S6, E3 Tinsel Edwards | Mixed media artist

In this episode, we hear from Glasgow‑based artist Tinsel Edwards, whose bold, autobiographical practice spans painting, printmaking, assemblage, installation and public art interventions. Born in the Midlands and trained at Goldsmiths, Tinsel has built a distinctive visual language that blends emotional honesty, humour and political critique.

We explore the themes that define her work, from motherhood and domesticity to feminism, economic pressure and the ongoing housing crisis. Tinsel’s tactile approach, using found objects, reclaimed materials and sculptural elements, creates layered narratives that reflect the complexity of contemporary life. Throughout, she champions women’s stories and challenges the erasure of women in art history.

Episode recorded on the 27 January 2026.

Website: tinseledwards.com
Instagram: @tinseledwards

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

Transcript

In this episode of Artist Tales, I'd like to welcome Tinsel Edwards. She's a painter and multidisciplinary maker who blends autobiography, activism, humor, and a fierce sense of commitment to visibility. Tinsel draws on her own lived experiences from motherhood to the everyday pressures of domestic life.

She explores bigger systemic issues from the housing crisis, to feminism, to economic precarity, and the politics of who gets seen, heard, and valued in the art world. Welcome tinsel. Thank you very much. Well, that was interesting listening to the introduction of exciting. You're such an interesting artist.

So tell us a little bit more about yourself and your artwork and what you do really. Okay, so I am Tinsel Edwards. I'm an artist based in Glasgow. I moved here from London in 2017, uh, with my family. Got two children. I've got a lovely studio in Glasgow with an organization called Outer Spaces. And I also work for the art school in, uh, Glasgow School of Art, which is very exciting.

What I do as an artist is predominantly, I'm a painter. I absolutely love paint, and it's always been the thread that runs consistently through my practice. But I also use a lot of found materials. I've used all sorts of things like bedsheets, serial boxes, um, old estate agent signs, all sorts of things. I like using things that I find in the street or things that, um.

Gonna be recycled at home. And I've recently started using ceramics as well and a bit of collage. There's lots of different things, but it's painting that kind of ties it all together. So what draws you to both the painting but also using other materials, particularly what you find sort of around you. So what draws you to that?

So lots of different things. In a way, it kind of started for financial reasons that I would end up, you know, not being able to afford. New linen or canvas from the art shop and finding bits of wood on the street, um, or things, you know, I've always worked in different studios. There's always people putting stuff out, and you can go and see what there is in the corridors and things, or in the local skit.

But then a few years ago it became more about the story that's connected to those things as well. So it's, it's like. Reusing, wanting to transform something that's been discarded into something new. It's a financial motive, but it's also becoming things that come from home. So my work since kind of 2018 has been very much focused on the domestic and my responding to my experience as motherhood.

So I've been using a lot of kind of cereal boxes where the kids get through so much cereal. So that's a really lovely thing to paint on. And yeah, they've got a story connected to them. It's something from the home. And, uh, there's also baby growers. I've painted on, um, socks, t-shirts, you know, like old clothing.

And also recently I've been painting on old drawers that come from the Hunter Museum in Glasgow, and I got them from. Place called Glasgow Wood, which is where you can take wood and recycle it. And so I love the store the, the fact that these old wooden drawers have, you know, a history to them that they've been in a museum and they've kind of possibly held old fossils and things like that.

And I've now painted on them and they've become something completely different. So yeah, there's lots of threads to just that one aspect of it. I guess I was gonna say, like you have the recycling, you have the affordability, you have. You know, you touch on history, the history of an object or, and the, the mys, if that's a word.

Yeah, yeah. Of, of the object, but also repurposing or recreating something into something new. So there's a lot of, as you say, say threads there. Yeah. And, and I quite like the challenge of using different things. So like painting on a drawer or painting on a t-shirt, the fabric of the t-shirt absorbs the paint quite a lot, so.

It's very different to painting on a shiny surface or something. I like, you know, the textures and the, and and um, the qualities, the material qualities of these different things as well. I like the challenge of it. I can imagine, you know, and I can imagine too, how not only working with those different materials, but also how people then interact with the, the final piece of art.

