This week I’m joined by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Formafantasma. Formafantasma are a design studio who investigate the ecological, historical, political and social forces shaping the discipline of design today. Their extensive client list includes Prada, Hermes, Vitra Design Museum, Fendi, The Venice Bienale, Rijksmuseum, and the National Museum of Norway.

This conversation was recorded at The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in the middle of feb 2025 just before the opening of Studio Formafantasma’s exhibition Oltre Terra. Oltre Terra is is an ongoing investigation of the history, ecology, and global dynamics of the extraction and production of wool. The show will run until July 13th so make sure to check it out..

Oltre Terra at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam - https://www.stedelijk.nl/nl/tentoonstellingen/formafantasma

Formafantasma website - https://formafantasma.com/studio

Formafantasma on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/formafantasma/

Cambio - https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/formafantasma-cambio/

Geo-Design at Design Academy Eindhoven: https://www.designacademy.nl/page/5809/geo%E2%80%94design

Interview with Tim White - Exlana sheep breeder https://vimeo.com/780306084

Artek x Formafantasma collaboration: https://www.artek.fi/en/company/designers/formafantasma

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A conversation about Plastic with designer Shahar Livne and environmental humanities scholar Heather Davis.

Shahar Livne is an award winning conceptual material designer. Livne's lifelong fascinations in nature, biology, science, and philosophy developed into an intuitive material experimentation way of work during her degree studies at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Shahar brings life to unique stories through objects and installations centered around materials as carriers of narratives. Some of Livne's projects deal with obscure materials such as blood, man-made fossils, crystallization and more, today we are going to be focussing on plastic, and Shahar has put me in touch with Heather Davis who I am thrilled to have here as our second guest today

Heather Davis is Assistant Professor and Director of Culture and Media at The New School in New York City. As an interdisciplinary scholar working in environmental humanities, media studies, and visual culture, she is interested in how the saturation of fossil fuels has shaped contemporary culture. Davis is the author of over 80 articles, book chapters, reviews, and catalogue essays. Her most recent book, Plastic Matter (Duke University Press, 2022) traces plastic’s relations to geology, media, biology, and race to show how matter itself has come to be understood as pliable, disposable, and consumable.

LINKS

Shahar Livne: https://www.instagram.com/_shaharlivnedesignstudio_/

https://www.shaharlivnedesign.com/

Shahar Livne, Metamorphism: https://www.shaharlivnedesign.com/metamorphism

Heather Davis: https://heathermdavis.com/

Heather Davis, Plastic Matter: https://www.dukeupress.edu/plastic-matter

• Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, French philosopher and historian - Heather spoke about her writing on the endless possibilities of matter and material. Plastic as a material is deeply connected to wanting to manipulate matter at the most fundamental levels
• Zakiyyah Iman Jackson: https://scholars.duke.edu/person/zakiyyah.jackson#:~:text=Her%20research%20investigates%20the%20fundamental,and%20rhetoric%20of%20Western%20science Thinking about the emergence of the category of the human, and the way it emerges through the hierarchy of humanity. The forced plasticity of the human body in various forms of black suppression. Various humans as abject other that carries the weight of plasticity.
• Pollution Is Colonialism - book by Max Liboiron
• Heterotopia: https://foucault.info/documents/heterotopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en/
• Geo Design, https://www.designacademy.nl/page/5809/geo%E2%80%94design
• Pinar Yoldas, Ecosystem of Excess.
• Crimes of the Future
• The podcast Heather referenced at the end about adaptive capabilities: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/garbage-patch-kids/id1554578197?i=1000641946004

Follow us: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/?hl=en

Get in touch: info@maddierosehills.co.uk

The Mater website: https://mater.digital/

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Claire Baily is a London-based artist, researcher, and educator whose work navigates the intersections of art, sustainability, and material innovation. I had been following Claire’s research on Instagram, after knowing her as an artist working with an array of materials, with amazing technical casting ability.. And then seeing her document a shift away from Petrochemicals, resins etc, looking at what a sustainable making practice might look like in the context of the climate emergency, documenting her experimentations with new materials for casting. I enjoyed the way she was sharing the research, the tests and the trials online - developing more sustainable art production systems with regenerative resources at their core, she is focusing on developing bio-based materials and processes that can be viable alternatives to existing making methodologies dominated by petrochemicals.

Claire suggested Sarah King as our second guest for the conversation.. Sarah is a circular economy researcher, sustainability and innovation consultant with experience in project management, design led research, and systems change. For the last eight years she has worked closely with businesses and academic institutions to educate and identify innovation opportunities in response to current environmental challenges, supporting the development of new technologies, products, and services. Her areas of scope include the built environment and construction, plastics and packaging, textiles and apparel, and sociocultural behaviour change. Recent projects include the culturing of pure Bacterial Cellulose for use in the apparel industry, food waste composite materials for interior panelling, and natural pigments for utilisation with digital processing techniques.

