Nicole Wassall works in many different kinds of media including but not limited to paintings, etchings, sculptures, installations and photography. At TM Gallery in London on 17 September, Wassall spoke to Arjun Sajip, digital editor at Apollo, to discuss the thinking behind her art and the process of making it.
Wassall covered plenty of ground, beginning with the origins of her interest in visual culture. She told the audience how discovering the ‘otherworldly’ nature of art nouveau in antiques shops in the Midlands as a child sparked her love of art; meanwhile, the movement’s disregard for boundaries between disciplines opened her eyes to the possibilities of working with all sorts of media. ‘It’s probably why I have so many different kinds of objects in my practice,’ she explained.
Given that Wassall’s concerns range from the microscopic to the expansive – from the chemistry of the brain to the sweep of art history – it was illuminating to hear her explain how she goes about expressing certain themes through her chosen media. She cited a seven-minute video work Bird in a Cage (2020) as an example of how she has used neuroscientific principles to illuminate certain truths. ‘I projected it with the scent of honeysuckle oil,’ she explained. ‘The part of the brain that deals with scent crosses over with the part of the brain that deals with long-term memory. […] I wanted to do something that felt nostalgic. And when I researched it, I found that honeysuckle seems to be a nostalgic smell across the world. Every time I played the video with the honeysuckle, people came up to me and went, “It’s so nostalgic.” But when I play it without the honeysuckle, no one ever mentions nostalgia.’
Her insights into water gilding, a painstaking skill that takes years to master, were particularly fascinating; the way she has incorporated the learning process itself into works such as And Somehow We’re Meant to Be Perfect (2019) – which comprises three water-gilded icon boards, each more technically accomplished than the last – is characteristic of her interest in change and evolution. ‘That was actually a process piece: the very first icon board I ever water-gilded is the first one in that series,’ she said. ‘I wanted to use the practice of learning how to water-gild as a metaphor for learning how to become better at life.’
Wassall was also happy to discuss her longstanding interest in religious symbols as well as the history of art. She does this in very different ways: whereas Pope Joan (2023) uses traditional materials such as tempera and bole on a water-gilded icon board to create a thoroughly modern painting of the apocryphal female pontiff, Flying Geisha Girl (2014) is a silkscreen print inspired by Japanese woodblocks of the 18th and 19th centuries. ‘She is hand-painted white, and I’ve used a pigment ink so that she changes colour in contrast to the paper,’ Wassall explained, ‘so sometimes she’ll look significantly more yellow than the paper, and other times less so depending on the sunlight, so you’ve got quite a nice dynamic feel.’
Anyone curious about Wassall’s work can see a selection of her works at ‘Retrospectively; Finding the Light’, which is at TM Gallery until 7 October. The talk can be viewed here.