So how have people. Kind of what you've presented or what you've exhibited? That's quite a hard question to answer really, because I suppose it's so different for different people and everyone brings their own thoughts and experiences to an artwork when they see it. But I guess like something like a cereal box, it's uh, like a universal thing that people have at home.

So. There is a sort of familiarity and say like a baby grow. That was, I used a couple of times, I made paintings where I stretched a baby, grow over a piece of wood and then painted on it. But you could see the sort of poppy buttons as part of the, the overall image. And I suppose people will have their memories of putting baby goes on babies if, if they've had children and yeah, I suppose.

The familiarity of these objects brings something else and, and lets people experience it in a, in a different way than if it was just a canvas. I suppose. I guess another way to ask the question is, has your artwork sparked any conversations with people who, who are coming to see it and sort of what, what have people talked about?

Yeah. So many different situations where I've shown work and there's a different bodies of work that I've made, but. I suppose, um, the current body of work that I'm making and when I've shown that people, people do find it funny sometimes they sort of respond to a humor in it and they might, I don't know.

I dunno. I find it very hard to imagine how other people would respond. I'm talking about conversations. I mean, with the housing work, there's this sort of housing crisis work. When I did an exhibition called The Poor, or I curated an exhibition and um, it was a group of artists who were all responding to a similar theme.

I remember vividly conversations from that exhibition, but that was like. Now 11? No, um, no, 10 year, 11 years ago. Sorry, 11 years ago that I did that exhibition. But I remember vividly the conversations in that and people coming and telling me how much their rent was going up and how they were having to move and being priced out of the area.

And just really emotional, personal stories about, um, how that housing situation was affecting them. And that was just from looking at the artwork, that was a group show, but I had my pieces in there. The estate agent signs the motherhood work. There's been all sorts of different responses to it. A lot of conversations.

I dunno, I use the yellow, uh, marigold gloves a lot. The, the sort of motif of that. And, um, people seem to love the fun and the humor in that. But people just, you know, everyone has a pair of yellow rubber gloves at home, probably. And uh, yeah, they talk about that. Yeah, I guess they see some things that they might have at home or recognize the feelings that I'm talking about in the work as well.

'cause a lot of this work is about trying to sort of make the feelings and the emotions visible or tangible in some way. And I think, yeah, some people don't get that, but some people. I identify with that and, and have a conversation with me if I'm showing work. Yeah, I can imagine. And I think both those topics have a real emotional or emotive aspect to them in, in different ways that probably do overlap in in some ways as well.

I'm gonna ask about both of them, but I'll start off with the housing crisis work you've done or the artwork you've done. What sparked that project? How did that exhibition come to fruition? So I think I first made work about housing in 2012, and I'll just add to that. My work always seems to respond to my own personal situation that kind of feeds into it.

So at that time, I'd recently become a single parent and I was renting a flat in, um, east London and just finding it really, really hard and hard financially. But I had already lived in London since 1998 and just over that, just a bit more than a decade. Having seen the changes and the gentrification and how much more difficult it is to, you know, cover the bills that were just increasing all the time.

Yeah. So it's like a personal experience, but also it is just such a strong topic of conversation. At that time in 2012, you know, everyone connected to the nursery or my friends, people at work, everyone had a story about how difficult it is and. I just wanted to explore that and express it and try and capture other people's stories as well, as well as my own.

But I started out by making paintings of adverts in estate agents windows, so it would, because I'd walked past so many estate agents and they've got this really like grim looking image, really dark, and there's often just a sort of floral carpet or something and a bed in the corner. And the cost of the rent is really, really high.

Like, I dunno what it is now because I left London eight years ago, but it would be about 600 quid a week or something for a one bedroom flat. And you think, how is that even possible for someone on like an average salary? And, and then you read more and more stories about. You know, foreign investment as well and people from all over the world actually, you know, buying flats off plan and never even living there.

