Content note: Childbirth, motherhood, chronic health conditions, nervous system (dys)regulation
Links to things referenced in the text:
Moving Pieces Collective
https://www.movingpieces.co.uk/
Matrescence by Lucy Jones
https://lucyfjones.com/books/
Transcript:
Georgia: Hello, my name is Georgia and I’m currently the Artist in Residence at St Margaret’s House in Bethnal Green. Each week I meet with Sam, the Arts and Wellbeing Producer, and we talk about how the Residency is going, what my ideas and plans are for the residency as well as any successes or experiments or things that haven’t gone quite to plan in my practice. They are really rich conversations and I wanted to record one to share a bit of the process of the residency and my practice. Thank you for listening or reading and I’m interested in any comments or responses you might have. There will be a sharing of my work at the end of the residency in the chapel at St Margaret’s House from 12th-14th July so I hope to connect with you soon. And now, to the conversation...
Sam: Okay, so obviously, we've caught up. The usual process of the residency, when we have our weekly meetings, is that we have a weekly catch up, literally just to hear about what you've done in the past week. Because what I really like about your residency quite specifically, but most residences anyway, is that so much can change in a week. Sometimes, no progress has happened, and that's equally as encouraging and good. But with you, nearly every time we've met, it's been like, ‘Oh, let me tell you about what I've done this week’ and it's like a whole new practice, or it's a whole new theory. So, for the listeners, we've already done our little catching up. So, I think let's start from the very beginning, and talk about you as an artist and coming to the residency and your practice. I'll start by just talking about St. Margaret's house and the residency. So the residency programme, as you will know because you obviously applied for it, is a three to six month slot for emerging artists where you get free studio space, 24/7 access, to literally just work on your practice. There doesn't have to be a deliverable, as you know, we've discussed that plenty of times. Somehow we're still getting towards deliverables anyway. But yeah, it's a really great opportunity that St Margaret’s House can offer.
G: And we have the support from you. These weekly chats.
S: Yes, because I get to line manage the whole residency programme, I have weekly check-ins with each artist. I would say they are exactly as those sound in a lot of ways, we can talk strategically and we can talk obviously about development. The check ins are mainly exactly that, it’s really more about me just honestly being nosy and hearing about what you've been up to and your practice. And then what always seems to happen, and I hope you agree, is that organically we are chatting through development ideas or drawing out concepts and working towards a deliverable, kind of without realising.
G: Well also because there's been a lot of space in them. I think you said at the beginning, space to have the big blue sky sort of ideas, to articulate things that you really want to try and that you'd like to do if you could. I think it's a really valuable part of the residency.
S: Well it’s my favourite part.
G: Which is why I wanted to do a recorded conversation!
S: Yeah, to try and capture it.
G: Exactly.
S: So, if we go back to the beginning. I got your application, or nomination actually, you have to get nominated to be Artist In Residence here. So we got your nomination through and obviously I did know you previously because you run Sandpit Arts at St. Margaret's house. But what's really nice is that the residency truly is allowed to act as a completely separate entity. This is starting way back, but do you want to talk a bit about what you remember from your pitch, like what you applied for? Because then I think it could be quite interesting to see how it’s changed.
G: As you said I run a project at St Margaret’s House already called Sandpit Arts, which is running workshops for adults to experiment with visual art techniques, and then sometimes that crosses over with other artforms too - last year we had guest artists bringing in poetry, weaving and movement. I love the ethos of St. Margaret's house, or certainly the way that the arts and wellbeing programme is run where you have a really supportive way of just enabling people to have an idea and go with it and see what happens with it. It’s been really great for me to experiment with running Sandpit Arts, it’s been an opportunity for me to run something independently and try out my own practice after working on community and community arts projects for about 10 years now. I’ve been exposed to lots of different organisations and methodologies using a range of different artforms, mostly theatre and performance. That’s been working on community projects facilitating others to come together and create, which I love as an artform in itself, but I’m also interested in developing my art practice independent of that. I’ve kept my own art practice going on the side, which has obviously interacted with community work, but I’ve been developing my skills and areas of interest as a facilitator and as an artist. I feel like there's something specific that I want to do, but I wanted some space to figure that out. So that's why I wanted the residency in the first place.
