S3, E1 - Laura Noble

Laura Noble is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator from Manchester, now based in London, England. She is the director of L A Noble Gallery and founder of FIX Photo Festival. The episode was recorded on 23 October 2023.

Websites: www.lauraannnoble.com and www.lanoble.art
Insta: @lanobleartist, @lauraannnoble, @fixphotofestival, @lanoblegallery
Twitter: @lauraannnoble

Podcast details:
Podcast email: artiststalespodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.artiststales.net
Instagram: @artists_tales_podcast
Threads: @artists_tales_podcast

Transcript

0:16

Welcome listeners to Artist Tales, a podcast that features and celebrates artists from different walks of life. I'm your host Heather Martin and in this episode I'm speaking with Laura Noble who is a multidisciplinary artist and also curator. Hailing from Manchester, she now is based in London. Welcome Laura. Thank you for having me. Hi. Well thanks for being on the podcast. It's great having you. Oh, my pleasure. It's brilliant. So tell me a little bit about your artwork and what are your artistic side? So me as an artist is a lot of things. I work predominantly with painting, but I do anything, works on paper, sculpture, film, photography, etching, you name it. I sort of end up weaving it in. Usually the work leads me to the medium. I don't start with a fixed medium. it often transitions and goes back and forth depending on what the project is or what the subject is. So something might start off as a painting, but then transition into a painting and some sculpture and something else. The project I've just exhibited became, yeah, it was several mediums. There was a film, sculpture, paintings, etchings, photography, and walking around the space thinking what else? And then there was an interactive film, which was kind of amazing, fun and brilliant seeing people responding to it. So, but also you could say my curation is an extension of my artistic practice anyway, because again, you're applying a lot of the same tools to that and how you connect with the work and how your audiences connect the work. It's all tied together. And then I write as well. So I write a lot of monograph essays for books, usually on photography. But yeah, other things as well. So I've done, got work in things like scenes and magazines, but also, yeah, writing is also very creative, but a very different head space than my other projects. So me as an artist, the first port of call is usually paper and brushes or pencil or something, graphite or something on paper, which then expands. And when you're doing artwork for, let's say, an exhibition. How much of that kind of influences each other? So it sounds like you do quite an array of type of art. Is it kind of one of those things you start off with one thing and it leads to another or is it just more? I mean the most recent project, I knew the whole thing had come together through a series of strange incidences anyway and had grown and developed through initially doing a painting for somebody else, a back, three backdrop paintings for another, for a photographer actually. And one of the, the first painting I did, that particular subject and that particular work, after doing the pieces for her, I then wanted to continue this process that I'd begun in this one paint, one of the three paintings. And then that grew into another painting. So these were on, the first ones I did were on just on canvas but without a frame around them because they were being clipped and hung as backdrops. And then I thought, okay, I'm actually going to make a painting using this technique and then that sort of transitioned. So by the time I did that, I was then approached to put those into another exhibition, at which point the method of making those, I did a short film. So the film came into it. And then following that, I then applied for an Arts Council grant and expanded it further. So the drawing and all the other mediums came in and obviously I could, I had the money with a project grant to be able to actually facilitate that. I did a residency and I could make all these things and have space and room to actually do that. Um, so that, yeah, it grew and grew and grew and everything was very organic. One thing made sense to then be created in another way. So yeah, I mean, I could talk about this for hours, but you kind of need to see it. But yeah, it, one work informs the next often. You touched on the fact that you had an Arts Council grant. Yes, the Golden Unicorn, a project grant in London for a solo show. Yes, I did. Yeah, exactly. Cause I'm just thinking, I mean, it's tough anyway, to try to get any sort of grants, particularly now when, you know, a lot of funding for things like arts has been cut or pulled back. What's the process like? It's long, it's difficult. I initially applied, didn't get it. Halfway through the application process, the form changed, which was not fun. And then actually reapplied, refined what I was doing, realized that a lot of the things that weren't working out were the things that had been suggested to me by the other person and worked with somebody else and actually