Becky Tucker Studio, Glasgow, Summer, 2024
Becky Tucker in conversation with Steve Turner
Steve Turner:
Welcome to Los Angeles, or more appropriately Welcome to California. Your show has been open for a week and since the opening, you have spent a week on the road in California. Where have you gone and what are your impressions or our great state?
Becky Tucker:
Thank you, yeah, I almost can’t believe it’s been a week, you could spend years on the road here and barely scratch the surface! We drove up to Yosemite for a few nights, did lots of hiking, the landscape is just breathtaking. We have stunning mountains in Scotland but the scale here is so different. The second day we went to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias which really resonated with me - I read that one of the trees called the ‘Grizzly Giant’ could be 2400 years old, it’s very humbling to consider such a passage of time, to get to stand next to something that has stood for so long.
We drove on to San Francisco via some strange towns and great diner stops along the way – (refillable coffee with breakfast needs to be a bigger thing in the UK). I loved San Francisco too, visiting Alcatraz was fascinating, and had some incredible dumplings in Chinatown that I’ll be dreaming of until my next visit.
We then headed down the coast back towards LA and stopped in a place called Morro Bay which is one of my highlights. It has this huge rock on the coastline which is a volcanic plug and on the shore just where all the restaurants and fishing boats are there are three 450 foot concrete smokehouse stacks, it was super foggy so they looked beautifully sinister. Anyway, I haven’t even mentioned LA, which feels like it’s own world, but to sum up, my expectations have been greatly exceeded. I love driving so I’ve been in my element on the Californian open road. I’m already thinking of where I’d like to go on my next trip.
ST:
We’ll circle back to this in just a bit, as I am curious to know if giant trees, rocks and waterfalls might end up in your work.
BT:
I don’t think they will in a literal sense, but the vastness of history and the passage of time are themes I think about a lot in relation to the work. I’ve been scaling up some of the figurative sculptures and I suppose they have a monolithic quality to them, particularly when it’s several displayed together. I think a lot about how someone may move around them in a space, maybe there’s something forest-like in that experience. It’s made me think more about installation, world building and how that might impact future works. With clay being mined from the earth there is already a strong connection to rock. I went to the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History where they have an incredible collection of gems, minerals, rocks and meteorites from across the world. As I have studied and experimented with glaze chemistry I’ve become fascinated by minerals and naturally occurring pigments. There was a stunning papagoite specimen in the museum which had some really bright blues running through it, and a sample of cuprite coated in malachite that was a really matte turquoise. I’ll use them as reference for developing new glaze colors…so I guess rocks are already part of the work.
Speaking of the Natural History Museum, I was also delighted to discover there a collection of Zuni fetishes. They are beautiful little hand carved animals, an ancient tradition where each fetish has a purpose and can give power to its owner. They are used for a variety of things including hunting, war, curing illnesses and casting spells. The idea of the spirit animal, totemism or an object imbued with power exists in many cultures, including Chinese, Buddhist, Greek, Aztec, etc. I’m interested in the power of objects, perceived or otherwise, so it was a real privilege to see these for the first time.
ST:
Before we talk about your show and your art practice generally, please share a bit of background information. I know you are from the village of Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire and now live in Glasgow. What was life like growing up in Northern England?
BT:
Robin Hoods Bay is really beautiful, it’s probably best known for fossils, fishing and its history of smuggling. There’s a subterranean network of tunnels that were used to smuggle goods off boats under houses and pubs in the 18th century. Our closest town is Whitby - the birthplace of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, so the whole area is laced with strange gothic histories. I love going back to visit now, but I remember at 18 I was really ready to leave and live in a city.
ST:
And what did your family do in RHB?
BT:
My parents were in the pub trade. We lived in one when I was quite young, but I don’t remember it that well though I think it was pretty loud. My parents worked very hard to give me and my brother opportunities they didn’t have, so I’m very grateful for that. I also worked in pubs myself since I was 14 which also was a great education.
ST:
Where did you go when you decided you wanted to move to a big city?
BT:
I went up to Edinburgh to study fine art. I considered London but I ultimately chose Scotland. I really didn’t have any understanding of contemporary art and hadn’t really been to any galleries or museums. I just liked making things and wanted to learn more about art history. I thought I would earn a degree in the subject that interested me most and then go back to working in hospitality. My degree at Edinburgh University was a five year master of fine arts program, it was half art history and half studio practice, a bit like doing two degrees at the same time. I wanted to develop a studio practice, but I also wanted to gain a broader context, something studying art history might facilitate. I was actually making paintings until my final year, but when I wrote my dissertation on twelfth and thirteenth century Iranian lusterware, I got so invested in researching objects and learning about ceramic processes that I completely changed directions.
