Holly Graham and I talk about getting back on a bike, this risky changing time, maintaining a sense of urgency, productive fear and cautious anxiety, and working to a deadline and floundering. We talk about work that has been delayed or paused such as Holly's public commission in Coulsdon, a sundial, which Holly is reconnecting with in her mind and worrying if all the calculations will still work! We talk about her residency in Southwark Park and the possibilities of corresponding events shifting under distancing measures. We talk about Holly's writing, and she reads a passage from her piece for an anthology On Care commissioned by Sharon Kievland and Rebecca Jagoe. We talk about sugar, migration and movement of objects touching on Holly's Sweet and Swollen series and Christina Sharpe's metaphors of the wake and the hold. We talk about the sugar bowls at the V&A that became the focus on Sweet and Swollen, which depict enslaved labour and the product of that labour at the same time. We talk about using photographs, found and personal. Holly talks about attending to images and the potential reanimation of the in-betweens. We talk about the word shuddering. We talk about the side hustle, and her podcast episode of this name commissioned by TACO, and her band Don't Freak Out. We talk about house mates, weekly aims, and formalising time for care. We end on surprise at the toll that separation has taken and the need for people and touch.
Image:
Cane Hill sundial design. 2020.
Links:
Website: hollygraham.co.uk
Instagram: @hollycagraham
To Us It Just Looks Like A Lemon, residency at Southwark Park Galleries: https://southwarkparkgalleries.org/to-us-it-just-looks-like-a-lemon-research-online/
On Care anthology to be published in July: https://mabibliotheque.cargo.site/ANTHOLOGIES-COLLECTIONS-THE-CONCEIT-OF-THE-CONCEPTUAL-copy
TACO podcast: https://rtm.fm/shows/twang-achoo-clang-oooff/holly-graham/
Music:
Don’t Freak Out.Jealous Guy featuring Natasha Heliotis on lead vocals.