S: I remember one of the specific things we spoke about, on the panel who chose the residents, we were really excited by yours because St Margaret's house is an arts and health charity and our five to six year plan is establishing ourselves as a creative health hub. And your nomination really hit it right on the intersection of arts and health. Do you want to talk a bit about what is your practice then?
G: Yes, at the time of the nomination I was coming to the end of a project with an arts and health collective called Moving Pieces and the project was exploring their approach to working with people who have Medically Unexplained Symptoms, which are basically health conditions that in a Western medical context are hard to treat or explain so things like chronic fatigue, chronic pain, autoimmune problems. And it’s through working with Moving Pieces over several years now that I’ve got really interested in creating work that comes out of embodied experience and that is at the same time resourcing for the nervous system, that’s a cornerstone of the Moving Pieces Approach. So my starting point is always sensing into the body and seeing what images or stories might be there, and I use elements from the Moving Pieces Approach as well as other practices I’ve come across to facilitate that exploration. So I use movement, visual art, writing, sculpture and performance to create work that explores my experience. And making work this way has been really important for my understanding of myself and, in turn, my health and wellbeing. I'm in my mid 30s now and my 20s were kind of a long journey of working out how to manage having a really, what I understand now is to have a really reactive nervous system. So I'm really prone to Medically Unexplained Symptoms, to having periods of ill health, symptoms that can't be medically explained in a Western context. And so the practice that I'm exploring now is, for me, integral to managing my nervous system and to integrating experiences, which, when they're not fully integrated, can keep the body in a stress response and contribute to being unwell. So it’s about developing a practice that supports my very reactive nervous system to integrate experience. And I think, or I hope there's things in that are interesting for everybody because as a society, we have so many Medically Unexplained Symptoms. But also the nomination when I wrote it, I was really interested at the time in exploring synesthesia, which is a condition where the synapses in your brain get merged; different sensory input can get combined with other parts of your brain. I, for example, see time and dates visually, and get a lot of internal visual imagery from sensory input, from touch and sound.
S: Is that the same thing, not to sound ridiculous, is it the same type of thing where you say a word and someone can say what it tastes like, or a colour?
G: Yeah exactly, it’s all part of that family of mixing the senses. Artists have found it interesting for a long time. Many artists that maybe don't identify as having synesthesia, but have explored, for example, what does it look like to paint this song. So I was interested in that at the time. And what's changed since then is that I had a baby last summer. So because my practice is really interested in what my current experience is, and obviously having a baby has really impacted my current experience. More than I thought it would, interestingly, which is also part of it. And that's getting, I guess, into some of the themes that I've been exploring.
S: Would you say that you've used art to give a language to some things that have been hard to explain?
G: For sure.
S: And that is processing but it's also expression. And, you know, those can be one and the same thing. We've spoken about this before, it's very interesting that your practice is responsive. So, as you said, if it wasn't that you had a baby last year, it would probably be taking thematically a very different approach because it's responding to what's happening to you and what you're dealing with.
G: I might be in a making process about not having had a baby and the struggle at that of that route and the emotional stories that come from there.
S: But either way for example, I can imagine there must be thousands upon thousands of words, millions of words written about motherhood. However, it's almost that your practice, no matter what even if it's things that are very common or well known, like motherhood, just as much as things that are hard to explain, like your physical symptoms that have been unexplainable, or at least not got the right words for. Whether it's that end of the spectrum and there's not much that can be said because there's little known, to something that actually has so much to say, so many different voices say, your practice is still giving a voice and language to something that doesn't have it yet. Even within the topic of motherhood in such a broad sense. My mum wrote a book about motherhood, so if she can then so many people have. Your practice is still unearthing things that are either less spoken about or even newer concepts or takes on those themes. And it's interesting, because we've always said that your practice is mainly about using art to process. But I think it's an and rather than or but, and also using art to voice, to express to, to give space to something much more, which I think is interesting.
