Ari Edgecombe

Welcome, Ari Edgecombe, to our first ever radio interview. I'm really honored to have you here. We've promised to have this conversation for about a year and a half of this conversation about art and stuff, so this is me making this real welcome. Ari, how would you describe your creative practice?

Lovely to be here. Thank you. What a beautiful opportunity. Yes, we're slow burners, but we're here, which is always good. I'm deeply interested in social histories, particularly ones that are rainbow social histories, so part of my art practice is about filmmaking and documenting those very specific histories at the individual's place, time, era, and fermenting those into very visual, visual documentaries that people can, that are accessible and reasonable for people to listen to and understand. As an art, as an art maker, a tangible tactile art maker, I love all sorts of stuff. I'm a paint bunny. I love to do portraiture of people. I also like to work in installation and create environments that people can step into. That's one of my favourite things to do, which tends to mean there's a lot of time in between exhibitions. I love doing installation work and combining that with film screening. Part of my art practice has been is about self-expression, about self-determination and very much about visibility of myself as a trans man and how that can be available, be made available into a public sphere for people to have an understanding or to create an open space of conversation with people and just to create also a space for people to potentially challenge their own thinking around things to reinvest in themselves as social animals, who share space with other social animals. So really, the invitation is there for people to gain a different understanding, different insight to the life styles and people.

That's awesome. Can you give a quick overview of your creative journey and how you got to where you're going?

Yes, that would be lovely. Love to do that from a little tucker, a little teeny person, had a pencil in hand, loved the sound of a pencil scratching on paper. One of my favourite things, and that's expanded into loving the sound of angle riders on wood and charcoal scratching through whatever and the sound of paint, especially the sound of paint that's lots of dripping onto the floor. So from when I can recall, I was a little person who would have a pencil in their hand, always sketching things. I would write over the lettering in books that I was reading, just follow the text and stuff. So my hands were busy with understanding shape and form from a very young age. So it's been parallel to my understanding and my visual understanding myself into the world since I was a little, little thing, which has been a really interesting process for me. As a late bloomer, which as we talked about before, being slightly slow burners and late bloomers, I went to the University of Canberra when I was 33. I think I was 33 in 1999, yeah, which is there's an age giveaway. That's one of those deal breakers of anybody who's listening. Don't listen. And I love my age. Went to the University of Canberra at the age of 33 and the reason I went there is I had a pretty, pretty reasonable portfolio. I had just finished, I think, a six-form sculpture at the Hagley School in Christchurch at the time. Julia Morrison had just come back into the country having been away in France on one of our leading contemporary artists, Julia Morrison, and had taken a position as a senior lecturer at the University of Canberra. So I applied, was accepted as a mature student, which was really, really cool. I'm glad that I wasn't a mature student going into that environment, into fine arts. And that's where I really started to push up against things that challenged me in some really interesting ways. And I feel like Julia Morrison just took one look at me and knew just where to poke to get those reactions and responses from me that would push me out into a different, different sphere of thinking, which led me into performance of body, which led me into some really interesting art forms, a filming itself. And from then on, I think I sprung from straight out into making a documentary film on New Zealand Queer History, which is really, really fun, really loved it, and really deep and emotional as well. But that parallel to that has always been that continuum of tactile art making, which is where I'm largely at now, is hands-on, gritty, smoky, dirty work. Often I'll throw a piece of stuff onto a fire if I want to get something happening in there with charcoal and flame. And I've lost a few artworks, throwing them on fires to see what will happen. But hey, that's kind of cool. So entered into that system, I guess, which really was a good system for me to get into at a later stage in life. And that was pivotal for me to understand myself in that environment, which didn't necessarily make a lot of sense to me, and still doesn't, but that doesn't matter. And we find our places, if we look carefully, we find our places. Now I'm part of the Zappekin Collective of Artists, Artists and Allies, which is a super awesome Collective of Artists out on the Motueka Estuary. And it's pretty hip out there, A vibrant Bunch, and we're very eclectic. And a number of the people who are artists in that studio space, also, are full-time artists who make living from their wares, which is super cool. So I'm very fortunate to rub shoulders as some very interesting people.

Thanks a lot. And as I understand, you also work a full-time job alongside that. How do you balance those two?

