On ochre, wild clay and foraging! This week I am joined by the magnetic pairing that is Heidi Gustafson and Belinda Blignaut. When I first came across the sculptures of the artist Belinda Blignaut I was blown away by them. Made from unprocessed clay and other found materials from her immediate surroundings, tapping into ideas around transformation. Though it took me a long time to actually reach out to Belinda and tell her what a fan I was, images of her works have been pasted on my studio wall and saved on Instagram for several years.

When we spoke on the phone a few weeks ago Belinda suggested we invite Heidi Gustafson to join us in conversation today.. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Heidi’s work in more detail since then.. Heidi is ‘a recovering philosopher who forages and crushes rock for a living.’ Her Book of Earth is an immersive introduction into the world of ochre, a naturally occurring mineral used to make pigment. Heidi’s cabin in the rural North Cascades shelters the Ochre Sanctuary project, which contains more than 600 pigments from around the planet.. a transforming body and future earthwork made with ochres and earth pigments gathered by humans worldwide.

We spoke about the body, and Belinda’s journey through health and healing. The body is central to Belinda’s work - the Mud Rights practice sees her covering her body with earth, creating an earth skin and lying down in the ground.. It is a still, meditative and contemplative experience of re-connection.

Heidi spoke about the vastly broad array of colours and forms that an ochre can take, how they have been a way of understanding her connection to earth, and how ochres are connected to our bodies through our material make-up.

Find Belinda & Heidi on Instagram: @belinda_blignaut @heidilynnheidilynn

Find out more about Heidi’s Ochre Sanctuary: https://earlyfutures.com/ochrearchive/

Heidi’s book, Book of Earth: https://earlyfutures.com/book-of-earth/

Belinda also organises the Wild Clay retreat: @wildclayretreat

We are on Instagram at @Mater________

We also have a website with 19 commissioned pieces of writing which can all be read for free on our website mater.digital

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I am joined by the wonderful Nicola Turner & Mick Sheridan, speaking about sculptures, upholstery, waste, horsehair and wool..

Nicola Turner: https://www.instagram.com/nicolaturner.art/?hl=en

Mick Sheridan: https://www.instagram.com/m.s.upholstery/?hl=en

Nicola is an artist with a background in set and costume design. She has designed for The Royal Opera House, National Theatre and Sydney Opera House to name a few.. Today we will be talking about her sculptures. As an artist Turner investigates dissolution of boundaries, liminal states, and continuous exchanges across ecosystems.. exploring the interconnection of life and death, human and non- human, attraction and repulsion. She combines found objects that hold traces of memory, with the shapes of living forms, and materials from organic ‘dead’ matter such as horsehair - a material used previously for bedding and furniture. Her sprawling sculpture, The Meddling Fiend, in the Royal Academy courtyard has been a highlight for many visitors to this year’s Summer Exhibition.

Mick is a second generation upholsterer based in Wales, proficient in both traditional and modern methods, and specialising in British wool fabrics. Mick’s Guerilla Reupholstery project finds fly tipped or discarded furniture on the streets, and transforms them into something new.. Using as much of the existing materials as possible and augmenting that with waste products from their reupholstery business. The chairs are sculptural, several being made in collaboration with an artist, and one with a Designer/Weaver.

Mick's Guerilla Upholsterer account: https://www.instagram.com/guerrilla_upholsterer/?hl=en

The Meddling Fiend at The Royal Academy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7gVTwxvhPk

Julie Ann Sheridan: https://www.instagram.com/sheridanjulieann/

Sadie Campbell: https://www.instagram.com/sadiedidi/

Find us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/?hl=en

Our website: https://mater.digital/

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A fascinating conversation with Deborah Tchoudjinoff and Oscar Salguero about geology, minerals, technology and fiction

Deborah is a multidisciplinary artist based in London who works across sculpture and digital media. She has worked with AR, VR, Unreal Engine, combined with sculpture made from wood or metal to present mixed media installations. Often beginning with a locality or research concept, she considers what the form is through the process of material and visual experimentations. Her practice engages with the temporal and spatial aspects of ecologies, in particular how technology, constructs, remembers, and forgets the stories of past and future ecologies. She is influenced by fiction, world-building, and otherworldly aesthetics.

Oscar is an independent curator, researcher, and archivist. His exhibition NEO MINERALIA presented a selection of new geological specimens crafted by ten international artists. The exhibition suggests recent rock formations no longer fit within the traditional groups: Igneous, Metamorphic, and Sedimentary. Instead, the era of human influence on the climate and environment has introduced two post-natural rocks: Synthetic and Digital. Salguero is also the founder of Interspecies Library - the first archive dedicated to the study and advancement of artists’ books exploring alternative interspecies futures.

Deborah is on Instagram at: deboraht_ff

Oscar is on Instagram at softcoreny

Find us on Instagram at Mater________

Our website it mater.digital

Projects & people referenced:

The Toaster Project, Thomas Thwaites, 2011

Neo Mineralia, Oscar Salguero

Sae Honda, Everybody Needs a Rock

Works by Deborah Tchoudjinoff

Ceramic Material Atlas

Lehman Brothers

Earth Emotions by Glenn Albrecht

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