G: I think motherhood’s interesting, because it's something that we all have experience of in some way, whether it's having a mother or being a mother or wanting to be a mother or being a proxy mother for somebody. But there's a lot of taboo around it that I hadn't realised. I'll cite what I think is a groundbreaking book that's come out in the last few years called Matrescence, by Lucy Jones, which really has helped me put some words to some of the experience. But I think what I'm interested in for my practice is that it's about my experience. But that ultimately, obviously does sit in a sociopolitical context. But it's finding a way for it to be this is my experience of Matrescence, for example. And articulating it like this, or creating these visual images, or these movements, or sculptures, help me process or integrate the edges of this experience. And maybe it will, I'd hope I'd, I'd love it if by showing some of this work it gives other people that come and see it in some way, just a small bit of like, oh, I can think that or I can express that because there's a lot of taboos in motherhood that I hadn't realised and a lot of pressure on mums today. I mean, it's a lot of pressure on everyone today, to be all kinds of different versions of themselves.
S: And where do you think just from saying that about, you know, nonetheless whether it means to speak to people or not or does or it doesn't, it's about you and your experience. However, and I'm asking this not to provoke but because I think I know the answer a little bit, but where do you think ego comes into that?
G: I mean, it feels a very new thing for me to be comfortable and confident sharing so much. I think that's down to maybe the time in life that I'm at, the experience I've got behind me now, I don't know. And interestingly, I think becoming a mother has impacted that as well, because I feel just clearer about some things now and I feel ready and okay to put some things out and share with people. It's taken a lot of confidence in me to get to this point, to say that I really value myself, when there have definitely been times in the past where I've really not valued myself doing this would have been very hard to imagine. And now I just feel clear that I value myself and that this is something that is helping me to be well and to thrive. And to be well in the sense of not to be rid of any ill health. It's about finding ways to live alongside my particular set of chronic health conditions and my reactive nervous system. And that's always going to be like that. But I can be happy and live well alongside those things. And that's what my practice is about, for me is finding ways to live in the best way that I can alongside the particular set of circumstances that I have.
S: I think it's been a tool that allows you to live in like the dualities of it all. So then coming to the residency, talk to us, talk to me, about what was the plan going through the first three months. I know you actually set up a plan from day one really about roughly what you wanted to explore. And talk me through what you've done; I know, but tell me again.
G: So I was very lucky that the residency got extended to six months, which felt like a really substantial amount of time to get my teeth into something. From the beginning I wanted to put a rough structure for myself, which I took from a project I finished just last summer with Moving Pieces. It was about an 18 month research project into living with Medically Unexplained Symptoms. That project followed a structure which I've just transferred into this one, which is to spend the first couple of months resourcing and grounding myself. Working with the nervous system is woven into the whole project. So if I want to explore themes that are coming from my experience, and they're coming from embodied experience, then resourcing myself first will make it a safe space for those things to come forward, and make it more likely that I can access what’s kind of really going on. So I spent the first couple of months doing lots of resourcing practices, body based skills to resource my nervous system. I was doing lots of body scans, lots of drawings directly from the body, doing movement practices and then doing big drawings in a sketchbook as well and doing lots of really crude body scans where I just draw a person and then draw my experience onto that person. I really love that process because it transforms your experience. Particularly at the beginning back in January when I was only four or five months postpartum and my body just felt like the most cumbersome, unwieldy, foreign thing, I found that a really powerful practice to draw how that felt and then to sit and look at it and see something different from what I felt and get a different relationship to it, and then to try movement with that image in my mind. So it's kind of accessing the same experience of what my body feels like but through multiple practices at once. So that was a lot of what the first couple of months was. The second two months were then exploring the themes that came forward from those resourcing practices. I basically followed the Moving Pieces Approach for the next two months, which is about exploring embodied experience but through the lens of lots of different art forms. Rather than going straight bang on the nose to make something about grief, for example, through resourcing yourself and body based practices and then using art forms that encourage metaphor and unconscious creating, it allows you to make things that you're kind of not expecting, or that you haven't premeditated.