And it, you know, taking communities apart 'cause there's nobody in living in certain areas even though they own these properties and they keep going up in value. Um, and then there's like sort of multi occupancy flats when people are all trying to squeeze into. One room just to cover the cost of the bills.

Lots of different things. Um, but yeah, the, going back to the paintings, I just found it quite, there was a humor in it as well, seeing what they were advertising and how much they were charging. So I just wanted to pick up on that and create paintings from that, uh, of the interiors. So that's how it started in 2012.

And was it a collaborative work or was it a solo exhibition? That was a solo work. So the, so yeah, it started with the estate agents', images, the paintings from that. That was a, a long series and they all became quite similar and it was reduced to like a bed, a light bulb, and either a toilet or a sink. So it's kind of like.

The bare minimum of what you need. And they're quite often in sort of dark blues or murky greens. It was a very sort of muted, dark, dingy palette. And then I moved on 'cause I thought, oh, I dunno if these are saying enough. And I moved on to creating estate agent signs, um, and sort of subverting the imagery from prominent brands of estate agents, but actually taking people's stories who.

They told me what was happening in their lives and I kind of screenprinted that onto the, the, uh, sign and subverted the imagery. And then this exhibition, the poor. I thought, well, I'll see if any other artists are doing something about this. 'cause it's such a sort of prominent issue at that time. I'm sure it's much worse now and there's many more issues that we're dealing with now.

But yeah, it was really nice to get a group of, I think it was about 20 artists. Joined in, and so it's called The Poor Door. And the Poor Door, uh, title comes from new developments. They often have an entrance for the affordable housing and an entrance for the sort of full price flats and the, the poor door.

So it's something that goes back to Victorian times in a way. It's like a sort of side entrance that's not quite as attracted as the other one. I was gonna say, it's very to Sian, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, and I did that exhibition and kind of brought it all together and then stopped making that work after I moved to Glasgow.

It felt it was time to, to move on. I find it interesting that you were producing that around 2012, that area, that time period. Because even now we're talking about rents, about affordability, about, you know, the cost of living crisis and it, it's particularly acute in big cities like London, but you probably do get it in places like Paris or New York or Toronto or any other big city, you know, cities.

And you know, I'm sure too there's rural poverty as well. I think it's one of those things that even now I think that type of work would still probably hit a, hit a nerve. Mm. I think as well, it's about trying to create cities where everyone can live, not just rich people. And it did feel like London was, it was, it felt like a lot of people kind of getting pushed out.

Creative people notoriously earn less money. Really true. Yeah, it's just trying to have retain like a diverse community. And if it's only ever gonna be driven by wealth and money and greed, it is gonna exclude people. Yeah. And that's more detrimental than including people. Yeah. No. I do also wanna get onto your kind of artwork that explores motherhood and you know.

Yes, please. Yes, please. Yeah. Great. In the diagnostic, you know, environment. So tell me a little bit more about how you're exploring that theme and you know, any of your projects. Okay, yeah. Brilliant. Yeah, just to sort of say about the housing work, that it came to a stop because I started to feel like. I'm looking an issue and I'm trying and I'm almost making work that illustrates an issue and actually as an artist, I don't want to illustrate, I want to explore and express.

I mean, it was expressionistic in some ways, but it became too sort of formulaic for me in a way. And then, you know, we left London, started a new life in Glasgow and I was really excited about being in a new place. Getting to know different people and understand how the city works. And I'd had my daughter and she was, um, she was only 10 months when we moved actually.

And it was about a year after that that I really started making the domestic paintings. And that's when it started with the serial boxes. I just thought, I'm not gonna do anything that I put too much pressure on myself. I'm not trying to. You know, explore all the politics to do with housing 'cause it was getting so, um, it was getting too far away from the magic of, of making and of being an artist.

Unknown and the adventure of that. So my current practice is, uh, exploring the emotional complexities of motherhood, and I'm doing that through playful use of materials, experimentation and color and paint. Um, but yeah, with an emphasis on play, um, there is a recurring motif in this body of work that I wanted to talk a little bit about, and I refer to it as the squiggle character.