That's a great question. Balance is not easy. And I'm just in the last, just the beginning of this year, started to strip away. Things are my life that were drawing on me, that were also drawing me away from creating. So what I'm doing this year is opening up a lot more space for creative practice. I would love to be doing this full-time. That is my aim. We'll see how we go with that. Like I said, my works are very slow and progressive. So it could be a long time in between sales, if I'm looking at that, which could be really interesting. Having a full-time job, I can burn at a pretty high level of energy anyway, which is, and that's slowly depleting as I get older. So I'm starting to get really curious about different ways that I could do things, and different ways I can engage with people to work alongside so that we can create things together as opposed to simply all of the energy streaming from me. So I'm curious and interested. Yes, one day the full-time job will be depleted to. I'm hoping have my full-time job be the art making, that would be ideal for me.

I would love that. Wonderful thing. As a slight off track from the questions I've got, you mentioned using fire in your creative process. That's something I do myself as well, and I'm just interested in hearing what draws you to that.

Flame has an unpredictable ability, and yet on that level of surface level, it's the fire, the smell of the fire, not knowing exactly what's going to come out. If the artwork is going to come out of the fire, what's it going to look like? There's an imagination there that I'm so curious about. There's a possibility there that I'm so curious about, and how fire shifts the material nature of things. We'll engage with the property of a material, say for example iron or wood, and intrinsically changes it for good forever. You can't turn back, and that's, I guess it's parallel to my own process, the things that have impacted my life and the steps that I've taken, I've thrown myself in the fire, therefore I don't turn back. I can't turn back now.

Wonderful. Which kind of leads us under the next question, which was about what do you see as being the role of failure and perseverance as an artist?

Everybody should at least fail at least once a month. I think it's an exceptional experience of self. I come from a karate-long term karate background as well, and often we were trained to fail, just to see how we were respond, and also to understand that failure is inevitable somewhere in our lives. We will hit a wall at some stage. What you do at that point is what's going to really matter. How you feel at that point is what's going to matter. So, excuse me, fail at least once a month or at least once a year anyway, and just get on with it and just enjoy that sense of poking your head out the other side and emerging from the ground and going, wow, that was awesome, that was hard, but look at me now, just continue on.

Yeah. And how would you say you approach self-criticism and growth?

Yes, absolutely. I think self-criticism is really useful, and again, lining up with that, parallels that for me is really important to line up with people who I trust with their critique as well, so I can open up those conversations. If I may share a very, very lovely story from another extraordinary contemporary artist who I won't name because I don't have their permission, but I'm going to tell this story. They're an amazing painter, large-scale portrait of faces, and they're very textural, they paint their paint use, and they have an incredible understanding of the canvas environment, and the use of paint and brushes and what they do and how they do it. Every now and then they'll take their partner and say permission to destroy. This is them talking about the work that they're working on. One particular work, they'll say permission to destroy. I've reached a point, they've reached a point where I don't like this work. I'm not sure what to do, so they text the partner and they say permission to destroy, and the partner will say, hang on a minute, let's talk. Let's talk. So that deep critique, I can, what I understand with my critique with work if I'm standing back and looking at something going, I'm not quite sure what's going on, what I know enough about processes and materials and art and myself, is that to just continue on with something, it will change form, it will change shape. So step back to the process, it's part of my critique is yeah, okay, that might look shitty, but let's step back to the process and see what comes out the other side. Talk to the people I trust about it, have a really good conversation, and just that's probably this way for me to engage in self-critique and then critique of others.

It's quite well known that as an artist, you'll push into a point of discomfort with a piece of work, and the difference between good artists and bad artists is whether they're able to push through that and create something beautiful, so it's really good to hear something like this.

Yes, yes I agree.

We discussed about us both being quite slow burners with things, have you ever got to a point where you've just hit a creative block with something and just gone, don't know what to do next, and I'm stuck, and how would you get through that?

So a creative block is not necessarily something that occurs for me. What happens is that time that I must provide myself, create a space, a good amount of time to step into, to create. So the blocks that can occur with regards to reaching my work as opposed to being able to do it, are if there's so much else going on around me that I'm engaged in, that I love, love it all, love it all, if it's delicious and delightful, and yes I'll throw myself into a number of different courts, and there that it's not a block, but it's a side path that leads me off in a different direction when I really want to do is get down in the studio, get messy and dirty and smelly and see what comes out the other side. So I'm not lacking in the desire or the wish or that I can't get through that, simply for me, it's a factor of time. I have a fantastic studio space, which is a really important thing for me to have a space and no matter how often I use it, it's there, I can just drop everything and go there, I can drop everything there and leave. Super important, I think it's probably the number one thing that I would recommend for an artist is to find a space that you can work in.