really, yeah, defined what the project was and how it was going to do it. I mean, I've managed to get Arts Council grants for other people in the past. And I think the best advice I'd give to anybody doing it is think, imagine the person reading your funding form, which is 80 pages long, knows nothing about art and is not an artist and is not interested in artsy language. They just want you to tell them what you're doing. And I think it's as artists and creative people, we do tend to use what they call peacock language and very flowery terms, which unless they're concise and make sense to somebody, they're just, they're not giving them the information they need. So yeah, I mean, a lot of the new form was, some things I thought were quite vital were taken out, you have to know how to abbreviate and cut down word counts. I think the word count was the hardest thing actually, because it's not. The word count on word is not the same as the word count on grantia that they use. Grantium, their portal that you put the stuff in on. Do it all on a document before you put it in. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's very complex. I mean, it implies that it's for everybody, but I mean, you feel like you need a PhD to do the application. It's very long-winded and it's. Yeah. For what it's worth. It's. You have to really, I noticed that a lot of academics are more likely to get funding and there's a reason for that. And I think it's the way it's structured is very academic and not necessarily helpful if you're coming from a different background, which is the whole purpose of the Arts Council, which is very frustrating, but it can be done. But sometimes it takes a couple of goes. I think I had a lot of elements within my project that included a lot of community engagement. My own community, the community local to where I was going to show the work, extended beyond that. I worked with a charity as well and those communities and actually the people that benefited from the project and still are actually since can be seen and that's really important. And I think artists sometimes are so... focused on themselves, they forget the fact that their work can have another people or potentially don't open it up enough for that engagement to then get that funding. And it's not an easy thing to do. Not everybody's comfortable with that. It's very difficult. And I worked with new audiences, but I also gathered other audiences I didn't expect along the way, which was great. Through the residency, I met everybody who lived near that space I was working in. and many of whom wouldn't be going to the exhibition, but they were fascinated with what I was doing and really happy that I was there. That was amazing. So how did you get the residency? That was something that it was somebody I knew who I worked with at the community garden and they ran a project about drawing and I invited me to do the residency. Residencies are also very difficult. I know a lot of people. There's a lot of them about, but often if it's something that's abroad or further away, or if you've got children or whatever, it's very hard to commit to them. For me, this was good because it was local to where I lived. So there was no commute. It was a five-minute walk from my front door, which was great. So I could just be there and I could work really late if I wanted to and weave that around my other responsibilities and my other working life. So it was, I could balance. both, but if you were having to travel, for example, I mean, it's like anything, you just have to organise yourself a lot. I think that's the life of many artists is organisation, particularly if you're getting into grants and residencies. Yeah, it's hard. It is hard. It is hard because it's, you know, you need to get paid for something. This is the other thing you can, it's very easy to be making. That's the easy bit. Creating the arts has never been a problem. I don't think I've ever had an artist block in my life. I don't know what that is. I've always got too many things I want to make, too many things I want to do, never enough time to do them all. But on the flip side of that, it's, well yes, that's the easy bit, but how do you make that bit pay? Or, you know, have enough money to do it, regardless of however that happens. So it's difficult. It's really hard. It's really hard. How does that influence your art itself? Because I'm just thinking with me, I sometimes find, you know, I've been occasionally paid to be a photographer and I'm doing stuff that I wouldn't normally take photos of or photograph, like events or, you know, weddings, friends weddings. Oh, okay. So sort of commercial work aside from artistic work. Yeah. So I was wondering from your perspective, do you find there's the kind of very, very artistic side of things that are... maybe not as sellable or seen as sellable, but that commercial side, is that sort of playing in the back of your mind at all? For my own work, no, because I'm not making commercial work. I think the most commercial I am is if I'm writing a text for a monograph. But even that, you get so immersed in the work itself, you're thinking of your audience and