It's kind of a loosely painted scribble or squiggle. It sometimes has arms and legs, sometimes has eyes, sometimes not. Sometimes wears little pair of boots. Uh, initially I brought this figure in as a kind of vehicle or device to explore paint. So paint application and color relationships. But it does also hold a narrative.

It's, um, a self-portrait of sorts, but it could also represent all of us. It's about exploring different emotions. So it, yeah, it carries a narrative. It's about the body. It's kind of about my body and what it feels like. Um, and so I'm trying to express through paint what it feels like, what these emotions feel like, what it feels like to be in the body, um, but just through this kind of playful, gestural, little character without actually painting a person or a figure.

And it, it, it, it's referring to quite a few things as a wider context. I feel, uh, the kind of darkness that's in the world at the moment. I feel it on an emotional level. I'm sure lots of people do, but the way that we have news, we're all kind of interconnected and we get images from all over the world, and we are bombarded with all these terrible stories and looking at what's happening in America.

There's a lot for human beings to process at the moment. So, yeah, it's, uh, an, an, an emotional response to that and then expressing it through paint. So it's kind of an embodiment. This little squiggly character is an embodiment of those difficult and challenging emotions in relation to the darkness that we're, we're seeing the kind of gradual creep to the far right that we see in our neighborhoods, in our cities.

We see it globally, but we also see it closer to home and it's, it's frightening. It also is a much more personal thing as well, and it's about my own, uh, feelings as a mother and the complexity. I talk a lot about the complexity of emotions, so there's lots of amazing, wonderful emotions to being a mother, but there's lots of difficult ones and challenging ones as well.

So in recent work I've explored. Guilt, frustration, tiredness, and more recently brain fog, which is actually also relating to experience of perimenopause. Also, it, um, I'm kind of asking questions in the work and exploring the mental load or the hidden burden that women primarily take on and the sort of prevalent gender inequality in parenting.

So the squiggle character is a playful, funny little thing, and it just allows me to explore and ask questions and process my thoughts and feelings about my own home environment, my life, and being a mum, and also in response to the wider issues that we are going through in the world and the times we are living in.

So, yeah. So it sounds like, although it's kind of a, a playful thing, it sounds like it's also multilayered. Yeah. And it's kind of evolved in the work. It popped up a couple of years ago, but it's, it's been evolving and uh, 'cause I can think what the one about guilt, I thought, okay, I'll, I'll use green and um, it's gonna be quite a big squiggle and it's gonna have bare feet.

Um. And then another one is a different color. Yeah. So it's a playful use of paint, but it has got this kind of cartoony element and I really want to keep pushing and developing it. Like what does this character do and different situations that it can get into. And yeah, I think and making it in ceramic and in paint.

And how have people reacted to this character? People seem to like it. I think they see it as quite playful and they see it as a bit of fun. But then when it's along with the title of the work, it gives a bit more insight into the narrative of it. People are intrigued by it, and some of the paintings that I've done actually look a bit dark rather than look playful, but it just depends how it comes out on the day.

I try to be quite quick about how I paint it. Yeah, people, people seem intrigued and want to ask more about it. It sounds like a lot of your work is about exploring Okay. Or kind of exploring and that, well, I guess exploring or storytelling or, you know, kind of raising in at times. I think in, it sounds like both with the work on sort of the housing crisis and, and motherhood.

Where you're at, but also common experience, you know, many people Mm. You know, would face, you know, it is very expensive. You know, living can be very expensive, particularly in bigger cities, but, and not, not just bigger cities elsewhere as well. But a lot of people are, you know, are mothers or parents or, or fathers.

And, you know, it's that. I don't know, I guess I'm hearing quite an authentic voice of. You know, your artwork is kind of reflecting where you are, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think it's always done that, and I do really want to somehow capture my experience of motherhood and hopefully it's something that other people would identify with as well, or, you know, relate to.