You always strike me as being a person of great integrity and energy. Do you ever get to a point where the energy just drops off?

Yeah, I do. I really do, Rich, and I think you probably know that. It's just like, well, I burn, and then I just, I have too, I will crash, there'll be essential signals from my body, from my mind, from myself. I might become cotton wool in the head, the body gets very, very tired, and there's a point where I probably should stop before that, or I will get sick. I'll get a cold or a flu or something, yucky, and I have to stop. Yes, I burn very high, and I can burn for quite a long time, and then I will just have to stop. So I need to find that little bit more balance in there, I think, where I just go, yeah, that's a really good time to just chill, because it feels really nice.

What would you claim to be the greatest challenge for you as an artist?

As just that little bit of uncertainty, if I'm putting myself out into the world, into the environment now, especially now, in this time of thinking, world thinking, in some parts of the world, where there's quite a backlash, or there's a punch forward towards trans people, towards rainbow community. When I'm presenting myself, visibility doesn't necessarily mean, what can I say, visibility doesn't necessarily mean acceptability from a wider world. So I will put myself out there on the line. Visibility is critical, essential for me to present into the world, and this comes from my own childhood of having a presentation for me to lock into. There was nothing visual or tangible for me to understand. I was just myself, that young person growing up going, I'm feeling all these things, I'm feeling incredible things, and I, what can I look at to see? So part of my work is, I will be visible, I must be visible, out of respect for that little me, and also out of reaching out into the world to other people who may be a little me, or a big me. And with parallel to that side to the type of that, there can be, there can be, I'm aware, I have an awareness, sometimes it's not, I don't have a fear as such, well, I'm not afraid, but I'm aware that there can be a demonstration against me, simply because of who I am. And it's a peculiar way, it's a very odd thing to know as being visible in the world, that somebody could look at me and simply, with an understanding that I'm a trans person, go, you're a trans person, therefore, I want to come and punch you in the face, or I want to tear down your artwork off the wall, or I want to say awful things to you because why? So, but I will continue, without awareness, without awareness that this is my responsibility, but I'm not responsible for how people respond.

Any ideas you could give to us to why somebody might want to do that?

I'm not you, I don't get it. Fear, right? Fear, it must be fear. I just, there must be a deep fear in people that there is an inability to simply stand face to face or near another human being and simply understand that there's another human being. When there hasn't been any display of hostility or not niceness coming from one to the other, then, okay, let's have a conversation, rather than the scary stuff. It must be fear, Rich. What else could it be?

I really don't know, I can't get my head around it. So, what's next for Ari?

So, I'm ready to do another show somewhere in the next 18 months, and I need that time up because I'll be doing quite a number of works and some big works. Next up for me is, and I've had a lovely conversation with somebody who knows me very well, and one of the big, one of the big elements in my work has been making cloaks, making cloaks out of corrugated iron, making cloak forms out of material, that kind of stuff corrugated iron feathers. One of the big things for me in university was studying Pacific art history and seeing these phenomenal, beautiful cloak, cloaks, oh my gosh, it right throughout the Pacific, and in this country. And I realised I was looking more and more and a cloak for me started to become a form of love and protection, and still it's a form of love and protection. My next exhibition, I want to create a series of cloaks, and this is my, it's my gift to the aspects of little paths in my life along the way, to that, to that little kid who would go to school in there, their pink school uniform would go, I'm not a girl, and would zip into the lane way on the way, changing their shorts and skippy, and head on down to school, you know, dressed as a boy. That little one, I want to make them a cloak. I want to make the next person, you know, the 10-year-old who's going, I don't know what's happening for me, but I don't feel like I belong over in that camp, I belong over in that camp, or where do I belong, I want to make a cloak for them. I want to, I want to make a series of cloaks of these really intrinsic key points that I could, I could dot in my life that were pivotal for an understanding myself, an experience for myself, and offer each of those parts a cloak. And part of that will, there'll be, there'll be film, there'll be a filmic element with that as well, which will be around water, water has been really important in my life as a child, and is now as well. So I'm looking forward to seeing where that goes, I already have a number of pieces that I'd like to present, that have just been building over time, and I'm really, I'm really to really dive in and go, mucky and messy with it and see, and we're not, we're not talking, we're talking big works, we'll be talking big works, I'll put a proposal into the Refinery Art Space so they don't know this yet, so shhh. If you're listening, if you're listening, we'll see what happens.