Links

Claire: https://www.clairebaily.com/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaZNJHTKnISc_3qDtrvlDlsbt0S0pMjc86KwWqx9wbRp9MWsV78-i3k6dao_aem_FlxJwHA1EmzgFcSs0Whekg

Claire on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clairebaily/

Sarah: https://www.earthliprojects.com/

Sarah on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarah_earthli_projects/

Materials Club: https://steamhouse.org.uk/news/materials-club-biomaterials-101/

On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/materials_club/?hl=en

Steamhouse Birmingham: https://steamhouse.org.uk/

More on the HS2 project in collaboration with British Ceramics Bienial: https://www.britishceramicsbiennial.com/news/from-waste-to-resource/

Centre for Ecology and Art Goldsmiths: https://www.gold.ac.uk/research/centres-units/research-centre/centre-for-art-and-ecology/about-us/

Olivia Aspinall: https://www.instagram.com/do_not_go_gentle_/

Material Futures at CSM https://www.arts.ac.uk/subjects/textiles-and-materials/postgraduate/ma-material-futures-csm

Follow Mater on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/

Original writing commissions by Mater: https://mater.digital/

Get in touch with any thoughts, questions, or even suggestions for future episodes: info@maddierosehills.co.uk

Please make sure to follow, subscribe and rate if you are enjoying the podcast, it means the world!

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Emii Alrai & Amanda Pinatih discuss material artefacts, memory, belonging and museum practice.

Emii Alrai: https://www.instagram.com/emiialrai/?hl=en-gb

https://emiialrai.com/

Amanda Pinatih: https://www.instagram.com/amandapinatih/?hl=en-gb

https://madepinatih.com/

Design Museum Dharavi: http://designmuseumdharavi.org/Design_Museum_Dharavi/Dharavi.html

Guna Guna, When things are beings exhibition at Stedelijk https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/production-static-stedelijk/images/_whats%20on/tentoonstellingen/2022/When%20things%20are%20beings/WhenThingsAreBeings2022-EN-FINAL24112022-SMALL.pdf

A Lake as Great as its Bones: https://emiialrai.com/A-Lake-as-Great-as-its-Bones

Royal Armoury Museum https://royalarmouries.org/leeds

Horsehair with Nicola Turner & Mick Sheridan on The Mater Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-mater-podcast/id1749226924?i=1000665067091

Emii Alrai is an artist and trained museum registrar whose work spans material investigation in relation to memory, and critique of the western museological structure and the complexity of ruins. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, her work operates as large-scale realms built in relation to bodies of research which concern archaeology and the natural environments objects are excavated from. Her material explorations weave in oral histories, inherited nostalgia and the details of language to question the rigidity of Empire, the power of hierarchy and the static presence of history. Clay vessels, gypsum forms and steel armatures punctuate the labyrinth-like spaces Alrai creates, mimicking museum dioramas and romanticised visions of the past.

Amanda Pinatih is an art historian, curator and PhD candidate. As Design Curator at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, she brings new perspectives to the museum’s vast design collection. Her experimental working method is driven by an interest in developing new formats for knowledge transfer, while her exhibitions and projects explore the intersections of social, political, (de)colonial, environmental and economic issues. Simultaneously as a PhD candidate at the VU Amsterdam, Pinatih is researching the affordances of Indonesian objects around social and political contestations of belonging for diasporic communities with roots in the Indonesian archipelago, both in the museum, at home and in artistic practice.

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Bosco Sodi: https://www.instagram.com/studioboscosodi/?hl=en

https://www.boscosodi.com/

Alberto Rios de la Rosa: https://www.instagram.com/ariosdel/?hl=en

Casa Wabi: https://casawabi.org/en/

Mater Website: https://mater.digital/

Mater Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/?hl=en

Bosco Sodi is an artist known for his richly textured, vividly coloured large-scale paintings. Born in Mexico City. Bosco Sodi has discovered an emotive power within the essential crudeness of the materials that he uses to execute his paintings. Focusing on the spiritual connection between the artist and his work, Sodi seeks to transcend conceptual barriers. In 2014 he founded the non-profit art centre Fundacion Casa Wabi in Mexico’s Puerto Escondido.

Alberto Ríos de la Rosa is a Mexican art historian. He currently serves as a curator at the PAC ART Residency in Houston and as curator of the International Biennial of Arts

and Cultures of Antioquia for the World 2025, Colombia. His academic background includes a Master's in Art History from The Courtauld Institute of Art, London (2014), and a Bachelor's in Art History and French Literature from Macalester College, Minneapolis (2011).