how they're going to engage with it anyway as you're writing. sorts itself out I suppose. I know I work with lots of photographers and artists who have a job which might be creative or not that earns the money and has their own practice. Both things have transferable skills but in terms of say photography for example doing a commercial job you I've actually met a lot of photographers who are thinking of becoming artists and have asked me or done mentoring with me or portfolio review. who have said, you know, I've done all these, you know, campaigns for Nike and all these other, you know, big jobs and I've made lots of money over the years, but I want to do my own thing. And they can't actually shift into that bracket because they have this very specific set of rules they have to follow when they have a brief. So a lot of it's about unlearning to be able to do it. Whereas if you're an artist by nature and then you're going into commercial. You're learning something and that's a little different. It's a different headspace. It's a different approach. It's easier to separate something when you're learning something new, but unlearning is very difficult, if that makes sense. It does. Yeah. And I guess, aesthetically. Yeah. And I guess what I have found myself doing is I have very personal projects that are very artistic, but don't expect it to sell. And yet, sure. And yet I'll get people asking me to take pictures that are really often unrelated to what I'm doing, you know, on a personal level. But they can, you know, they can see you have technical ability, even if the subject isn't something that they appreciate. So you will always get that crossover. If the quality of what you do is there, you can still, I mean, I'm always advising, you know, photographers, if they have a commercial practice to have a separate website for that commercial stuff. You can always put your artistic stuff on a commercial website, but you never put your commercial stuff on an artistic website, because the people you want to see your artistic work are not interested in your commercial practice at all. You don't need to see it. Whereas a commercial business who might want to hire you, might want to see some of the other stuff that you do, because they can see that perhaps part of an element of that would work in a commercial, done in a commercial way. So it's, it's a different approach. And I think in terms of selling, selling something you've made, it's, you don't make it with that in mind, because I think if you're making art, you're making art. You hope that it would sell, and it's lovely when it does. I think half of the battle is finding your audience. I agree. Because there is a buyer, but it's finding that buyer. That's the hardest thing. People respond to things in different ways. And somebody loving your work and buying it are two very different things. That's what I've experienced, yeah. And I think that's why having a grant, if you can, is I understand why artists sort of hope for grants and try and get grants so much because you're being paid to make the work. So if you do sell, it's a bonus. But if you don't, you've been paid for the work you've made. So because you're factoring that into your funding, you're being paid to make it. You're getting an artist's fee. So, I mean, I sold at my last show. a show before last, but it wasn't made as, you could say it was a selling show, but it wasn't. It was an Arts Council funded show. So it was the importance of it was making that work, creating that work, getting it out into the world. And anything else was a bonus, which was great. But also the project itself has expanded and grown and connected with other things following it. So that was an absolute... That was great that it's continued and that's been wonderful. I had, I mean, all my works, I touch on the subject of anamnesis, which is a platonic form of remembering. I approach it from a notion of un-forgetting. I look into things, into trauma and various other things to do with memory. Whereas, you know, a theologian would look at anamnesis as remembrance in terms of religion, which is interesting. not what I'm doing, but an interesting aspect of that. And when the show was up, a professor of anamnesis came to the exhibition and said, would you do a talk about your approach to this subject to some trainee priests? Which was the strangest but most fascinating offer I've had in a long time. And why not? That's fascinating because that's a dialogue that's opening up creative ideas and philosophical ideas that wasn't, and I said to him, how did you find this exhibition? I said, do you have a Google alert on the word anamnesis? And he said, yeah, I absolutely do, because it's very rarely used. It's an old, old word. It's not very old word. I've been using it and working on that subject since the 90s, but you know, it's not a regular word you hear in conversations. So anything that pops up, he looks into it and he came, came twice actually, he came to see the show twice, which was fantastic. So yeah, there's always wonderful surprises along the way. And I'm wondering, just listening to you talk there, you know, when you did the