But I just feel it's important for me at this time to try and, yeah, get it out somehow and, and. Not just by writing it down or it, it has to be something that's made, that's made in paint or made in ceramics and, and it often refers to things in the home like, uh, you know, I'm making these tiny bits of Lego out of ceramic at the moment because there's lots of Lego around when the kids are small or I.

I kept painting nappy bags for a period of time, or, yeah, there's lots of different sort of, um, objects that I'll kind of pick up on that are from around the home as well. But yeah, it's just kind of wanting to highlight the complexities of the emotions that come along with motherhood or parenting. But I do say motherhood because there is a feminist element to it.

I talked a little bit about the invisible load and the mental load and yeah, so I'm asking questions in the work as well, but I just have this kind of compulsion to paint and make things, and I sort of can't really function properly if I don't do that. It's my way of, um, processing the world and processing my thoughts and feelings and, yeah.

I would say that's probably a common theme with a lot of artists. Mm. Being, having some form of art to process your thoughts and feelings. Mm. But I do, I'm glad you raised a feminism because I, I wonder too whether there's a thread throughout a lot of your work to do with feminism, because even with the housing crisis, you know.

It does disproportionately hit poorer people. Mm-hmm. And you know, if we start looking at demographics who tend to be poorer, you know, it tends to be ethnic minorities, women, you know, like there's, I'm sure there's nuances and it's not to say it doesn't affect men, but it kind of marginalizes, visualizes certain, you know, people within society.

So. I don't know. How do you feel about that? Do you think there's a kind of a, a threat of feminism throughout all of your work? Or is it, you know, something that kind of pops up in, in different ways with different work? I suppose I've only really more recently become aware of it and actually wanted to, to make it part of the work.

Yeah. I think when I was. Doing the housing work. It's not something I was thinking about or the work previous to that, but, um, yeah, and, and it's, it's a bit to do with being an artist mother as well. And you know, my son's about to turn 16 now, but even then when he was born, I was a bit reluctant to sort of, I don't know, you feel different as an artist if you can just turn up to the private views and meet people and.

It suddenly becomes actually can't because you are at home with your child, which is wonderful, but it does cut out those kind of networking opportunities when your child is younger. So, yeah. Well I was a single parent as well, so that was something slightly different as well. Yeah, the feminism, I'm going off in a bit of a tangent, but, um, yeah, I think it's just, uh, it's uh, a really strong thread in my work now because I often reference artists from the past as well, and I've specifically research, uh, female artists.

Because of that whole thing about that they, you know, they weren't allowed to show work or practice as artists or, you know, uh, and weren't, uh, celebrated in the way that they should have been. It's changing now, but it's only really been very recent that that is changing. So I make a conscious decision to find female artists that I might not have heard about and find out about their stories and find out more about their work.

I have in some of my works being really overtly referencing them by, you know, in the titles that I use, it might reference a particular artist or a brush mark or a, a tiny bit of their painting. I'll actually like, you know, physically recreate it and reference it within my piece. I love doing that because I feel like I connect with that person from years ago and think about.

What their life might have been like and how they were able to keep being creative and making work when the odds were against them. I guess it's like, it's quite an inspiring thing. So like I've recently done a piece inspired by Pauline Botes last, um, painting she made called Bum. I've been working, it's not quite finished.

I've been working on it for a few years now. Thinking about her life and how she wasn't really allowed to do painting at the Royal College of Art. She was advised to do glass instead. There weren't even female toilets in, uh, the Royal College of Art at that time. Yeah. So there's been a lot of pieces like that recently where I've chosen tostudy a particular artist and, you know, really thought and about what they were, uh, experiencing and tried to bring that into the work.

Yeah. And I think. What you've described is probably a common experience for many, many women, you know, of previous generations where actively discouraged probably to be artistic. Or to be artistic in a certain way, and maybe pushed to doing other things. And I'm thinking too, you know, not only just painters who were overlooked, but also writers who had to write under a man's name to get published.

As you were talking, I'm, I also thought of Emily Carr. I'm Canadian. So she was, was painting in the early part of the 20th century around the time of the group of seven who were a group of seven men. Mm. In Canada, you know, and she was never part of that group because she was a woman and she was very, very poor.