From 2014 to 2023, he worked as a curator at the Casa Wabi Foundation, where he curated solo exhibitions for artists like Daniel Buren, Michel François, Harold Ancart,

Jannis Kounellis, Ugo Rondinone, Izumi Kato, Huma Bhabha, and Claudia Comte. He also directed the residency program in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca and Tokyo, facilitating participation of over three hundred art professionals from around the world in community projects. Additionally, he promoted emerging Mexican artists through the

foundation's exhibition platform in Mexico City.

Previously, he was part of the curatorial teams at Museo Tamayo in Mexico (2011- 2013), the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in the United States (2011), and the Peggy

Guggenheim Collection in Venice (2010). Through his work, he continues to make significant contributions to the field of art history and curation, fostering cultural exchange and promoting both established and emerging artists on an international scale.

Fundación Casa Wabi is a non-profit, civil association that fosters an exchange between contemporary art and local communities in three locations: Puerto Escondido, Mexico City, and Tokyo. Casa Wabi statement: "Our name originates from the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi, which seeks beauty and harmony in the simple, the imperfect and the unconventional. Our mision is focused on forging social development through the arts, which we carry out through five key programs: residencies, exhibitions, clay, films, and mobile library. Casa Wabi is located on the Pacific coast, 30 minutes from the Puerto Escondido airport, Oaxaca. Set between the mountains and the sea, our headquarters have been designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando and under the initiative of Mexican artist Bosco Sodi. Our facilities include a multipurpose palapa, six separate bedrooms, two closed studios and six open studios, a screening room, / auditorium, a 450 m² exhibition gallery and various workspaces that make it an ideal place to recharge and interact with other artists."

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Hannah Pezzack is a writer, editor, and curator. Drawing on sonic knowledge, ecology, and the politics of intimacy, she regards language and sound as deeply intertwined sensory and embodied mediums. She is currently a junior curator at Sonic Acts – an art, theory, and technology biennial – and is the assistant editor of Ecoes, a bi-annual magazine about ‘art in the age of pollution’, published by Sonic Acts Press. A lot of her work has been about relational ontologies – thinking about human and non-human exchanges and how we might be able to challenge the hierarchies and binaries between them.

Hannah has suggested Anastasia (A) Alevtin as our second guest for this conversation..

(A) is - a theorist, writer, and artist whose work scrutinises how dominant Western politics of structural marginalisation is lived and quietly subverted in one’s daily anti-ableist, migratised, and non-binary communities and multispecies kinships. In their artistic practice, they work with text, textile, performance, aesthetic gestures, and collective readings. With the support of the Finnish Institute in the UK & Ireland, Art Promotion Centre Finland and Glasgow Seed Library, they are developing Dormancy, Reseeding, and Resistance. The project engages with communal gardening, seed-saving practices and grandmothering in the contexts of anti-ableism and food in/security, specifically lived by chronically sick and other precarious bodies in Turku, Vantaa, and Glasgow.

Links

Hannah Pezzack on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hanapezzack/

Anastasia (A) Alevtin: On Instgram: https://www.instagram.com/awaitingbody/

Anastasia’s website: https://soundcloud.com/mutantradio/scrying-the-landscape-w-dim-garden-071124?ref=clipboard&p=i&c=0&si=81A0A022125347DE91651223A8CE1B71&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Aquatic Encounters book: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Aquatic-Encounters-A-Glossary-of-Hydrofeminisms-by-Anastasia-A-Khodyreva-editor-Elina-Suoyrj-editor/9789527258262

Noise Summer School: https://graduategenderstudies.nl/education/noise-summer-school/

Sonic Acts: https://www.sonicacts.com/

Astrida Neimanis - Hydrofeminism or on becoming a body of water.

Astrida Neimanis - Post-humanist phenomenology

Hannah Interviewing Astrida Neimannis for Sonic Acts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6B5RESGwFY

Hannah Rowan: https://www.instagram.com/rowanhannah/?hl=en

Anne Imhof - One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s27gmjB8gdw

Find Mater on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/mater________/?hl=en

Find the commissioned essays on The Mater Website: https://mater.digital/about/

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An EPIC conversation with Ellie Barrett. We delve into the philosophical and artistic histories of materials. We talk about Ellie’s art practice working with various materials and in collaboration with both her mum and daughter.. Ellie is a sculptor, practice-based researcher, writer, academic and artist-mother, who is invested in exploring sculpture as a collaborative discipline. Using material engagement as a means of activating different circumstances and experiences as sites for making. She is an advocate for artist-m*thers.