S: Every residency I say the first third, however long that is whether it’s one month or two based on how long the residency is, just experiment, just explore, don't really have a plan. Obviously, you have your practice, and that's fair enough. But other than that, those are really the only parameters. And it's nice that both the start of the residency is encouraged to do that and then that kind of mirrors the Moving Pieces Approach as well. What I saw, particularly in those first few months, was this release of thoughts and energy. Every week, I came back and there was a different type of body scan to look at that got to do that lovely thing that art does, where you can be like, ‘Oh I'm seeing a flower in that’ or ‘actually I can see a cosmic sun’. And it has a different energy to it as well. It was very, very interesting to see. Particularly to see how four or five months after giving birth you spoke about, and maybe I'm jumping the gun a bit, but you spoke to me about how, what is it you said about how a mother is using the most amount of energy during birth?
G: That was something that came up before the residency, I started exploring those images. And then in the first couple of months of the residency was still doing them quite a lot. And they'll keep weaving through I think in this last period that I'm coming into now. But yeah, the energy…what did I call them? Ah yeah, energy fields. When you give birth your energy field opens probably the most it ever will and has the form of an hourglass, so really wide at the top where your crown is and really wide at your base where your sacrum is, and really small at the centre where your solar plexus is as you quite literally shrink yourself to make way for this new being that comes out. And then in the immediate period postpartum, which is such a roller coaster in so many ways, and part of that is because we've just opened so so much and traditional wisdom says that we need to seal those energy centres again afterwards. And that energy field looks more like a seed pod, closed at the top, bigger in the middle, and closed at the bottom. As you are finding a way to integrate being a person and being an individual, while also being connected with this being that was inside of you, and is now outside of you. I was doing those signs, particularly the seed pod sign, on repeat!
s: It was great. It also gave a little bit manic, which I loved, just doing it over and over again. But like it really felt like despite your probably quite sporadic chaotic energy of trying to re-regulate yourself, also you now have a baby, that's crazy, so much going on. But you came and you made and made and made and made and didn't stop. And even if it was doing the seed pod or the hourglass over and over again, it felt like it must have been cathartic in a way and you have just gone through the most kind of exertion of energy ever and now you get to just make about it, and it just was very interesting to watch these fire out of you again, every week coming in I’m like ‘oo a new cave painting, in the walls…’
G: Something different.
S: Yeah, you really took what I suggested and what Moving Pieces do and ran with it. I said experiment and off you ran, which is amazing. It's been really exciting to see that someone takes it so thoroughly; I've told people to experiment before and I can sense hesitation. And actually, you had none, if anything, I'd be talking about experimenting and you’d say let me tell you what I've done already! It was really great to see those first two months specifically.
G: They felt really important at the time as a way of coming to terms with my body and, in the first instance, my experience in my body, which I felt like I was exploring in those first few months. And by repeating that image of the seed pod, I felt like I was also actively sealing my energy back.
S: Exactly.
G: And then going into the middle segment was exploring some of the exercises that I've done with Moving Pieces, which, again, must look strange from the outside but they make a lot of sense to me and as a process to dig more into the themes that are coming out. So the first two months I was doing a lot of body scans, I was doing a lot of grounding and then these energy flow diagrams. And then I started working with the clay in the middle months, which I think is a really amazing material. You're literally making something with your body. It's such a live thing that responds to how you treat it. If you treat it softly, you create a soft sculpture. So I had a piece of clay and was wanting to make a landscape. And it wasn't like making something premeditated, like I'm going to make the landscape of my experience right now. But that's kind of what happened just by the way that I was feeling into it and ended up making a bowl and the ball had these sharp and soft edges. And I could look at it and say, that's kind of my experience at the moment. I am being a bigger container than I've ever been in my life. And I feel both soft with that and really fiery and sharp. And then I did some drawing off the back of that. And then another part of the Moving Pieces Approach is making a landscape to wear on your face, which is a mask, and that basically enables you to find more layers in your experience. Because it's the first time I'm doing it independently, I've done this process alongside Moving Pieces three or four times, this has been a really amazing opportunity to do it independently and then find some bits that I'm doing the same, and some bits that I'm expanding or doing a bit more my way.
