Contos is one of 19 artists showing at Heide in the Future Primitive exhibition showcasing Australian and New Zealand artists engaging with the past and present across different cultures. Contos was an obvious choice for this show as she travels as widely, collecting trinkets, beads, small objects and bric a brac and using them in her work. “I’m not a hoarder,” she says. “But I don’t throw things away.” Artist residencies all over the world have provided Contos with inspiration and ideas, in particular trips to Africa. “I travel as much as I can,” she says. “I go to some amazing places, like Kenya and Tanzania, the Navaho homeland. I look at a lot of things. Flower arrangements, fashion, Chinese gardens, buttons, computer games… I steal things.” How does Contos describe her work? “Very playful,” she answers. “Quite subtlety erotic. It has a push pull effect, where you look at things that are familiar but then I’ve put them all together in a way that is not quite familiar. There’s a duality. I kind of take a little bit of everything in a search for identity. It’s seasonal, it changes a lot. Sometimes it’s very strong but the strength has vulnerability. There’s an energy to it. It’s not political, it’s not trying to say anything huge.”
How does Contos know when a work is complete? “I don’t know when to stop,” she says with a laugh. “How much is enough? I work quite fast. Then I’ll do something completely different, like go for a walk or a swim or play a computer game. Sometimes the work itself just says ‘enough now’. Although her work is noted for its playful quality, Contos says, her art comes about from a synthesis of intention and ‘just playing.’ “I usually have about five works on the go at once; I tend to work on too many things. I’m not a very good person if I’m not making. I’ll have a serious art work, where I’m trying very hard to get it right, and things that are very playful. Those usually end up being the better pieces. I am trying very hard to make work that I just ‘let go’ of. But I need to be serious for that to happen.” Various crafty activities including sewing and embroidery comprise her artistic process, resulting in a significant collection of work and has her exhibiting alongside local luminaries like Ricky Swallow. A selection of her older works will be shown in the main gallery at Heide III including embroidered album covers (“I really took off on a tangent with those,” she says) and embroidered faces on old copies of Australasian Post magazines she bought on eBay. “My dad used to get them when I was young and I remember being a bit shocked, thinking it was pornography.”
Contos talks about two aspects of her work, the installation side and the commercial side. How would a viewer know which of her pieces was a commercial work? “You could just put it on your wall; the ceramics, for example,” she answers. “Everything’s beautifully sewn or embroidered. But still grungy, it’s still what I do. I don’t know if people would want to own the others. Some of the sculptures are slapped together with a glue gun and air dried clay. Although I do like things to last, I also like to go crazy.”
Perth native Contos trained as a costume designer in theatre as well as in fine art and her work does have a bold dramatic presence. You can imagine them as part of a set design but having to share the space with live bodies might not be the best setting for them, as, like their creator, her works are singularly assertive and independent. “I like to think of them as actors already on stage in their own right,” says Contos. What took her away from working in theatre? “I don’t like to be told what to do,” she admits. “I don’t like collaborating or working within a hierarchy.” She’s open to co-creating work that spills into performance, however. “If everyone’s working together, on the same vision … I’d never rule that out. I’d love someone to interact with an installation or sculpture.”
Her exhibition for Future Primitive, she says, is ‘like a Victoria and Albert museum of the future or past, I don’t know.’ “I’m the solo artist in the project space. There are other artists in the main Heide space. Does she have a favourite piece? “I like them all. A mother doesn’t have a favourite child – at least she isn’t supposed to.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
