An Artistic Sense | Harriet Goodall
Connection and community are at the heart of all that artist weaver Harriet Goodall creates. Her output spans gallery exhibitions, workshops, and large scale commissions for commercial and residential spaces worldwide, but her earthy, rural up-bringing keeps her grounded. As does her home and studio base in Robertson, a village in the Southern Highlands of NSW where dairy farms and lush rainforest meet.
Harriet lives in a rustic, art-filled farmhouse with her husband Mat and their two kids (plus a menagerie including dogs, horses and chickens), and she works from a sizeable machinery shed a few paddocks over. Her studio neighbours are a motley crowd of rescue goats and her daily outlook takes in rolling hills and the diamond sparkle of the Illawarra coastline.
Traditional craft practices and ancient techniques of basketry are the basis of Harriet’s creations, but the artist's work has evolved to incorporate textures, memories and processes that strengthen her connection to her biography and the land.
Please enjoy our chat with the inimitable Harriet Goodall. We certainly did!
What are your earliest memories of creativity and making things with your hands? Was art a part of your childhood home?
Yes! My childhood felt very creative. Life on the land is intrinsically creative – finding solutions for farmyard problems, finding beauty in the late afternoon light, collecting ephemera, plenty of hours spent outside, scratching around in the dirt at the sheep yards and yes, my Aunt was a full time landscape painter and abstract colourist so I grew up dreaming of being a junk sculptor.
Can you describe the journey that led to you working as a full-time artist? Why weaving?
Mum always had loads of baskets in the kitchen and beautiful kilims, wall tapestries and bark cloth tapa paintings on the wall. I was primarily travelling the world through my twenties and Mat and I filled our backpacks full of collected loom woven cloth collected in markets and from communities we stayed in. We eventually decided to sell natural dyed alpaca textiles from Peru, Bolivia and Argentina here in Australia and started a fair-trade business called Warp & Weft when we settled down. Years of explaining the process, led me down the long, deep rabbit hole of basket making techniques and then creating sculpture from fibres. I suppose it’s all just a search for connection – connection to nature and natural processes and expressing a love of our landscape.
What inspires and drives your work? Is there an underlying ethos?
In my mind, the whole notion of weaving and basket making is metaphoric for a quality of life we should all aspire to live. It’s the first ancient technology (basketry evolved around the same time as agriculture) and embodies a sense of village life and community; it’s a truly ecologically practice leaving no footprint as we forage natural elements that eventually breakdown back to nature and finally it’s a meditative, slow, careful and considered practice.
Your mediums aren’t restricted to weavable fibres – what other materials do you incorporate into your work, and where do you source them? What is your favourite material to work with?
I like to differentiate my work by including materials that hark back to my country roots. I have long included found corrugated iron – the architectural favourite of the bush and burnt out car panels with pattern and colour that speaks of time and decay. Lately I have been using second hand tarps from semi-trailers which have been ripped and mended and I use them as canvas backdrops for my woven work and even just as loose textile work. I love that they have journeyed across the country and transported things to keep remote communities thriving.
You aren’t afraid to pick up heavy-duty power tools! What processes besides weaving have you incorporated into recent works? What do you want to experiment with next?
Women getting on the tools are rad! Not only does it subvert expectations, I think it takes me back to happy times in the workshop with my father. With a hand-held mask up to my face I would steady the steel while sparks flew as he fixed farm machinery with his TIG welder. We would chat away and they were happy productive days so I feel very comfortable in that mode. I use a MIG welder to open up creative possibilities of making frames that resemble woven work but have more longevity.
I’d love to try bronze casting one of the big net-like kinetic sculptures I have been making – they are currently made with a giant bamboo-like grass, invasive species and I’d love a more permanent version to install outdoors.
What rituals get you in the mood to work? Can you describe a typical day in the studio?
Ideally I would start the day with an outdoor run or pilates at a local studio which gets the endorphins flowing before the studio. When I arrive, after my oat-milk coffee, I enjoy the ritual of lighting the fire and it’s the very first thing I do. If I am lucky my delightful husband will come down and light it on his way to work on the farm. I usually get some music going on the speaker first thing and do a big clean up and reorganise before I start making anything. I find I get caught up in processes in the afternoon so, starting the day with a clean slate is key. I usually work right til I have to leave and roll down the doors at last light.
The studio scenery changes all the time depending on what work I have on, often I am in the middle of a big weaving commission and weave all day, others I am having meetings or creating samples for basketry retreats. The space gets very full and colourful when I am making a whole solo show for exhibition and I have 10 or 11 pieces on the go at once. I love to move from one to another intuitively. It’s an ebb and flow of work moving in and out of the space.
Weaving can be very meditative, but I imagine it also taxes your body. How do you feel after a long day in the studio? What do you do to maintain balance and relax?
If it’s cold, I am super ready to warm up when I get home so I light a candle and get straight into a hot bath before we make dinner. I renovated a claw-foot tub and we have an outdoor bathroom set up which the kids love. If it’s hot, we dive off the jetty at the dam down in the paddocks or go to the amazing local waterfalls for a dip. We eat at the family table every night and Mat and I make sure to spend time relaxing together at night.
Why did you choose to live in Robertson and how has the Southern Highlands setting shaped your work?
I came here because we were both seeking country lifestyle and my parents had settled on a big bush block at Wilde’s Meadow. That property became the hub of the family and we had birthdays, weddings and my first workshops there. Family is important to us and we are all Southerners including Mat’s family who are from the Monaro.
Robertson is equidistant from the capital cities of Sydney and Canberra, has a very creative energy and lots of artist live nearby. I even found a highly professional, commercial gallery to work with in my village (Gallery Jennings Kerr). I never thought I would leave the big open skies of the interior but seeing the ocean from our house is pretty special!
What scents do you think define the Southern Highlands and its beautiful naturescapes?
The bushland around here has a magnificent mossy, lush fern covered ground and the Yarrawa brush our local native bush smells of peat, moss, woodsmoke and Sally Wattle Acacias.
Southern Wild Co takes scent inspiration from memories of growing up in Australia. What fragrance memories do you hold from your childhood?
We lived in a homestead where my grandmother had planted an expansive garden with gardenia and climbing roses at the front door and a pergola dripping with abundant purple wisteria where we ate in the outside court-yard. Summertime was spent in the swimming pool which had a magnificent stone wall covered in jasmine. There also was a famously abundant white nectarine tree nearby (legend has it accidentally planted when a builder threw a pip out the window) which produced the most enormous dripping fruit warmed by the sun and so I would say it was a heady mixture of wisteria, gardenia. jasmine, nectarine and of course, chlorine! I would also add that the smell of lanolin and peppercorn trees will always take me back to our shearing shed.
What is on the horizon for you?
I have recently made a kinetic sculpture installation which will be a part of a collaboration with a movement artist for National Science Week at The Corridor Project in Cowra. I am soon filming my next online course all about sculptural installations and assemblage using nature and the end of the year will see lots of travel. Over summer I’ll be in Marrakech, Morocco, Goa, India and Kyoto, Japan. Then I’ll be back in the studio working on my next exhibition. Our eldest is doing his final year of school next year so we’ll be home supporting him through that. We are just taking it day by day for now.
Discover Harriet’s work here.
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