ST:
What were the first works objects you created?
BT:
Well, the paintings I made were these big abstract monstrosities, with some kind of figurative elements? (they were a mess!!) I had started making these little polymer clay models, would arrange them in a shoe box, light them, then translate that to a painting. The little models became more interesting than the paintings. They were these pathetic little slumping, warped figures all lined up on a shelf. I messed around with animating them but didn’t have the patience for it. With about six months to our degree show I just started making sculptures out of every material I could get hold of, wax, chicken wire, clay, foam, plaster you name it. One of the pieces was this nearly two meter tall figure lacquered in black, it looked like a pregnant Marge Simpson had been put in a blender with a Tony Cragg dice sculpture (not in a good way). I’ll never forget one of my tutors said ‘well, at least you had fun making it’, which probably sums it up. I know you’re going to ask to see pictures of this…over my dead body.
ST:
No pictures necessary! It was a necessary step and you ultimately found your way. So you finished your studies in 2017 and decided to stay in Scotland. How did you begin to develop your career?
BT:
Well, with my degree show being a total disaster (at the time it felt like the most important thing in the world), I wanted to keep making but couldn’t see any path to do shows or earn any money. University really didn’t give me any tools to actually enter the art world, I didn’t have any connections or know where to begin. I wasn’t really that taken with the art scene in Edinburgh so in 2018 me and two of my best mates moved to Glasgow. I worked part time in a gallery and did bar/catering shifts in the evenings. I had a small studio near the shipping docks and started working with clay. I bought a wheel off gumtree (an online classified ad site in the UK) and taught myself to throw, which led to a very small business making functional ceramics.
Things really changed for me in 2020 with the onset of Covid when Scotland was in a strict lockdown and I was furloughed from my gallery job. Our studios were all individual so our landlord was happy for us to come in to work and I just went for it. Before that I didn’t have the confidence to make the work I wanted to, but no one cared what I was making, no one was looking, so I had total freedom to try things. I took the gamble of moving to a bigger space and buying my own kiln which helped me to develop my practice really quickly.
Me and two friends put on a show ourselves in London, which led to some group show invitations from artist-run project spaces. OHSH and Haze were some of the first to show my work. I guess it’s just sort of gone from there, it’s really other artists I have to thank for getting me started.
ST:
Indeed. Had it not been for Natalia Gonzalez Martin including your work in Illuminations, the group show that she curated for my gallery in 2023, we might not be having this conversation now. With all due respect to the other artists in Illuminations, your work truly stood out to me. It was monumental, unexpected, distinctive and striking. That show featured works that were inspired by Medieval or Renaissance art. Can you elaborate on your interest in art from the past?
BT:
I find learning about art history from different eras and cultures to be very compelling and sometimes overwhelming. I have become increasingly drawn to works and periods that have very little written record, where even the authorship of a work may be speculative. And it’s not just art that I investigate. My library (a few shelves in my studio that one day may grow to earn that title) has books on many varied topics from fossils to weaponry to the Japanese art of packaging. I like to find connections between seemingly disparate subjects, something that requires digging into the past.
ST:
Let’s turn to your current solo show. What were your motivations for the works in Umbra?
BT:
Before I started making any of the work for this show, I was reading Matthew Green’s Shadowlands, a survey of Britain’s lost villages and how they met their fate. While surveying these lost villages, Green reimagines the lives of those who may have walked the streets before these places were lost to the sea and earth. He talks about Britain being ‘shaped by absence’ and how ‘what has disappeared beneath the sea can rebuild itself in the mind’. The book served as a poignant reminder of the transitory nature of existence. I think about this a lot in relation to ceramics. Though fragile, it is a material that survives even when buried underground for millenia. As a consequence, it tells tales from our ancestors.
Green opens his book describing the Scottish Neolithic village of Skara Brae, Orkney. Skara Brae was discovered beneath the sand following a storm in 1850. Dating to approximately 3000 BC, it is one of the oldest known man-made structures on the planet. It provides clues to the mystery of how our ancestors lived. Items found at the site include pottery, jewelry, tools and carved stone objects. Among the finds is a beautiful whalebone figurine known as The Skara Brae Buddo (Buddo being an Orcadian term of endearment) that may have been an idol or even a child’s toy. I am always drawn to objects that don’t have a clearly definable function.