talk to the trainee priests. Haven't done it yet. We're in conversation about when, but I've been invited to do it. Can't wait though. It's going to be fun. Yeah, no, I was about to ask, you know, how much does that influence, but if you haven't had the conversation yet or the presentation, you know, kind of that interaction with different people, perhaps from a different point of view. I mean, there was interaction all the way through the project with different people and with children. So I did workshops with very young children, which was amazing and interesting and very noisy. I can imagine, yeah. But working with people who've experienced lots of trauma and their response to the work was the absolute icing on the cake. The pieces that people made were extraordinary and I would happily have hung them in the exhibition if they weren't being given, you know, I framed them up and they took them home, but that was amazing. My Instagram has recordings of the works that were made and definitely have a look at those if you're interested because they're really beautiful. I made abstract drawings of the children and abstract collages with women and also did a a group where we did a mixture of, which was more of an open session, which was a charity event. But yeah, the pieces were stunning. And it was really interesting because they were all asked to draw something that was difficult or they wanted to forget or let go of or I mean, with children, you wouldn't use words like trauma, it would be something that made you cross or something that made you sad, you know, or as with adults, you could sort of get more in depth. Um, we talked about color, you know, warm colors coming forward, cool colors receding, all these different things, but they basically made a drawing which they would then crush. And then we'd make a copy of that. And with that, they would create their abstract drawing or collage. And then we'd frame that. And I framed them up afterwards. I worked with another artist, Ellie Laycock, who helped me and helped me to facilitate all the practical stuff and filming everyone's hands, crushing their drawings. And what was interesting was. The adults were really nervous about drawing because they were worried about how good they were, which is ridiculous. I said, it doesn't matter, you're going to scrunch this up. But there was still this apprehension, whereas the children couldn't wait to draw, but were very apprehensive about scrunching their pictures because their pictures, you know, they go on the fridge, they go on the wall, they used everyone oohing and ahhing. So it was a really, but the final results and the works they took home, they absolutely loved. bar none, it was amazing with the transformation and the art piece that they took away. That was amazing. So that audience I was excited to work with, but it was above and beyond what I was hoping for. And I still doing those workshops on occasion with other people and other charities. I mean, this particular charity was Nova who worked with families from Grenfell and the surrounding boroughs. do a family program with children and with adults and adult learning and they do all these amazing things. And it was just a privilege to be able to work with them. I've done a few workshops, photo workshops with them and they're great and the families are incredible. But yeah, that was really special. Really, really special. Yeah. And I guess something like art, you know, whatever that art form takes can help people through quite traumatic or quite difficult memories. It always got me through. It always, it was, I mean, if somebody, you know, I'm not a religious person, but art is my church, it always has been. It's my safe place. It's my haven, whether it's, you know, looking at a painting, reading a book, listening to music, going to see a play, but actually seeing art in the flesh as always, you know, if ever things weren't good, I go to a museum, I go to a gallery, I go and look at art. hands down is my number one therapy. Making art is the ultimate, obviously, go somewhere else in your head, everywhere, you know, your entire being goes somewhere else when you're making or does when I am. But yeah, I think it's using that. And basically the method had come about through me doing it myself for something of mine for this other project. And then realizing that actually, this method anyone could do. Every woman that I showed the method to said they would teach their children, which was wonderful because it's like, you know, children often can't articulate those things that are making, that are upsetting them in words, but they can draw it. There's a reason it's used in therapy. So it was a wonderful, a wonderful thing to do and keep doing, keep challenging myself, working through my own stuff alongside engaging with others is really, yeah, it's wonderful. sounds like it's really having a positive impact, but both on yourself and others. If we can maybe get into the curation, how did you get into curating? Well, I sort of very quick potted history of me. I studied fine arts. I studied in Australia for a couple of years. I did A-levels in Manchester, whizzed over