Kara Wood

FEATURED ARTIST

Video, photography and article produced by David Griffen.

Kara Wood is a Newcastle-based mixed-media artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, installation and assemblage. Trained in ceramics and fine art at Newcastle Art School, she has spent more than 25 years developing a body of work that centres on women’s rights and challenges assumptions, power structures and the status quo.

Working across intimate and large-scale formats, her installations are materially rich and conceptually driven, using layered forms to question how women are represented and understood. A Wynne Prize finalist, Wood has exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work is held in private and public collections, including Newcastle Art Gallery. Her exhibition Nice to Meet You opens this month at Straitjacket.

I think the biggest barrier would be the weight that you carry from responsibilities outside of your artistic practice.

Tell us about your practice.

I’m Kara Wood. I’m a Newcastle-based mixed-media artist, and this is my studio. I have a specialty in ceramics. I’ve done ceramics for a long time, probably 30 years, so I know a lot about ceramics, but my practice encompasses a wide variety of mediums, particularly at the moment, textiles. I’m moving a lot more into textile art, but always encompassing a ceramic element in that textile practice.

Have you always wanted to be an artist?

I’ve always wanted to be an artist since I was a little kid, and my mum put me in art classes from when I was very little. I always thought that I would be an artist when I was older, an older woman. I don’t know why I thought that as a young girl, but then I had children when I was very young, and so I always did art, but my art practice got put on hold, I suppose. Then when my youngest son was 18, I fully decided to do what I had always wanted to do, and that was focus on my art practice.

What did creativity look like through those years?

My art practice has always been there, regardless of where I have been in my life. It just takes different forms. So for instance, when my kids were little, I would sew things, or I would decorate the house, or I would make things for the home or the children, or do art projects with them. I still did ceramics, but obviously that was a lot earlier in my ceramic career. So I always did it, I just did it in a different way. I have always been creative and always had something to use that creative outlet for.

What do you think your younger self would think of you now?

I think my younger self would be proud of me as an older person. It takes real bravery to be an artist. It doesn’t matter what form of art practice that you do. It’s brave to do that because there’s so much pushing against you not to be an artist. So I think my younger self would be proud of me as an older woman.

What are some of the biggest barriers for women in art practice?

I think the biggest barrier would be the weight that you carry from responsibilities outside of your artistic practice. As females, you’re raised in a society where there’s this expectation, and there still is, that you are the caregiver and you carry most of the mental load in a family capacity, which I am in.

And I think the biggest barrier is putting yourself first and saying, no, I can be the priority. That is really difficult as a female, I find, and when I speak to other females, it is a common thing. You find it really difficult to put yourself first because you’re taught to not do that. You’re conditioned to it, actually.

Do you think that is changing?

I think my two oldest sons, they’re amazing dads, and I think that they parent equally with their wives. They both have strengths and weaknesses, but it’s much more equal. I was a single mum, and my boys were amazing young men, and I’m proud of my sons and the men that they have become.

But when I talk about the conditioning, I think it’s a societal thing, and it’s deeply ingrained in our society, not necessarily the individuals that get raised. There’s lots of amazing men and young men out there that don’t have that expectation, but in general, it is a societal thing.

What are you exploring in your work right now?

All of my work explores females, whether it’s historically things that have happened to females, or current, or whatever pisses me off, really. It just depends. Usually when I come off the back of a really heavy concept-driven work, I go into something much more light.

The show at Straight Jacket, I’m exploring the theme of self and identity, I suppose, and how who you are is how others perceive you, because you are different to every single person that you meet. So to me, you perceive me in a certain way, but my children perceive me in another way. A random on the street doesn’t know anything about me, and they will perceive me in another way.

So the show is really about that perception of how people view you, and how I’m all the same person, and there’s multiple facets of me. No one perception is wrong. It’s just that that is me, and how complicated we are as people. So that is what I’m working on for the show at Straight Jacket that opens on the 7th of March.

What else are you working on?

I’m working on another couple of shows. One is towards the end of the year. The concept’s already done, but it is just about women fighting for their rights, basically, and it will be quite pertinent. Actually, that is just an ongoing thing.

Then another one, I’m looking at amazing women through the centuries and the impact that they’ve made in our lives, and continue to make on our lives, and just sort of a documentation of that.

Women’s rights, it’s like a dance: bit forward, bit back, bit forward, bit back. And I think with what’s happening globally, where you look at the eradication of women’s rights overseas, there’s this… where I personally feel like, with that, and our patriarchal society, and all of these people of power, because it’s just about power really, are clinging on. They’re in the last frenzy of trying to keep it before it dissipates and something else comes.

Why textiles?

I think textiles, by and large, is a medium that historically has been female, a female medium. It was taken over when the guilds were introduced, I think in the medieval period. I don’t know the dates.

Women always did textiles and they did it in the home, and then the men came in, they established guilds, and they decided what women were allowed to do and what women weren’t allowed to do. But by and large, textiles has always been a female-centric thing.

For me as well, using this as a tufted surface, the back of it, the rugs, women are always being treated like they’re just useful. Women are useful, and they’re there, and you don’t really think about it, but there they are. I think the rugs talk about that as well. So I take them off the floor and I put them onto a form, and I make them something… I turn them into something else.

What is the reality of being a full-time artist?

I think in order to, with my three shows, in order to achieve that, you have to make compromises. You can’t not, because there’s so much you’re juggling in the air. I think the hardest thing about being a full-time artist is that there’s this expectation that you’re supposed to be good at everything. You’re supposed to make your art and be amazing at it.

You’re supposed to be your own social media expert, and if you listen to what you should do, do all this posting all the time. You’re supposed to apply for grants and write your grant applications and be good at that, and you’re supposed to write essays on your work. Do your admin and do book work. It is overwhelming.

So I think the juggle is, for me anyway, I have a great ability to hyperfocus on something. If I’m hyper-focusing on the work, which is what I need to do, the rest sort of goes away. But then when I come out of that hyperfocus, I’m like, oh my God, that’s right, I’ve got to do that now, and oh shit.

I think I find it really hard. I think that’s the one simple answer. It’s really hard, and I don’t think you can do everything well because I think that’s a myth. But you’re always struggling with money, so it’s not like you can just go, well, I’ll just pay someone to do that job.

How do you handle the pressure when things shift?

I think that is the trick, and I like change. I think that is a positive part of my personality. I don’t mind change, so I thrive in chaos. I’m good if I have to pivot as well, because there’s many times where I’m making something and I look at it and I think, oh, shit, I really hate that. And you have to pivot, and you have to learn how to pivot.

What is your dream project?

My dream would be to have a huge space where I could make massive work, and a massive kiln, like one of those big trolley kilns. Then if I could make anything, I would make a massive installation, like gallery-size or something, just go crazy. That would be if I had unlimited money and space, because space is a killer for every artist, money and storage. You can’t go big when you don’t have the space to go big.

There’s nothing better than feeling immersed in something. I love the emotion of an installation. A single outlet can suck you in as well, and you can feel immersed, but for me, that experience of it’s all around you and you’re in it, I love that.

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