Meet the Artist: Emily Hartley-Skudder, Jhana Millers
We spoke with artist Emily Hartley-Skudder about her exciting upcoming presentation with Jhana Millers Gallery at the Fair. Known for her playful, thought-provoking installations and vibrant oil paintings, Emily invites viewers into a world where everyday objects, gendered spaces, and nostalgia collide. In this conversation, she shares the inspiration behind her new series, “Petite Spa,” and her unique process of collecting found objects, while reflecting on the role of domestic spaces in shaping our identities. Read on to discover more about Emily’s creative journey and what we can expect to see:
____________________
What can we expect to see in your presentation with Jhana Millers Gallery at the Aotearoa Art Fair?
I’m looking forward to riffing on the fair as a big ‘expo’ by transforming our booth into a bathroom showroom, complete with a distinctly unfashionable shub and bidet, and icecream-parlour pink and purple lino – with paintings to match of course. Luckily, Jhana is super supportive of my more eccentricinstallation ideas.
My new series of paintings have a lot of splashing going on. I build table-top sets in my studio and chuck water and objects around, capturing them in-camera with high speed flash to crystallise the splashes of sparkling liquid. I then translate these images into oil paintings, which include the colours and textures of the installation they’ll sit within at the fair.
This new project is called Petite Spa, which takes its name from a brand of single-use shampoo and conditioner bottles populating motel bathrooms. I’d like audiences to step into my bathroom tableaux – IRL and within my paintings – and perhaps be inspired to reconsider their grey and white home-décor decisions, or at least leave with a sugary, retro taste in their mouth.
Image: Splash Club Installation, Emily Hartley-Skudder
You have a fascinating process of collecting found objects. Can you tell us more about how you choose and respond to these materials?
It all started with collecting miniatures as a child which I just couldn’t let go of, and I brought them out again at art school. The scenes I was constructing with miniatures began to make sense as life-sized installations, which meant the objects I collected had to scale up too. I trawl junk shops, building recyclers, and Trade Me, and end up spending a lot of time coordinating trips and pick-ups around the motu – with my partner and family’s help – to expand my treasure trove of retro carpet, bathtubs, sinks and hairdryers. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. For this new series, I’ve come full circle and started collecting bathroom themed miniatures. So I’m taking a trip back to the diminutive and having fun with scale.
I love taking objects that already exist in the world as my starting point – they give me an anchor and also come with their own host of associations and meanings which can be played with and manipulated. I’m drawn to dated home-décor trends; the colours and styles some people now love to hate. Also, cheap materials that mimic luxurious materials; things like pleather, poured resin to imitate marble, and parquet flooring that’s actually lino. These things speak to taste and class and societal pressures, and I love the rush of finding something that you may never find again. When it comes to items that might have existed in the carpeted bathrooms of the past, sometimes the real is stranger than anything I could have dreamed up myself.
Image: Emily Hartley-Skudder
Gender, public and private spaces seem to play a key role in your art. How do you think the objects you use reflect societal expectations?
I often think about how we construct our personalities with the objects we surround ourselves with, and how this can be explored really well through the still life genre. The domestic space, especially the bathroom, brings with it a whole lot of gendered connotations and the ways we try to control our bodies and literally flush away waste. I began diving into the recycling bin and including my own toiletries, inhalers and cleaning products in my still lifes, which then led to me searching out objects with very direct links to the body – breast pumps, douches, speculums.
Then there’s toys – you can’t escape how they are very much part of the socialisation of children, especially when it comes to gender. I’d like to think there’s an underlying tension in my work, between elevating something while also critiquing it. It’s a fine line. For instance, I wouldn’t spend hours a day rendering glistening pink plastic if I didn’t kind of love it. I celebrate overtly feminine and ‘girly’ aesthetics, but also explore how it’s used in an extremely commercial way as a toxic marketing strategy, exposing the absurdity of gender divisions – especially when it comes to products for children. Capitalism, eh.
Image: Rinse and Repeat Installation, Emily Hartley-Skudder
How do you imagine yourself, your practice, to look in 10 years time?
Not a tough question at all! Hmm. My partner Hamish Coleman (also exhibiting at the fair) and I would love to find some kind of amazing commercial building where we could set up studios and live there too. So an epic live/work studio, with storage and workshop facilities, and with lots of cats, would be the dream. But honestly, just to have a sustainable art practice and be a bit more stable financially would be incredible, but I’m not sure if that’s wishful thinking.
I also have lots of ideas and ambitions for large scale installations at public galleries, and would like to exhibit internationally in a more serious way. But a lot of things are out of our control as artists, so we’ll have to see. Everyone’s life plan – win the lotto?
