Q&A: ARTIST MOLLY STEPHENSON ON THINGS THAT LINGER
We spoke with Melbourne/Naarm-based art therapist and artist Molly Stephenson about her lobby installation at The StandardX, Melbourne.
Throughout May, The StandardX, Melbourne will play temporary home to three of Molly’s imaginative and material-led pieces spanning sculptural and oil pastel works, adorned with found objects of significance from the city and beyond.
Ahead of her installation, we discussed how to capture a “hint that something just happened here”, and how we create spaces and experiences that invite people to linger.
Your work feels like it holds onto fragments and materials with a past. What do you find yourself unable to get rid of?
I don’t really get rid of anything. If I see a certain texture or colour or object, I’ll put it in a box or anywhere on the floor, and just know I will use it. I’m really interested in how we define waste. Not waste in terms of rubbish, but waste as something that may or may not hold value. How we use it, how we dispose of it, or how we can give it more weight. So I’m always holding on to things, literally and metaphorically, that I’m drawn to.
You reference hauntology and what lingers. What does this mean to you?
I stumbled upon the term hauntology when I was doing my honours. It’s basically about something resurging or returning, or something that never quite left, like a shadow. I was fascinated by that and how something can linger. Kind of like waste, it’s not something that disappears, it’s just out of sight until it refleshes itself.
Is there something you’ve found recently that you know will end up in a work?
A lot of things, mostly domesticated objects. I recently got hit with all these ideas and I was at home in our garage and I thought ‘great, I’m going to take the doorstop, I love that shape.’ Then I found a suitcase lock and my old medication box. I was collecting all this junk I was purely attracted to texturally or shape wise.
Except, my partner is obviously looking around the house and asking what’s happened to our doorstop.
How do you approach beginning a piece?
Usually from playfulness, being curious, and engaging in sensory exploration. If I find something a bit kooky, I get really excited.
When I’m making work and go into it with a preconceived idea, it’s disastrous. It doesn’t feel right and it doesn’t feel me. Whereas if I’m exploring objects from a sensory place of just play, I make the work I’m most aligned with.
Is there a piece of Melbourne art or culture that has been staying with you recently?
A show I did see recently was at Potter Museum of Art, curated by Chuz Martinez, called A velvet ant, a flower and a bird. I haven’t felt that energised, stimulated and excited by a show in a really long time. It touched on things I’m fascinated by — that intersection of ecology and relationships and art. I highly recommend everyone to see it.
What kind of spaces do your works belong in?
They sort of go anywhere and everywhere, but my works have never felt finished. I like to think of them as lying dormant. I find sometimes they stay in my home forever and then all of a sudden I’ll get this urge to rip it apart, and I’ll bring it back into the studio and think, ‘oh my gosh that’s exactly what it needed.’
You’re showing these works inside a hotel, a place people pass through. Does that change how you think about your work being experienced?
My experience of being in a hotel has been clean and businesslike, but when I walked into The StandardX, Melbourne it was so fun and playful and experimental, so I’m curious to see how my sculpture is perceived and how people interact with it.
My mum always says it’s like an alien. It was the meshing of a candle holder, a terracotta vase and pot stand, a lot of shells and filler and ribbon and sand and a bit of soil from my old garden, so it’s got a very lifelike presence. I’m curious to see if people want to get up close and delve into all these intricacies, or if they want to keep their distance.
Do you have a favourite piece you’ve ever created?
Yes I do, but it was the process that I loved the most. When I was doing my honours in 2020, I made this sculptural installation as my final work. Every day I would be reading theory and taking notes, fully obsessed, deep diving, and then playing around again with found materials from home or from outside.
I made a sculptural installation that was about a space that hints to there being a prior activity. A party just finished, or you sit down and the seat’s warm; you feel there was something that just occurred, and I tried to externalise that sensation in a playful, whimsical, kind of creepy way.
