My Space: Nicole Clift
What makes a truly creative space?
Words and Image by Timothea Moylan
Nestled in the shady backstreets of Kent Town is a converted warehouse with studios for over a dozen of Adelaide’s most exciting artists, including Nicole Clift. She currently has a beautiful silk print hanging in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s Radical Textiles exhibition, alongside William Morris and Sonia Delaunay, no less. Nicole welcomes us into her studio, showing The Note her new set of mid-century map drawers and a canvas she just started painting. The intersecting graphite lines, a wash of shocking pink and darkened, almost mathematically arranged cells are hypnotic. We launch into our first question:
What direction is the painting heading in?
It’s very colour-driven. I’m thinking about really loaded pigments – how far you can push a colour before it loses itself and becomes black. I don’t want it to get to that point – I want to keep it as the richest purple, the richest green, the richest pink, the richest blue. And I want them to become so interwoven together they create this super-dense void.
Let’s backtrack for a moment – can you describe your creative practice?
I work in painting and tapestry weaving. I’m trying to visualize invisible systems that make up our reality – time, gravity, particle movement and light waves. Things that we can’t see but are crucial to the way that we live.
What made you want to explore these ideas?
I’m interested in how we’ve thought about these systems across time – how ancient thinkers considered air currents, or how planets worked, for example. Those references swim in my brain a lot.
What’s your process for starting a new painting?
Every time I start a new painting, it’s like I’m doing it for the first time. I always forget how to navigate a painting. It’s just this massive puzzle and you don’t really know how you’re going to solve it. But that’s why I’m drawn to it – because it’s a problem to solve.
Where do you take your inspiration from?
At the moment, it’s the beginnings of natural philosophy, specifically in Greek thinking. I’m reading a book called Anaximander, which is about the first thinker to scientifically create reasons for why things are, rather than attributing it to ‘because God was angry’. That was revolutionary thinking. Ancient natural philosophy is still so relevant. Right now, I’m thinking about those invisible systems and different literature that unpacks them, whether it’s poetry, something from 2000 years ago, or current thinking about how planets behave.
What musicians are you listening to when you work?
At the moment, it’s Biig Piig – I’ve never had to say that name out loud! I think she’s great. Nilüfer Yanya – poppy, but referencing ‘90s grunge. Oh, and Aldous Harding! She’s so weird.
Keep up to date with everything Nicole Clift is working on via @nicole.clift.