Really, really came for that, and it feels that'll also be a, alongside each of those cloaks will be a photo from my life history. So I really want people to have a connection, an understanding of what it can be like for a young person in an environment that has no visibility, and we actually turn out okay, given the right series of events and our lives, and if he makes some good choices, so that'll be up next, and it's going to be big, and I feel, I feel, I feel pretty fiery and fired, I feel, I feel inspired, I feel self-inspired.

Beautiful. Yeah, I found myself getting quite tearful listening to, just the beautiful humanity of what you were saying. If you, had an opportunity to talk to the younger you, or young people around now, who are experiencing something similar to you, what would you say to them?

I would ask, I would invite them, I would encourage them to listen to the good things that people have to say to them about them, to be alongside people who sincerely care about them, who allow them space to move and breathe in the world, and they don't have to set themselves in stone. And you know what, I would like to look at them and say, you'll be okay, you'll be okay.

That's saying, don't have to set themselves in stone, that's a beautiful one, and I think it applies to so many people.

I think so. Yeah, I think it's a beautiful way of being.

What advice would you give to young people who are thinking of pursuing profession in the arts? Where do you begin? What do you need to be doing with yourself? How do you approach that?

It's art school, I think, is a great forum for meeting and for for being challenged with the right, with the right people and the right tutors, the right environment, not for everybody, and by no means am I saying that's a package people have to go with. There's a lot of fantastic artists in this in this country who miserably failed art school and have gone on to do the most incredible things. I think it's really important to have a community around you that understands you and that you can be alongside potentially, you can flex your muscles, make stuff together, make stuff alone, put your artwork out, get it out, put it out into the world, just let it be seen, let people see who you are and what you do, really, really cool, and being in this epic and collective for me is super great, great. Like I said, get a space to work in, be an environment alongside people. Do the business, enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, but if there's an opportunity comes up and it's safe and it's good, go for it, go for it, get in there, put your work out into all sorts of shows and stuff like that, make those proposals, say I want to show everybody your stuff.

How would a young person find out where these shows were and where the opportunities were do you think?

It's actually really good question and not something I have an answer to and I would hope there's there are youth forums and pathways, I know there's networks in the city by all means where people link up together as used as young people or even more as young adults. Yeah, that's a good question so I'm hoping that I'm hoping we can find that out actually and that could be a really good thing to add on to the tag onto this show.

Yeah, certainly something I'm trying to kind of get in my head around as I had to work out ways, open up opportunities, not just for myself, but for all people.

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. It's those networks and connections are super important. And you found working with the arts councils in the area relatively easy or are they approachable? Yes, by all means, this year we applied for our third artist's residency space at Zappekin. So we've had two very, very cool ones over the last couple of years and this year we're basically the Tasman District Council and the Arts Council. They've been really useful with regards to saying yes to what we're suggesting that we're going to offer studio space which is very hard to come by in our environments to three or four artists for a series of eight weeks and at the end of that they have a show. Really, it's been super successful so we feel really supported there. Myself personally, anytime I've approached the Arts Council in Nelson for the purpose of exhibition show whatever or if I've been working with another organisation for that reasoning, they've been excellent. They've been excellent. I really appreciate the presence of this style of community radio for them. I think you provide an opportunity for people to really listen and connect to each other and that's that's quality that's more quality than I think we can ever get with mainstream. So thank you.

Oh, welcome. Yes. Just before we go Ari, where can people find your work?

So I work at the Zappekin's Artists and Allies studio which is on the Motueka highway from in between Mapua and Motueka and there's an old apple sheet you can't miss. It's got signs all over it. There's a sign at one end before as you're approaching from either end on the road. It's in my studio spaces which I share that space. A lot of other people, it's a great vibe.