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Artist Interviews
Visual Artists' News Sheet | Special Issue: March – April 2020
Janet Mullarney, Ubiquitous Undesired Friend, 2009; photograph by Ros Kavanagh, courtesy of the artist
Staging Space JOHN RAINEY AND JANET MULLARNEY DISCUSS MATERIAL CONCERNS IN THEIR WORK.
John Rainey: When I’ve experienced your sculptures in the past, there were distinct points of identification for me. There’s a combination of a visual language – signs and symbols that you seem to have developed over time – with a type of rendering that suggests a natural affinity with materials. What were your early experiences of working with materials? Janet Mullarney: I think everybody works with their own signs and symbols to a lesser or greater degree; visual language is what we’re at. We’re communicating what we can’t communicate through verbal or written language, through what happens to be a material language. When it works, I think one can understand what we’re looking at, without necessarily fully understanding it logically. As a child I was given a lot of materials to work with. I was given paint and had my father’s workshop to mess around in, making puppets for myself. He loved wood – we had an old Georgian house and he worked on it a lot. He had great skill. I obviously had a lot of admiration for that and wanted to be admired by him. JR: My father also has a wood workshop, where he built and made things for our house. I was always very aware of what he was doing. I also have very clear memories of sculpting puppet heads in clay at a young age. JM: These things are very formative. Later, as a young artist, I won many Glen Abbey and Caltex competitions, which gave me money to escape Ireland when the time came. In Italy, I dropped out of art school very easily; it meant nothing to me – I was far too young for it, I think. Besides many odd jobs, I started working in furniture restoration. Learning to work with wood in that context was a type of training. I sort of ignored art making until a lot later. Restoration is the opposite of art making really – the less you are seen, the better restorer you are. I was very intent at that, but then I made a little figure one Sunday afternoon – I’ve still got it. It was the first time I thought of sculpture. It went on from there without any clear idea of what an artist was meant to be doing. JR: I have a similar core training in ceramics, introducing other materials over time. I’m interested in the pluralistic approach you have with materials, which seems to be led by a sense of appropriateness in any given instance. Are there other factors that inform your material choices?