to Australia. realised it was not for me very, very quickly, but did a diploma out there. If I'd stayed, I'd gone straight into the second year of a degree. But I came back to the UK, left my family behind, went to university, went to Kingston, and they had a painting degree that was quite specific, which is why they were my number one choice. And also I didn't know anything about which London colleges were the places to go way back then. When I came out of university, I needed two things. I needed a studio and... library, so I got a job in a bookshop, got a studio that started in a commercial bookshop and then eventually a photographer's gallery. And while I was there, I started to collect, I started to buy art, I started to write about art, about photography. And yeah, I mean, as a creative person, you sort of curate things all the time anyway. I mean, from the year dot, you know, I will arrange things on a table and then keep changing it. You know, even as a kid, I used to... rearrange my shelves all the time because if something new came in things had to change or something I'd grown, I decided I'd grown out of would be removed and things would have to be reorganized. So I've always had that sort of, and it's not like being obsessive or compulsive about it. It's just, it's nice to place things and the way a space feels with things within it. I have It's really hard to put into words, a phenomenological approach to space. So the way I inhabit space has always been important to me and the way I'm responding to the space is really important. So curation sort of naturally is my jam, I guess. But when I started the gallery, I mean, that was through my book on collecting had come out, I was doing portfolio reviews virtually every lunchtime. So I had that as a... sort of a side thing going on. I was at Paris Photo one year with another artist and we said something about what we were looking at and they turned to me and said, well, you could do this. I said, what do you mean start a gallery? I said, well, how? With what? You know, I'm a working class northerner with no money. What do you expect me to do? And I, myself and another collector, ended up setting up a gallery, which then... We went our separate ways because they were more interested in vintage works and not working with living artists, whereas I'm quite interested in working with people still living and breathing. So when Lang started curating anything, I think you can really, I love that you can tell a story with curation. A great exhibition, a great show, whether it's a group show or a solo show, you should be able to take somebody on a journey as they go through that space. And myself, I mean... telling a story or even just playing with people's preconceived notions of something and unsticking something and shifting something around, presenting something in a new way so that it's interpreted differently is really exciting. You can show the same artist several times but in completely different ways and interpret the same body of work and tell a different story. So for me, the curation ties in with all that. It ties in with narrative, it ties in with with the full circle. It's a full circle. It's a circular thing. It's not a linear thing. I can remember the shows that really blew me away, you know, from the get go. I mean, when I started at the Photographers Gallery, Camilla Brown was doing the Winner Grand Exhibition, and she'd made this zigzag through the centre of this long gallery space and you had to navigate this zigzag wall that was in the middle of the space. You had to weave in and out to get through and around. So you felt like you were in it because you had to, you couldn't just walk in a straight line and whizz around it, you had to go in and out and out and out. So she was thinking about the sort of complexity of a city and made the experience of that exhibition. So for me, whenever I'm approaching something, it's, you know, and I often will find the space to go with the work rather than the other way around. So I go that space will be great. When I started Fix, I knew that was such an exciting location. The barge house was such a fantastic architectural space that I could do really interesting things in. So the curation side of it grew slowly. Well, I suppose it grew alongside doing other things. When the first gallery opened, just having the freedom to do the things that potentially I had maybe seen lacking in some other things that I'd seen, you know, I'd be like, well, if I was going to do something, I'd do it this way. And I suddenly had the freedom to do that. Yeah, it was interesting. And it still is. I, you shouldn't, you shouldn't notice curation. It should feel that you can flow through it. Feels natural. And then afterwards you think, actually that was really well curated because that was an interesting angle I hadn't even thought about, but it felt right. So I went with it. Whereas if you go into a space and think, Ooh, and everything feels a bit jarring, you know, it's badly curated or it's not been thought about, or there isn't enough information, you know, things like that can kind of throw you off. experiencing the thing