And, you know, her work didn't get recognized until well after, you know, until after she died. Mm. And they're really struggling to preserve her painting because she had, she couldn't afford very. Good boards tip to, um, paint on. So it's probably a, it sounds really such a positive thing that you're throwing a light on these artists that otherwise, you know, people aren't aware of.

You know, there's probably many artists that I'm not aware of, but I do appreciate where, when other artists or other people kind of shine a light on. I dunno about Emily Carr, actually, she sounds really interesting. I'll have to look her up. She's a very interesting artist. She did a lot of landscapes and worked, um, she was, you know, we're also very much in touch with indigenous communities in, in Western Canada.

And had a real respect for indigenous communities. So yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll send you, I'll send you some information on it. That sounds good. Yeah. I mean like say with Pauline Botie, like she is getting a lot more recognition now and her work sells a lot of money and um, she's very celebrated. But you know, at the time she died, her paintings, I dunno, they got left, I think it was her brother had been storing them in a barn, and I can't remember who discovered them now, but they'd just been.

Left in there, not really protected or anything. 'cause they weren't thought of as anything interesting. So it was a shame that she didn't experience in her lifetime that actually she was doing a really interesting thing. She was one of the only sort of female perspectives in the pop art movement. Um, yeah, it was only the male artists in pop art that we all are, are the household names.

So, yeah. Yeah, and that's quite a common theme I think over the generations. Yeah, sadly. Now I'm going to kind of go back a little bit because I'm quite interested in some of the work you did fairly early on, like some of the, the. Collaborations you've done. And I'm also thinking about, um, twinkle Trouten.

Yeah. Who I will be interviewing for this podcast as well. Yeah. So maybe you can talk about some of that work. And I know that's, I think that was fairly early on in your career. Yeah. Um, so tell us a bit more about that and, and how it Yeah. Um, it's great to hear that you're interviewing Twinkle as well, so, uh, yeah.

We met when we were nine, so went to primary school together. We lived together in London. Afterwards we formed a band, uh, which maybe, uh, we might get onto as well. But then we did a collaboration. It was Tinsel and Twinkle and we did lots of different activities where it would be kind of street based artworks.

So we loved the idea of kind of taking it out of the gallery and interacting with people in a different way. Because I think to go into a gallery, you have to feel. That you're invited some, I think some people might feel that it's kind of, there is an elitism, uh, in art and, um, people might not feel that they can go and ring on the doorbell of a gallery.

So we like the idea of taking it out onto the street and, um, interacting with people and having conversations. So yeah, we did lots of different things. We did, uh, the Bank of Tinsel and Twinkle, which was all about. We had our own bank notes and uniforms, and it was all about the exchange of thought instead of like a currency, thought instead of currency.

And we were asking people what they thought about money and how. How, I don't know, just thoughts about money. Um, and we collected all the bank notes that people had written on and um, that was really interesting. We kidnapped a banker as well, and that was around the time that RBS had been bailed out by the taxpayer.

So we waited near the RBS in Liverpool Street to try and catch a banker. We kind of did and yes, held them to ransom for a small amount of time in a gallery space. Oh yeah, we find cars as well. So we dressed as traffic wardens. That was the first piece that we did, which was 2009. So we dressed up as traffic wardens and we made these tiny little parking tickets.

They were screen printed and on the image it was an image of Woolworths and um, which had to close down 'cause it was just the kind of, the recession had hit in 2008. And on the little picture of Woolworths, it said it was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Which is an opening line from Charles Dickens Tale of Two Cities.

But the idea of that artwork was to say, you know, uh, recessions are difficult, bad times, but there could be something good coming. It's not always all negative, it's a period of revival. Yeah. So we went around and stuck these on people's cars and we had the actual parking ticket bags. Uh, so people would think that they were getting fined, but they'd open it up and they'd have a free artwork.

