We spoke to ATW Artist in Residence Tricky Walsh about their creative practice and influences. Tricky speaks to their day to day in the studio and their residency at the ATW.

How did you get into making art?

I was always making things actually so it was just a natural progression, probably to my parents disappointment. We moved when I was ten or so and they bought a business that had these piles of pasteboard boxes lying around. I remember really clearly the progression from, you know, playing with toys with their implicit and fairly fixed narratives to making tiny worlds and things out of a transformable material. The successes and failures of that were probably the thing which still continues to perpetuate my need to make. Who or what inspires you to create? We had some family friends who used to fritter around in their sheds, inventing things. hovercrafts, metal detectors, radios, crazy stuff. I used to love walking through them checking everything out, seeing how things were put together, but mostly watching people who have both a need but also the means to be able to work out how to fulfil it. That resonated, I guess. I wanted to be able to do that. My brother and I got science-y presents from them, and I think it probably had a lasting effect on both of us. My favourite toy as a young child was an LED and a nine volt battery. Lol. But it's those things, being faced with a material and looking for the thing that it might become which really inspires me. That and this dual source of early human invention which burns with optimism and capability, but then also the way that nature creates - sort of slow and out of view. Those two things would be big contradictory parts of my creative ancestry.

What does your practice involve – what techniques do you use in your work?

I am not really an adherent to one material. I guess the idea decides most of the time what it will manifest within. Although I have a particular affinity for timber - it wears its history in a way that I love. Scars, repairs, everything. The combination of Timber and string is about the most perfect thing for me though, which is why I'm so drawn to looms. They really are the most beautiful of all our machines. So, I paint, I use sound and film, I sculpt with anything I have to hand really, sometimes I write. To me, it's whatever communicates most effectively.

What does a day in the studio look like?

See, I really want to tell you that it's really chaotic but it's actually disappointingly ordered from the outside. I have tables set up for different things, and a workshop for big messy things. Maybe the act of making, the distraction of doing things that you can do without having to problem solve or think about too deeply allows me to mentally wander which only encourages this tangential practice. I usually have a few things on the go. I like to move between media at the same time. But I generally start first thing, make a coffee and go. Then I remember I haven't had a shower yet or left the house at some point and remedy that. Then I make some more. I'm an early morning - late night maker. I kind of tank it in the afternoons, so if i have a bunch of deadliens that's the time that I'll resent the most adn will lie around an read for an hour. I like when it's quiet outside. That's my favourite time to make things.

How does your work in this residency relate to your practice and where it is heading?

I'm not sure yet. I'm hoping I can incorporate weaving into my sculptures. But as I progress I can see that it's already having an effect on how I'm thinking of things - mentally building them from the ground up, in tiny bits. which is very different. I usually see things quite architecturally, like a series of planes forming an object or space. This feels much more organic and intuitive. I can see that it will effect my painting. I've been engaging with a more hard edged aesthetic, but the process of combining thread to mix colours optically has been really lovely and has made me think about colours in a completely different way. A very dimensional, solid way. I think it's going to have a really significant effect actually. I'm sort of holding the possibility of what might happen very carefully, like a baby bird, not wanting to look at it too carefully lest I get in the way.

Join Artist in Residence Tricky Walsh on Saturday August 17 for an artist talk and studio viewing at the Australian Tapestry Workshop (ATW)’s Artist in Residence studio space.

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