Artist Story: Catherine Bertola

Please give a brief introduction to yourself and your artistic practice

I used to go to dance classes as a child until I was about 17 years old, and the dance school I went to would organise huge productions every couple of years at The Alhambra Theatre in Bradford. This was a really formative experience for me, and opened my eyes to a world of creative production and possibilities. Although I loved it, I wasn’t really cut out for being a professional dancer, I was far too self-conscious to be a performer.

I didn’t really know being an artist was a possibility, it’s certainly not something that was ever presented as a career option at school, in fact it was always dismissed as something you did if you couldn’t do anything else. I never had a clear epiphany, but I definitely remember having an underlying desire to do something creative, to make and produce things, without much of a sense of what that could look like. I knew I would not be satisfied doing something ‘ordinary’, so I followed my instincts and decided to study art, not really knowing where it would take me, but here I am nearly 30 years later.

As an artist, I make site-specific installations, drawings and films that address the invisible histories of women, whose roles and contributions to society are overlooked and undervalued. The work gives voice to untold narratives, excavating the past to confront contemporary inequalities that women continue to face. Giving voice and visibility to those ignored by official accounts has never felt more important.

Rooted in sculpture, materials are central to the work I make, from collected dust to gold thread, salt and wallpaper, chosen for the meaning they bring to the work. Past work has often been temporary and precarious, with installations disappearing almost as quickly as they were made. This temporality has been an integral part of the work, the circularity of it both responding to history and then in turn becoming history. More recently I have begun working with film, using dancers as a way to feel and explore space, to convey ideas and relationships with domestic space, drawing on my own experiences and frustrations with the lack of value placed upon the hidden labour of domesticity.

It’s funny thinking about the influence that theatre had on me as a child, and the role that performance and storytelling has subtly played in my work over the years, along with an underlying curiosity about history and the past. As a child I have a vivid memory of walking around a large stately home, and being obsessed with looking for secret doors. I can’t recollect what might have piqued my curiosity in this way, what drew me to the idea that there was something more to things than I could see, but this fascination still permeates my practice.

Why do you choose to work with materials such as salt, dust, ash and wallpaper? What is the significance of these materials?

Materials are central to the work I make, chosen for how they add meaning to a work through their historical significance, innate physical properties or how they resonate with a particular place. When working on commissions the material often comes first, before I then work out and feel my way through how I am going to use it.

Dust is a material I have used repeatedly in my work to make drawings and installations. My fascination is in part due to its aesthetic qualities, but originally I was interested in it as a forensic material, made up of minute particles of matter, that holds within it traces and residues of the place from which it was gathered, as well as the occupants of that place. Over time, the associations it has with time and domestic labour has also become important as I have become more interested in exploring the histories and politics of domestic space.

After I had my first child, I was trying to explore ways of working, when travelling and taking on large-scale commissions became difficult for a while. I began using archival images of empty interiors, taken from a collection of photographs that captured buildings that no longer exist as the result of ruination, fire, demolition or extensive conversion, as proxies for real spaces. In the series Sad Bones (2013-18), I set the fireplaces of these images alight, momentarily animating them, and leaving behind traces of soot and ash clinging to the surface. In the work Filling Absense (2017), I used fire ash to create a wall drawing of the wallpaper seen in the backdrop of one of the photographs to scale, as a way of re-conjuring the space, using a residual domestic material. Wallpaper patterns have always been a motif in my work, there’s something about wallpaper being a witness to domestic life, and a way of locating a place in a particular time. In Filling Absense, the drawing is left incomplete, a monochrome shadow of the space it is depicting, and a subtle reminder of how it felt to stand within it. In retrospect this idea of being a shadow, being only half there, seems very reflective of my own feelings at the time. A parent of two young children, I was feeling increasingly invisible and overlooked as I struggled to make work and make a living, I did feel like I was disappearing. Which, while I probably didn’t really speak about it at the time, looking back feels very close to the surface of it all.

Salt is a material that I started using more recently, in work produced for the exhibition ‘Below the Salt’ at Temple Newsam House in Leeds. The exhibition explored social hierarchy through reference to the fabric and architecture of the building itself. Salt became significant because of its value in the 16th century; it was used to demonstrate the status of people within the context of household dining. I created a temporary, elaborate installation with salt on the floor of the Great Hall, which was documented before being swept away. Small amounts of this salt were then used to create a series of traditional photographic prints that act as a permanent record of the intervention. Another work, Fixed Transience, explored the preserving properties of salt. Old postcards were saturated in salt, with the crystals that cling to the surface obscuring and destroying the image rather than conserving it.

While your work often deals with domesticity or the domestic space, you seem to have a real interest in the histories of grand houses and stately homes, and in the historic role of women in these settings. What is it about these settings – and the people who inhabited them – that fascinates you?

My interest is in the domestic space first and foremost. Many early works were made in much more modest properties, with the stately home creeping in around a decade ago as I began to work on commissions for more formal historic sites. I think stately homes always feel like they belong to another time, often trapped in particular periods, depending on how curators have decided to stage and narrate them. History somehow feels closer and heavier in them, which as an artist offers a wealth of material to work with.

I see these spaces as theatres of domesticity, places of huge contrast and hierarchies that separate those who lived within the walls, and those who worked behind them. These complex tensions become a platform from which to tease out and explore relationships with the domestic space more broadly, including my own relationship to it, which has felt more heightened over the last few years.

There’s a kind of domestic alchemy involved in many of your installation works. How important to you is the idea of transformation – of transforming everyday materials into something decorative and precious?

It’s fundamentally about value. Noticing what goes unnoticed, taking residues and materials that are usually removed and discarded, and making them take up space in a different way so they can’t be ignored. Transforming dust into an intricate wallpaper pattern immediately turns it into something that is beautiful and very visible, and connects to my interest in questioning invisible labour and the overlooked narratives of domestic spaces.