for what it is because you're too busy getting hung up on weird positioning or frames that don't work or whatever it is or bad lighting or whatever it happens to be. So yeah, so I don't know if that answers your question. It's kind of a long-winded response, but yeah. No, it does answer the question and it falls on, I think, to my next question. I think you've probably alluded to it a bit earlier on in the interview. How much does the art influence the curation and how much does curation influence the art? In terms of how much do they influence each other is I guess what I'm getting at. Okay how much does how much does the art influence the curation? Well a lot. I mean yeah absolutely. I mean this I always make what I call my scrolls whenever I'm doing a show I make a map of the wall and everything's printed to scale. In fact Jay when Jay worked with me, Jay Nash, they saw this process that I do and absolutely didn't sell because the physicality of the space is really important. Yeah. So, you know, doing a video of the space, all those things help because you have to imagine being in it. So if I'm sometimes, so for example, London Art Fair 2020, I'm doing the Photo 50 exhibition. So I'm given a very specific part of the building to work in. However, I do have a bit of flexibility as to how it's arranged inside. And I had to work out what would fit, who would go in it and how that experience would be. So I actually went from... So the exhibition goes from being outside. So it's about... it's called Occupy the Void and it's about how we occupy space. All the artists were female and all over 50. the show wasn't about being over 50 or being female. First thing you saw was architecture. So again it broke down a lot of shirt, you know, you often see, oh it's an art shirt, you know, you wouldn't know as you walked in, oh this is a show of just female artists, there were no flowers there or anything that you're used to seeing. Not that flowers aren't, you know, that, yeah I love it, I love that, but it, you know, it was very important to me that you had an experience it went from external to internal in terms of internal space and then through and beyond death, so beyond that. So the way that the exhibition went thematically and psychologically was important and physically but also tonally, so from the one end the exhibition was darker, so there were walls which are painted sort of midnight blue getting lighter. until the last part of the space was just white with only black and white work in it. So it went from colour to black and white as well. So depending on how, and you were led from one specific side to another, and there was sort of a space at the end with a seating area so you could sort of be quite contemplative at the end and sort of meditate in that space if you wanted to and just be quiet at the end. And if you walked back through it, you could feel the difference between one end, because it was a long, narrow corridor shape, but I didn't want people just to be able to bolt through. So I had these very angled walls that made you weave through the space to get from one end to the other and again, interact in a different way and playing with things like... So I had the artist that I wanted to work with, I had the work, but I had to work out how they would all contain. It's a bit like the matrix, where everything's sort of flying in 20 different directions, and somehow you start to weave in, it all sort of pulls together into the center at the end, and you know where you are, you know which way is up. Yeah, I knew what I wanted to do with the walls from the get-go. I didn't want something that felt like cubicles, which is what often people would do with that space. that used to frustrate me as a visitor. So sometimes it's the space and how I want to change it or alter it. Or, you know, I've got this amazing work. How can I show it in a different way? So showing Karl Bloßfeld's work on shelves in an asymmetric way with white frames and white passepartoutes, people assumed they were contemporary if they didn't know his work. Opposite another artist who had contemporary gravures, but were framed and lined in a very neat line in black frames with off-white passe-partoutes, everyone thought they were Victorian because they were being presented in the inverse of each other. So as an exhibition it was really interesting because the older looking of the two was contemporary, so it was doing something a bit different with Blosfeld than just gridding him up on a wall, which is what we're used to seeing. LAREE And to me just listening to you it sounds like it's very nuanced in many ways but quite conceptual. Like you're having… Oh, totally. I'm having a conceptual party. Yeah. Every time loving that. Yeah. Because if it's, if I'm not excited by what I'm doing and engaged by how I'm showing it, how, how would I expect anyone else to be if I was just going through the motions of, oh, well, this would just put this on the wall, that on the wall. I think it's difficult because so many people call themselves curators. I mean, you can curate a sandwich now, can't you? So. It's become this sort of overused term and you can