I developed a deep interest in burial, archeological sites and the idea of making works that may survive underground long enough to lose their original context. Last year I was fortunate to be awarded a residency in the Aquitaine region, France. We visited Lascaux IV near the village of Montignac. Lascaux is a network of caves with over 600 parietal wall paintings. Radiocarbon dating of the charcoal suggests the paintings are around 17,000 years old. The caves were discovered by accident in 1940, when 18 year old Marcel Ravidat’s dog, Robot, found the opening to the caves at the base of an uprooted tree. Returning with two friends they discovered the caves to be covered with paintings of animals. After briefly being open to the public the caves were closed in 1963 to preserve them, as carbon dioxide, heat and other contaminants were damaging the paintings. Now visiting Lascaux IV is a surreal experience, a museum with full-scale replicas has been built for visitors to experience the caves, even the temperature and light is controlled to mimic that of the original caves. The entrance to the real caves is just behind the museum, calling from behind some thick locked doors.
So the sites Lascaux and Skara Brae were certainly catalysts for the show. A cornerstone of my practice is finding references from vastly differing cultures, periods and aesthetics. I’m interested in finding what unites material practices. The depiction of creatures and figures has happened everywhere, thousands of years and thousands of miles apart, albeit with different symbolic and functional purposes. Umbra explores themes of the ruin, the idol and the lost artifact. I wanted to create a diverse group of works that could belong to an ancient past or an impossible future.
ST:
You have certainly done that. Can you elaborate on your specific motivations for a few works in your show? How about The Welcome, Umbra and Siren?
BT:
Earlier figurative works alluded more to costumes or suits of armor that adorned the figure. With The Welcome, I wanted to make the figure seem more sentient. The glassy wet eyes and the addition of hands give her (or it) more agency. The Welcome is like the host of the show. I was thinking a lot about monuments, idols and systems of defense.
With Umbra, it took shape more organically, a synthesis of everything that's been simmering in the studio lately. People have said that it looks either ancient or futuristic, sad or fierce, that it could be Chinese or from an anime or a medieval illumination. I like that it is difficult to place it.
I made Siren early in the year. I had made a similar form with some red clay last year and thought it was kind of silly and cute. I guess a lot of the works seem quite dark so maybe Siren brings some levity. I really enjoy titling works, the words are often archaic or have a double meaning. In this case, I was imagining Siren as an annoying alarm, or a seductive sea creature. Both definitions are quite funny for this little work.
ST:
What about the group of works that might be described as reptilian? Their forms, features and glazes are all very striking. Though smaller than most works in Umbra, they pack a big punch. What is their significance?
BT:
I’m drawn to reptiles and amphibians because they feel so ancient, closer to something from the Mesozoic era, something that feels otherworldly. I consume a lot of imagery but I don’t look at any reference pictures when making, so they become these weird blends of fragments I’ve looked at. For example, Bridge has tiny human hands and Yoke has two reptilian heads but also has feline paws. The sculptures often don’t make sense anatomically, necks too long and legs too short, but that is my way of exploring the inventiveness of our own memory.
ST:
A number of ceramic artists have visited your show and been impressed with the way you join separate elements into a single work. Can you elaborate on this?
BT:
Ha ha yeah, that can be a bit of a nightmare. I’m firing to high temperatures so I get a lot of shrinkage - it can be 10-14%. There’s a high risk of things warping and not fitting and balancing. It’s really just been lots of trial and error. I coil-build a lot of the sections but also cut slabs, and by eye, cut a pattern like you would to make clothes, and just build from there. Keeping the clay thickness really even and drying things slowly are really important. I use a clay that’s 20% grog (ground up fired pieces of clay) which makes it a lot stronger and less likely to warp. It’s just me in the studio so the fun starts when I’m stacking them and strapping them together, I use zip ties to temporarily hold them in place, then it’s a very laborious process tying the strappings. As I can’t pull through the suede from the other side, I have to attach it to an upholstery needle (or thick bent wire because my needles keep breaking) and essentially sew them together.
ST:
Thanks so much for this insight. I wonder what you learned about your work after seeing it installed in Umbra?
BT:
To be honest I still feel like I’m processing it. It’s always strange to see my works outside of the studio. I’ve sat with them so long which makes it hard to see them with fresh eyes. I don’t think I’ll know what I’ve learned until I start properly making work again.
ST:
And finally, once you get back in the studio, what are you excited to begin working on?
BT:
I’ll be starting to make work for a show next year. I’m going to take a few weeks to develop some new glazes and test clays while I read and research. I’ve had such a steep learning curve in the past two years, my skills are slowly catching up to my ideas so I’m hoping to execute some really ambitious works. I have no idea what that will look like yet but I’m excited to get started.