So, yeah, it was really fun to work with Twinkle and, but the distance now makes it a bit more difficult and we're both really sort of focusing on our own practices. But yeah, it was, maybe we'll do them again. I'm not sure. Well, it sounded like it, there was such like a, a lot of energy and, and some fun actually in a bit of a cheeky way.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do have to ask how did the banker react to, to the, um, being held hostage? Um, so we had, we did get moved on from RBS after a short while by the security guard, but so we sort of went around the corner. Um, but this, a banker that did work in there came up and we said, well, can we just kidnap you for, uh, a little bit?

He was quite happy for it to happen, but we just put this like Sian sack over his head and posed for a photo and he was just laughing, thinking it was quite funny. But then actually, I dunno if I should tell you or not, but um, yeah, when we had the gallery exhibition, the, the banker was kind of, um, a friend who said they would be the banker.

But yeah, it was to sort of illustrate a point, I suppose. But yeah, he sat there for the whole time and he was kind of tied to a chair. But he was also raising money for the charity shelter as well. So all, all good. All for a good cause. Yeah. No, that's good. That's good. I did also want to ask you about, uh, actually before I get onto priced out, you mentioned you were in a band, so I did to ask you about that.

Yeah, so that was for seven years. We started in 2000 and it finished in 2007 and that was the four fairies. So me and Twinkle, we are both artists and there's also Tinky and Sparkle, but we're all from the same town. Leamington Spa in the Midlands, uh, twinkle and Tinky are sisters. But yeah, we basically grew up together and yeah, it was during the time that we were at art college, we grew wings basically.

And we had wings every day for seven years. Uh, and we would grant people wishes and hand out wish vouchers and get into all sorts of funny conversations and scrapes. And, uh, some people loved it and some people really didn't like it, but the band evolved from that. So it started out that we were the fairies.

Then we thought, oh well maybe we could do a band as well. And we wrote, uh, lots of songs about our experiences of having fun. Really? Yeah. Sounds like a bit of a riot, to be fair. Yeah, we, uh, we'd have like coordinated dance routines and we'd like coordinate our outfits and one of our signatures was white stiletto shoes, which we'd.

There were only about a tenor at the time. We'd have to get new ones every six weeks or something because they get completely trashed and, um, stomping around the streets of London and we'd like graffiti on them and, and stuff. So yeah, there were lots of different things, but it, we rehearsed every week and we did lots of gigs in venues around London and we organized our own tours to New York a couple of times.

Wow. So it was the four of us, and it was four friends as well. So we were singing at the front, the four of us, and, um. Four friends were on guitar, bass, and drums. So it was actually eight of us altogether. Oh gosh. A proper band. And what kind of music did you play? I'd say it was quite punky. A bit kind of glam.

Very ramshackle. Quite raucous and, yeah, loud and yeah, high energy. And it wasn't about being perfect, it was about. Enjoying it, I guess, and, and, uh, the lyrics were all about, you know, going out and having fun or, you know, one of them was about being vegetarian. So we did have a bit of politics in there, but, uh, it was mostly just about having fun, really in our twenties, I think that's probably not surprising, but hey.

I did wanna touch on priced out. So was that a book that you wrote? Yeah, so, um, around the time that the housing work finished, so I was doing the estate agent signs 'cause I was also part of Disneyland, um, Banksy’s exhibition. Um, and I exhibited the, uh, the estate agent signs at that. But, um, some friends who have an independent publishing company called Dunlin Press approached and said, would you like to write a book about this, about your experience as an artist?

London and how the housing crisis has impacted you, but also how you've made this body of work about it. So it kind of, um, captured that period of time in my life and I invited in, in Twinkles in the book as well. I invited other artists to contribute their own stories about what was happening to them.

So yeah, it captured that whole body of work and there's lots of images in it and also. My own experience of, of what was happening. That's amazing. And, and to sort of, I guess, sum it up in a book is, is probably quite a, you know, a, a good thing. And I think for a lot of people, whether it's a published written book or even a photo book or other types of books, you know, it's, it's really nice to have something that tactile, I find.

