Episode 43: Art/Life Balance

Is your practice taking over your life? Or is life getting in the way of your practice? 

As part of Parramatta Artists Studios' annual Movers and Makers event, Esther Anatolitis facilitates this conversation with artists Abdul Abdullah, Çigdem Aydemir and Harriet Body on the less discussed aspects of being an artist, including managing admin, juggling a day job and finding time for a personal life.

Abdul Abdullah is an artist from Perth WA, currently based in Sydney, who works across painting, photography, video, installation and performance. As a self described ‘outsider amongst outsiders’, his practice is primarily concerned with the experience of the ‘other’ in society. Abdullah’s projects have engaged with different marginalised minority groups and he is particularly interested in the experience of young Muslims in the contemporary multicultural Australian context, as well as connecting with creative communities throughout the Asia Pacific.

Harriet Body is an artist from Berry Springs, NT, currently based in Bulli, NSW, working in the expanded field of mark making to contemplate process and time. Moving across painting, textiles, ceramics, and dance, she melds traditional materials and processes in unconventional ways. Harriet also works collaboratively with various community groups, providing workshops and art experiences for people of all ages and abilities. She is co-Director of ARTBEAT, a weekly, accessible free-form dance workshop, and is one half of Thom and Angelmouse, a collaborative project with Thom Roberts. Thom and Angelmouse is supported by Studio A.

Çigdem Aydemir is a Sydney-based artist working in the mediums of installation, performance and video art. Her socially and politically engaged art practice investigates possibilities for intersubjective and transcultural communication with an interest in post-colonial and feminist issues. Much of her work expands on the veil as a culturally constructed site and as material realisation, while exploring the veiled woman cipher as resistant female other and as lived experience. Through critiquing, decolonising and queering mechanisms, Çigdem questions established relations of power, while producing work that is driven equally by research, play, criticism and humour.