S: It's been nice actually when we've had conversations where you've introduced Moving Pieces’ approach or what you did previously and then, even if you're not saying it in those words, we're both noting how you've purposely chosen to deviate from that slightly. Again, that whole process of, you know, ‘to Magpie’, to steal a little. You went through something that proved wholly beneficial to you and you love their approach. But nonetheless maybe it works great for you as a participant but when you're leading, it's what you can take from them. I love seeing where the deviation from inspiration goes, because it’s a starting point where we can all meet and understand. And then it's the way you colour it that is very different. Do you want to talk a bit about the pilot workshop series? Because that kind of happened alongside the months we've already spoken about. You brought your practice to a group of three, was it three other mums?
G: Yes, it happened quite organically because I was talking to another mum who I've met through the process of having a baby who was…I mean, I think all mothers that I know we've had our moment in the last year since giving birth where we have just felt that this is really tough. And she was in that moment and was having trouble sleeping and I said that I've learned some skills for regulating the nervous system that I find really helpful, I can share them with you if you like because they can be things you do when you can't sleep. She said yes, and then I invited some other people to come as well if they would benefit, and it ended up being four of us that met that day. So me and three others. And it went really well and there was appetite to meet again. And at that first meeting I didn't do anything creative.
S: I was going to say, did you plan it to be a workshop?
G: Yeah, I planned it to be a workshop to share the skills because I wanted to be clear that for that moment I was their friend but I was taking a slightly different role in that I was sharing these resources as a peer, but I did want to make sure it was safe in the way that I held it. Any work with the body, we can just never assume the stories that people have got in their body and some of these skills can have quite a big impact on your nervous system. Even though they may seem really subtle, the more subtle things are often what our nervous system picks up. So I didn't have any intention of facilitating it like a project at the time, I just wanted to share these skills in a safe way, and to caveat it with ‘I'm sharing these as a peer, but for this hour that we're together I will be holding space and sharing the skills in as much of a trauma-informed way as I can’. There was appetite to meet again and it was actually after meeting with you and one of our conversations I thought, I'm going to throw something creative into this. We met again and I had some materials and said would you like to make some marks at the end or do some drawing and there was a bit of interest in that. And then it occurred to me that maybe there was more to explore and that it would be interesting to share some of the process that I'm going through, and there was interest in that. So we've met five times now and I've shared some of the core bits that I've done, which began with sensing into the body and doing drawings from the body about how we find our experience now. And that particular exercise I think is really valuable when you've gone through the degree of change you go through when you have a baby. And then we've added a couple more layers to that as well. I'm hopeful that there'll be something from that project to share at the Exhibition.
So I think I've got just under two months left where I want to bring together all the things I've explored into some visual art, something that brings it together as well as experimenting with new visual art making techniques. I say visual because, as I've realised through the wide experimenting that I've done, where I was throwing ideas around, like, I'm going to make a film, I'm going to write a poetry book. What were the other ones I had, I was going to do a performance…
S: We are now doing a podcast!
G: I had lots of different ideas and I want to do something that brings it all together and I've decided to stick with visual arts because that's where I feel most comfortable and also I just really want to have a real thorough experiment with some messier visual art making practices that I've always wanted to do, like Action Painting, and mark making on a really big scale. So that's my plan for the next six weeks is to use my whole body in making pieces, but it still will have the themes and things that I've explored in it. So finding a visual language, or a movement language combined with a visual language to…
S: tell the story of the residency at least I guess?
G: Yeah.
S: How does it feel to have to put some things aside, put some things on ice, and say yes I wanted to do film but actually I can't. How is that feeling to consolidate so much? Because that was what was great about the first chunk of the residency was that we couldn't stop, we would have so many threads of things to explore.
G: I was really surprised at myself because normally I'm the person that's sitting there going err is that too much? That's normally the role I have in creative relationships. I guess because it's just me in the residency so I’m being both sides of things. And now the part of me is coming in saying let’s just focus on this. But I don't feel like it's confining because there's so much experimenting to do even in that form. I've never done Action Painting on a big scale before. I've never used big DIY mark making tools. I've got some massive sticks of bamboo from my mum's garden that I've just duct taped a load of sponges and Brillo pads onto the end of it to make some really big mark making tools. So there's still quite a big creative process to go through of how I explore that technique, and then bring in all the textures of the four months of exploring, and the themes. And how mark making with this body that I have at the moment which is postpartum, which is still experiencing chronic health conditions, how does that feed into mark making and creating with the whole body?