see when somebody truly has curated something and cared about it because it's the detail. The devil's always in the details. It might be in the captions, it might be in the, you know, the booklet that's made for the exhibition, it might be some tiny thing. I'm of the opinion, give everyone all the information they can take and they can take it or they can leave it. But if I'm wanting for something and it's not there, that frustrates me. So it sounds like you're really putting the person, like the visitor at the heart of it. Because I'm a visitor too. Indeed. Yeah. I have to please myself and I am not easy to please. Ask my husband. I think sometimes having those standards and knowing what you want and having those concepts and knowing what works for you. it probably works for quite a lot of people. I don't want to put my name to anything that I'm not proud of, that I'm not happy with, that I'm constantly trying to improve. Even if it's something that seems quite small, I put my heart and soul into it. I have to absolutely be confident that that's as good as it can be. Or what's the point? If I drop dead tomorrow, hopefully, touch wood, I won't. You won't. If I drop dead tomorrow, I can stand by the things that I've put out in the world without any regret and say, yes, they were. good exhibitions, they were, you know, great artists, they were interesting artworks, they affected people in some way. I've made a mark. However big, that doesn't really matter. I'm insignificant. But I don't want to sort of do something half-heartedly just for the money or just for the, you know, it's got to be good. Yeah, you have to have a high standard because no one else is going to set that standard for you. And that's how you build your reputation. I mean, your reputation's everything. I was going to say like, you know, you're remembered often by the weakest thing you've done, not by the best. Of course, of course you are. Of course you are. I mean, yeah. And that's, and that's regardless of what your profession is, you know, we all have ups and downs, but yeah, I agree. I think it's, you know, sometimes things are difficult, but how you cope with those difficult things is how you learn and move on and... get better. So yeah, I think if you're given everything all at once, I often see where, you know, someone has everything at their disposal and actually does a pretty dull job of things because it's too easy. You know, sometimes those challenges you push, you give that extra bit, you know, you have that hunger to get it right because you might have something to prove or you... you've set that standard and you want to keep excelling your own expectations. You want to go, yeah, I've seen improvement. You know, you don't start strictly come dancing, hoping to be as bad in the 10th week as you are in the first, you want to improve because that's part of the interest of art, of creating something is getting better at it and everyone else enjoying it. So yeah, absolutely. And you want to be known for doing a good job. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, when someone comes up to me and says, I love the way you curated that. It's lovely. It's, you know, it's sort of, oh, wow, you noticed. That's really lovely. That's a lovely thing. Yeah. You want to be known. Well, you want to be, everyone wants to be known for something good, you know, regardless of being a good person and doing good things. That's, that's life, hopefully. So what's next? What do you think? What projects, what sort of things do you think might come next? There's all sorts of things. I mean, it's interesting because the way that the art world is shifting and changing at the moment, different projects take longer. Opportunities are much more different. I'm noticing lots of shifts and it's been, it's been an interesting, I mean, obviously COVID had a massive effect on a lot of things. And I'm doing things in different ways. You know, I learned how to do an online 3D gallery, which was a whole new world for me, considering I grew up without a computer. So it was... That was quite a big challenge and for the festival that was great. But yeah, going forward, I've got, I'm still making works that are continuing in this theme of anamnesis for my own work. That's still ongoing. I actually made a new piece and did a little exhibition with two other artists locally last month and made a new piece for that, which was a very large drawing, which was fantastic. I want to make some more of those. In terms of working with others, I've got obviously the artists that I work with at Alien Noble Gallery, that's always ongoing and looking for opportunities for them, from exhibiting to putting their work forward for festivals and things like that, approaching and working with museums and other people in terms of investing in their work. I'm doing a text for an artist for the... I don't know if you know PhotoFest, they have an exhibition each year with the 10 by 10. So 10 artists from 10 portfolios by 10 of the people that interviewed them for their portfolio reviews. So I've been asked to do an essay for one of the people that I saw when I did the portfolio reviews