The PhD: https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/152305/1/2020BarrettPhD.pdf

E.Barrett’s website: https://elliebarrett.com/

Put It To Work: https://putittowork.wordpress.com/

E.Barrett’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elliecbarrett/?hl=en-gb

Links to sited texts and works (in order of mention)

Aristotle’s Hylomorphism: https://metaphysicsjournal.com/articles/10.5334/met.2

New Materialism: https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0016.xml

Material Literacy, A.S.Lehmann: https://www.academia.edu/35213411/A_Lehmann_Material_Literacy_Bauhaus_Zeitschrift_Nr_9_2017_20_27

Glitter with R.Coleman and N.Seymour, The Mater Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-mater-podcast/id1749226924?i=1000670752060

O. Bax: https://www.oliviabax.co.uk/

R.Molloy: https://www.artthou.co.uk/editorial/12/rebecca-molloy

J. Shannon The Disappearance of Objects: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780300137064/Disappearance-Objects-New-York-Art-0300137060/plp

The Goat, R.Rauschenberg: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/rauschenberg-goat

Dominique White: https://blackdominique.com/

E.Barrett Salt Dough Exhibition: https://elliebarrett.com/explain-things-to-me/

J.Bennett Vibrant Matter: https://www.dukeupress.edu/vibrant-matter

C.Oldenburg, London Knees: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/77314

Object Oriented Feminism: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt1g2knjg

Object Oriented Onology: https://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/the_big_idea/a-guide-to-object-oriented-ontology-art-53690

Lion Salt Works: https://lionsaltworks.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/about-us/

Art & Agency by A.Gell: https://monoskop.org/images/archive/4/4d/20150328075023%21Gell_Alfred_Art_and_Agency_An_Anthropological_Theory.pdf

SPACE podcast: https://spacestudios.org.uk/events/out-of-space-episode-4-looking-after-the-art/

Bad Vibes Club - Ten Texts on Sculpture, Maintenance: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ten-texts-on-sculpture-10-maintenance/id1220925467?i=1000659524759

E.Thomas: https://www.herts.ac.uk/uhbow/students/meet-the-artist-elly-thomas

E.Thomas, Play and the Artist’s Creative Process: https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/play-and-the-artists-creative-process-book-elly-thomas-9781032178370

E.Barrett’s, Processes and Forms for Artist-Motherhood, In Situ residency text: https://www.in-situ.org.uk/post/in-residence-ellie-barrett-and-nora-2-yrs

K.Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv12101zq

E.Barrett, The Sculpture Kit: https://elliebarrett.com/the-sculpture-kit/

R.Morris: https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/robert-morris-62842/

B.Le Va: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/barry-le-va-dead-post-minimalist-sculptor-1234582161/

H.Judah, How not to exclude artist mothers and other parents: https://www.hettiejudah.co.uk/how-not-to-exclude-artist-mothers-and-other-parents

E.Barrett’s w/ mum and daughter: https://putittowork.wordpress.com/2023/08/26/how-to-work-as-a-mum/

Hand-made Soft Play: https://elliebarrett.com/handmade-soft-play/

E.Barrett, Vibrancy and Natural Dyeing: https://putittowork.wordpress.com/2023/09/20/agency-and-natural-dyeing/

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An amazing conversation with Bisila Noha & Simone Brewster

Bisila is an artist working predominantly with clay, with a background in Translation and International Relations. She writes about ceramics, crafts, identity and design, and has a particular interest in the contributions of women of colour to the history of art and craft. Her words are a bridge bringing the past - the forgotten, the ignored, and the belittled - to the present.

Bisila suggested we are joined in conversation by artist, designer & cultural change-maker Simone Brewster. Strongly grounded in craft, Simone’s practice includes painting, sculpture, jewellery and writing, Using her creative outputs as her voice, celebrating and sharing windows into varied Black female narratives and histories. The threads that flow throughout her work display a balance of function with beauty, a repurposing of the “ethnic” and the “western” and a continuous playing with scale, materiality and architectural form.

Links

Bisila Noha Instagram

Simone Brewster Instagram

Bisila’s blog post about translation

Bisila Noha Baney clay project

Negress and Mammy

Woman In Parts

Simone’s solo exhibition

Spirit of Place

V&A porcelain sugar holder

Ursula K le Guin, Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

Elizabeth Fisher's best-known work is Women's Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society. The 7th chapter The Carrier Bag Theory of Evolution inspired Le Guin

Lydia Yuknavich talking about The Carrier Back Theory of Fiction

Frank Gehry, a Canadian architect, famously said, “Decoration is a sin, expression is in materials”

Truth to materials - ‘A belief that the form of a work of art should be inseparably related to the material in which it is made’.

Slow Motion Multi Tasking, Tim Harford

Follow Mater on Instagram

The Mater website

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