Yeah. And um, 'cause you know, a lot of that work has kind of disappeared now, but, um. I, and it's only a short book, but it really goes through all my thought processes of when I was making it, how, what the sort of creative decisions were. Um, and it's so nice to have that all there, that it won't kind of disappear and then my kids can read it as well.

Yeah. And it's something, as you say, it's something for them to, to hold onto and read as well. Yeah. Just kind of looking forward and I'm just thinking kind of the last few questions. Do you have any upcoming sort of projects or if you don't, you know, or at least don't have immediate projects in, uh, in hand, where do you think you're going?

Like, how do you see, how do you think you, how ahead of you is perhaps going Well, I have made a conscious decision to not seek any projects at the moment. To not try an exhibit, to not try, well, I probably will enter a couple of things, but I really want to solely focus on making and making the work and put all.

The possible energy I can into making, because I've spent years and years sort of trying to look for opportunities and sort of scrambling around and actually I don't want to. And I, and I've also been an activist in a lot, an instigator in a lot of ways. Like I've often curated exhibitions, I've brought people together.

I, I ran my own gallery for a few years with a, with a friend as well. Um, I've always kind of pushed. To, to use my energy to bring people together. And actually I feel a bit tired from it now, and it is financially it's quite difficult to always be doing that. And I, I want all that energy to now just go solely into my making for at least a year.

'cause I'm excited about my work and I want to see how far I can push it and, you know, really experiment and, um, take it further. That sounds, yeah. Like quite a good, I don't know, I guess it's kind of focus self focusing, isn't it? Like that's what I'm hearing from you. Yeah. I think I was spreading myself a bit too thin by always trying to do different things all the time.

And like I, I launched them art classes last year and it was great. It was art classes for teenagers, but the amount of work that went into trying to get people to come, trying to find a venue. Covering the cost of all the materials and all these things. I, at the end of the, the first sessions, I thought, I don't think this is right for me right now.

I think what I really need most is my work, and I want to commit to it so that, you know, I've, I've made a, I've sort of worked out a list of a few pieces that I want to make this year, and I will finalize that by getting it all professionally photographed and build up a portfolio and. I get my website much more updated.

So yeah, that's my plan at the moment. That sounds really positive. And as you were talking and even over this episode as we're recording it, what I'm hearing is you're trying a lot of different things. Mm-hmm. And I think I, I really, I am drawn to something like that because I like to try different things and I think that's how I learn.

And sometimes, like you said about the classes, you know, you try it not quite for me, you know, or not now, but sometimes in the trying you. Learn, yes, a lot about yourself, but also is this right for me? Is it right for me right now, is it, or can I take things away and incorporate that even if it's not something I'll pursue?

Yeah. I think with my work as well, I've really changed my approach over the last few years. My actual practice is that I let the process lead and if I something pops up in my head telling me to make a little piece of Lego outta ceramic and paint it red, then I'll just do that. I won't think, oh no, but I know that's not gonna do anything.

And, or like, I've been making little fried eggs or, you know, painting the squiggle person. I just, I let the work tell me what's next. And, uh, there is a lot of research that goes alongside it, but it's very much, um, process led and enjoyment led. I like try to go in the direction where it feels more fun, even though there's all these kind of.

Political thinking that goes into it and, uh, lots of different strands I suppose that, that, that I'm thinking about. It's primarily about exploring and experimenting and trying things and seeing where it goes. It's about an adventure. And I think that's so important. Um, well great. I really wanna thank you.

It's been wonderful speaking with you, so I want to thank you for your time and, and certainly talking about your artistic journey. Oh, thank you very much. Yeah, it's really nice to have the opportunity to talk about some of the things that are in my head to talk about out loud. It's really nice. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thanks for tuning into my conversation with Tinsel. Her work is testament to how art and creativity can challenge accepted norms and explore bigger systemic issues. More information about Tinsel is in the show notes. In the next episode, I'll be speaking with Twinkle Troughten, who has collaborated with Tinsel.

Her work explores the English landscape and what has influenced it over its generations. You won't want to miss it.