UNLOCKING THE WORLD WITH MELBOURNE ARTISTS GRACIA HABY & LOUISE JENNISON
Interview for Inside Out magazine's blog

The online world is a great tool in connecting us with creatives, especially when it comes to these two artists: Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison. They like to tinker late at night and use paper as their primary medium, making limited edition artists' books, lithographic offset prints and zines.

They are also responsible for Hammer & Daisy, a handmade, one-of-a-kind range that includes postcards, journals, notebooks and soft toys. You can bag Gracia and Louise's zines, artist proofs, books and notebooks at their online store.

I describe the pair as crafty, visual storytellers; Gracia and Louise's creations are soulful, childlike, soft and nurturing. Looking at their work inspires and makes me feel a little dreamy. Fuelled with my new-found awe for these artists, I wanted to discover a little more. The girls generously answered a few questions – see below for insight into these creative souls.

Q: What are the inspirations for your up and coming exhibition?
A: A key to help make your own world visible, the title of our forthcoming exhibition in gallery two of Craft Victoria, is an amalgam of sentiment and prose drawn from Hermann Hesse’s novel of 1927, Der Steppenwolf.

Spoken in warm voice by Pablo to Harry: ‘I can throw open to you no picture-gallery but your own soul. All I can give you is the opportunity, the impulse, the key. I help you to make your own world visible. That is all.’

From such we took impulse and set to creating a series of other worlds that lie hidden, other interior worlds viewed with twin ‘gleam of pain and beauty that comes from things past’. (Hermann Hess, Der Steppenwolf) If you like, it served, and continues to serve, as an ever-flexible springboard from which we’ve been launching ourselves from for some time now.

We have also looked to the seductive power of nostalgia. Nostalgia greatly appeals to us both for it is somewhat of a riddle not to be trusted in so far as memory is concerned. The inner landscape and the greater literal world, the geography we map charts longing, and fragility is revealed along the way, we hope. But be forewarned, it is oft a pathway littered with red herrings. Our keepsakes, these objects gathered, perhaps they are not all they appear at first cursory glance. Perhaps these objects take, as Jean Cocteau mused, ‘advantage of our habit of believing them to be immobile.’ (Jean Cocteau, Beauty and the Beast: Diary of a Film)

This, in a loosely formed nutshell, is the story behind our forthcoming exhibition.

Q: How long has it been in the making?
A: Our work for this exhibition has been in the making for some time now and is, as you’d expect, gathering fierce momentum as the date for installation draws ever nearer. The works exhibited will be the result of roughly a year, or more, in some cases, and we are being driven slightly mad as anticipation and nerves mount.

Q: Between the two of you, who is better at what?
A: Having worked collaboratively for a little over ten years now, we wear our collaboration like a second skin. As Ramona and Rebecca referred to us in their recent book I Make Stuff, ‘perhaps it is easier to think of them as a left and right hand of the same body.’ (Ramona Barry & Rebecca Jobson, I Make Stuff)

That one favours watercolour pigment to scissors is of no surprise, we’re sure. Perhaps we could also add, one of us is more comfortable working within the realm with colour, the other with framing a composition. One favours the spoken word, the other the written.

Q: What's the best thing about working together?
A: Sharing the combined weight of ridiculous doubtfulness and maddening frustration is one of the best things about working side by side and on the one image or page. Yes, a load shared is lighter, this much is true It is also a reassuring path to tread. But it is challenging, too. It helps keep one motivated. It is endlessly inspiring. And it is comfortable in the best possible sense. Seems it is every little thing to us.

Q: ...and the worst?
A: Two peas in a pod, sometimes, it has to be said, we lack the voice of reason, someone to firmly place both feet on the earth, grounded once more to reality after a bout of fancy or self-doubt. Sometimes such similarity of working, and thinking, too, has its downfall.

A well-known joy of collaboration is that it yields fruit not possible without the other, that an image can be made that would have been possible by no other means; for such a reward, who wouldn’t risk a little madness?

Q: You say you tinker late at night, how late are we talking? Do you find the night particularly inspiring or is it a logistical matter?
A: Whilst one of us is more of a natural night owl than the other, we rather fell into this pattern of working at night due to logistical reasons referenced. It is quiet in the house, it is quiet in the street outside our house, and the body feels ready for a little stillness after the day. It feels as though you are less aware of the time passing as you sit and either draw or cut out future collage pieces. Daytime chores don’t nag for attention either.

Sometimes it can be more than logistical reasons that find us working late. It is an inspiring time to set the mind exploring or to harness the idyll dreams from the day.

Sometimes we work into the early hours of the morning though this is not nearly as often as we’d have you believe.

Q: In the coming show what are your favourite pieces and why?
A: We are having a great deal of fun putting together the different works for this show. There will be watercolours, there will be artists’ books; there will be framed pieces, prints on the wall. Neither of us is yet sure what piece or pieces we will be particularly attached to. Perhaps once we see it installed in the calm white of the gallery space. Working from our home-based studio, most of our work, once dry, is quickly whisked away to be stored or under press.

Vanessa Colyer Tay, 2009
Inside Out blog


Gracia Haby
One moonlit night with little to no prospect of success.
2009
postcard collage