in the off year, as it were, this year. So I'm writing a text that's got to be done by the new year, I think. But that's... So I'm doing a little bit of writing as well, which is nice. I love doing that. I love writing on a project. I always find that really, because you can really immerse yourself in it and live with it and get into it. So that's coming. And all the usual, you know, lots of surprises and things that I haven't even thought about. And a podcast, which I'm sort of keeping under my hat, but you know, you'll hear about it. I'm sure I will. You'll hear about it. So yeah, just working, you know, doing. putting a few in the bank before I release it so I'm not having a mad panic trying to get everything done in eXimate. As you probably know, you have to plan ahead. So I'm doing that right now. Yeah. I'm hoping it's, yeah, trying to deal with it getting darker too early. It's always a challenge, isn't it? I hate it. I absolutely hate it. I love September. It's my favorite month of the year. And then suddenly everything changes and it gets dark. Yeah. I love the autumn, but I know what you mean with the days. You were aware that days are getting shorter. I seem to get more, yeah, because I like, I do long days. So yeah. And also being a painter, I like my light. True. I need more, please. Yeah. And photography is the same, you know, you need your light. Yeah. Unless you're, you know, into photographing at night. But yeah, it's that time of year where things are, you know, thinking, oh god, the Christmas ads are going to start soon. That's going to be. Oh, depressing, but yeah, it all becomes too commercial and strange, but I'm really, yeah, doing lots of interesting things and I think that's, I've never really been one to just focus on one thing. My brain doesn't work like that. I find I'm a little, I'm a bit like that. I'm getting more like that. And I'm just finding the different bits that I do, whether it's the podcast and the photography, I'm no interest in ambient sound, it kind of gives you a different perspective. Yeah. And your brain, you have to use a different bit of your brain and approach it. You know, some days you think I cannot write today, my brain will not shift from this gear to that gear. This is not the day. But other times you think, yeah, absolutely. I can shift. You know, this is, this is right. And like I said with the artwork, everything informs everything else and it all transfers back and forth in the end. But yeah, I've never been one to... I was told at school that I always got the right answer, but I found the hardest solution to every problem. And it wasn't that... and they were wrong, because basically I just like to understand what I'm doing and fully immerse myself in it, so that I know why I got the right answer or why that thing worked out or how I'm going to do the next thing. So as long as I'm learning, I'm happy. Like, and I think that's why I do lots of different things because it keeps challenging you. You know, am I gonna run out of things to say? No, I've got lots of things to say, but how I'm going to say them might be through an exhibition, might be through a bit of text, might be in a film, who knows? Might be on a podcast. So all those things, yeah, I like to keep it, I get bored, I'd get bored. I think the day that I stop and go, I've got nothing to do is the day I... leave this earth. I'll die of the shock. I've got nothing to do. What? Exploration right there. That'll be me done. So yeah. Hopefully that won't come anytime soon. It will not. There's too much going on. I'm safe for now. I'm safe for now. Well, thanks. Great, Laura. It's been really lovely chatting with you for this episode. Thanks for having me. It's been nice. Thanks for listening to this episode with Laura. I hope you enjoyed listening to it. More information about Laura, including social media handles, is in the podcast notes. I'd really appreciate it if you could rate and review the podcast in the podcast apps. In the next episode, I speak with Roland Ramanan, a London-based photographer and musician. Here's a clip of a conversation. So a musician, I've been a musician for... a long time so I took up the trumpet when I was about 10 years old I think, something like that. So I played the trumpet for a long time. My father was a jazz musician on the London jazz scene. His name was Sheik Keane and he played with a musician called Joe Harriot who was famous in the late 50s and 60s on the London jazz scene. I didn't know him very much as I was growing up because he left to work in Germany and went back to St Vincent in the Caribbean. when I was very young, so I didn't know him growing up, but I knew his music. So through my mother, I knew his music, I knew his records, and his poetry, in fact. So I played the trumpet, but not as a profession, but certainly as a passion. I played a lot of purely improvised music. And the photography came much later. I was always interested, I think, in the visual arts, but I had a job as a, well, I did a science degree, then I had a job as a teacher. dabbled in painting as a hobby for a very short time. I look forward to you joining me in the next episode.