S: So we know we're working towards a deliverable. It’s a visual arts exhibition installation, experimental or experiential, something with a multitude of things going on. But we have spoken about how that doesn't mean the end of anything, if anything it’s probably marking the start. in the grand scheme of things.
G: Yeah. It’s exciting because I was nervous at the beginning. I was just thinking, what am I going to do when this ends? And now I'm starting to see beyond it and thinking well I'm gonna apply for this next.
S: Well that is what I was going to ask, what are your hopes for your practice post residency?
G: Interesting question.
S: Sorry if you haven’t prepped!
G: I would like to, I mean, I've talked to you about wanting to apply to run a longer version of the pilot project I've done with new mums. And also there's Sandpit Arts to consider, I’d like to be running workshops again under that umbrella and maybe being more intentional with that, and even more facilitated or themed potentially. And I think I'm going to keep going with my own inquiry, I think I am going to make a film! I think I am going to make a poetry book! Just, you know, in my own time after this, and maybe there'll be an opportunity to show those in the future alongside whatever comes out of a longer project. So I think there's more to do…
S: Definitely, always. And again, just another curveball. What would you say has been your biggest learning so far?
G: I've never backed myself in the way that I have felt able to in this residency. Even to suggest, for example, recording a conversation like this that I might put out there - unthinkable in the past! So my biggest learning is probably that I can do things, and that if I put my mind to something I can do it, that I can follow through on things, that I can do things that people potentially find interesting. Like you said, I guess the ego thing around having St Margaret's house say yeah, we think you're an interesting person to take this space, it does do something.
S: There’s a bit of reassurance there.
G: Yeah. To give you a context to make something in and then it makes it feel…I mean it's a process based practice anyway so it is for me, but…
S: But it's for us too, we've asked for it!
G: Yeah, it's hard to keep the motivation when it's just for you. It's given some more purpose to what I'm doing and I think it's going to really give me some momentum to keep going. I think my biggest learning has been that I can jump into new opportunities and kind of believe in myself and deliver things. I was thinking up till last week, gosh, I've said I'm going to have an exhibition, but I haven't even made the big pieces yet. And then in the last week I've been photographing everything I've made so far and looking at the pictures that I've taken of myself wearing the mask, and realised that there’s already quite a lot here!
S: Because you've had such a process based practice, you have never not been making and doing and some people would spend time in books and theory before even starting to make.
G: Well that’s been massive learning too to just do. I've been very blocked in the past by ‘Oh, what am I going to do today’. And particularly having a baby has made time, I’ve spoken to you about this before, how having a baby has kind of bizarrely given me the gift of time, rather than taking it. When I have half an hour now I know exactly what I want to do with it. And it's really knocked off some of the hesitancy I might have had. For example, drawing, I've got 10 minutes, just do it, just draw something and then move on and do the next thing, rather than sit there and look at it for four hours, which I've definitely done in the past.
S: We spoke a bit about how there potentially used to be this much more self-conscious Georgia who was too aware of perceptions of everything and self perceptions. And then we spoke about how within motherhood and going through that there's this huge sense of liberation in that.
G: I feel it's been a gift as well of just knowing what's really important. The most important thing is that I'm alive, my daughter's alive, my partner’s alive, my mum's alive. It really helps you see things in very sharp… On the flipside of that, death feels this constant thing but, personally, I feel more vital living alongside those things.
S: And also, I suppose, because you now have a dependent you have to back yourself.
G: That's what I was exploring in the mask work is that my experience has been that it's brought me much closer to survival, animalesque, in the wilderness. We are just surviving, all the rest is lovely if you've got it, but the core thing is, keep myself alive, keep the cave in my story, the baby, all alive. In that context, it doesn't matter so much what other people think because I have my job, which is keep the baby alive. And that's the most important thing and it's weird how that then liberates to make the other things that are less important suddenly feel available because they're much less loaded.
G: Thank you very much for being up for doing that.
S: Of course. Thank you for having me on your podcast.
Listen in one of my weekly conversations with Sam, Arts and Wellbeing Producer at St Margaret's House, as part of my Artist Residency