What role does time – and the passing of time – play in your work? Your photographic and film works often have the look and feel of another era. And some of your installation works only exist for a brief period of time.

My inherent interest in history, and using the past as a way to reconsider our understanding and reflect upon the present, immediately connects the work with time. The photographic and film works use archive images which have a particular quality, but they become merged with the present through the insertion of my own presence.

Often, time is embedded within the materials themselves, particularly dust which is often described as “the matter of history”, a residue of living within a space. The temporary and precarious nature of installations that disappear almost as quickly as they were made has been an integral part of the work. The circularity of both responding to history and then in turn becoming history is something that has been central to those works. As I get older I have begun to consider this fleetingness. If I want my work to give voice to those that history omits, and shift the way history is perceived, what is the legacy of my practice if it too disappears without trace?

Whilst you sometimes appear in your own works, more recently you’ve started working with professionals from other disciplines such as dancers and choreographers. How has working with performers from other disciplines changed your working practice?

Previous works have involved superimposing images of myself into photographs of historic interiors as a way of both thinking about how these spaces have been occupied and experienced in the past, and at the same time reflecting on contemporary relationships with domesticity, with what has changed and what hasn’t. Domestic spaces are complex, especially for women, existing as places of work and entrapment, places of safety and comfort. Past works toy with those tensions.

In a completely practical way it was also easier to use myself, but in the last couple of years I have made two film works, In the Between Space and When feelings take on solid forms, which involved working with a choreographer and dancers. I wanted to explore a more physical relationship with the spaces I was working in, and using actual bodies seemed like the best way to do that. Having to communicate my ideas and thoughts to the choreographer was really different to the more direct and intuitive process of making installations. It was a really fascinating and interesting process, to see how others interpreted and shaped my feelings through their own language of movement. Weirdly, working with others seemed to allow me to bring more of myself and my own experiences into the work.

In 2021, you co-edited (with Rosie Morris) a publication for Artists Newsletter’s 40th anniversary series that reflected on the current landscape for women artists and highlighted less visible, marginalised and precarious practices. How important to you is advocating for the work of others and helping to support and promote change?

Really important. As an artist you are often working alone and it can be isolating, so feeling like you belong to a larger, generous and supportive community becomes essential. This is very much what Vane did in those early days, it created a community that was supportive and nurturing in a really broad and democratic way.

I definitely think as I get older and particularly since having children, I have become increasingly aware of discrimination and inequality that exists within the art world. Research such as the Freelands Foundation’s annual report into the Representation of Women Artists in Britain, and Hettie Judah’s recent publication, How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents), highlight the current landscape for women artists and how the existing structures exclude many artists from participation. I have seen so many women, including myself, lose confidence in their practice, and feel like they are becoming invisible, as making work becomes harder to balance with the realities of caring responsibilites and trying to make a living. Despite this being a well-known and understood pattern, it seems like there is little support to help people re-emerge and re-establish their practice after having families. Although I think and hope this is beginning to change, as discussions about these issues seem to be getting louder and gaining traction, I feel it is really important to talk about my experience, to help advocate for change and if nothing else help other artists know they are not alone.

Myself and the artist Claire Morgan have recently initiated Hypha, which has been born out of conversations we’ve been having about how the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic over the last three years has left us feeling disconnected and untethered, perhaps dissatisfied with some of the structures we operate in. Through events and studio visits we are bringing women artists together to talk about their ideas and work in a space that allows for honesty and vulnerability, as a way of building confidence, fostering deeper connections between artists, and creating a sense of community.

Do you have any particular memories of your experience of working with Vane?

I first got involved with Vane in 1998 when I was still a student in my final year at Newcastle University, although I think we kept quiet that we were still students for fear of not being able to take part. Myself and four others organised a group show as part of Vane98, in Cross House, Newcastle, which would have been the first time we had exhibited our work publically. It was a really exciting time, there was a real sense of a community of artists working in Newcastle and Gateshead, the BALTIC was starting to come into existence through its pre-opening programme, the Angel of the North had just been installed, there was a lot of activity and opportunities to get involved in, which made it feel possible to stay in the area and be an artist. Those early days of Vane were really important in encouraging graduates to stay, and in helping to build the foundations for the thriving and diverse community of artists and organisations that exist here now.

The work I made for Vane99, in the Stephenson Locomotive Works building, was a really pivotal piece for me and the development of my practice and the trajectory of my career. It was the first work I made after graduating, and was also the first site-specific installation I produced, which was a huge turning point. In my final year at university, I had been making work where I was collecting materials and marks from my home and other environments, and thinking a lot about the relationship my work had to place. But the course at the time was really centred on the idea of a traditional studio/gallery model of making and showing, so there wasn’t really any scope to pursue the idea of working site-specifically. The work I made was called Hearth, it was located in what had been the office of Robert Stephenson, the 19th century civil engineer and locomotive designer. I found an archive photograph of the room when Stephenson had occupied it, and set about recreating decorative elements seen in the image using the dust found in the derelict and dilapidated space. It was like magic, everything clicked into place, I realised I could make the work I wanted to, I just needed to find the right contexts and opportunities. I know that this piece was the reason I was offered a number of the early commissions and residencies that helped raise my profile in the early days of my career.

The visual arts scene in Newcastle and Gateshead has unsurprisingly changed a lot over the last 20 years, as the economic, political and cultural landscape has evolved both within the area, but also more widely. Vane seems to have continually weathered these changes, adapting and transforming, so they can continue to support artists.

Interview by Stephen Palmer

Read more about Catherine Bertola’s exhibitions at Vane.