Mirror, mirrorRosslynd Piggott and Rudi Williams 
InterviewExhibited works

Interview:
Rosslynd Piggott and Rudi Williams 
In conversation with Sue Cramer


Melbourne, July 2024 

Beauty



    • [Sue cramer]
Each of you has a keen sense of aesthetic refinement. I wonder what beauty means to you. Is it something that you strive for?

  • [Rosslynd Piggott]
This is a complex question—versions of beauty being endlessly various, contrasting, contradictory—the chaos of which reveals its own beauty. However, I have never shied away from, or been suspicious of, an object, place, or moment that I found to be beautiful, quite the opposite. Such moments can occur like a seduction, an ecstasy, a shock, a stillness. I am fortunate to say that I have experienced many such moments of accord in my lifetime—in front of art, in a building or in nature—in different parts of the world, and I experience them all (still) as moments of deep joy. It’s as if each of these moments is carried around in our tissue, forming the strata of our character, and way of being in the world. 
  • Beauty is like oxygen and is as necessary as breathing, whether it be grand or utterly simple. It can be found in the discovery of a lost object in an op shop, in a millisecond sliver of light, or in a glass of water at sunrise. It might catch you by surprise—in a Shinto wedding observed by chance in a temple garden, or reveal itself when, rose petals are poured through the Pantheon Oculus in Rome during the Epiphany service. Each of these moments is like a tear in the fabric of what might otherwise be mundanity. The not-quite-alive is given an extra dose of the vivid spinning molecules of aliveness. 
  • Oxygen—Beauty. Yes, I do hope to offer someone a moment of oxygen through my artwork.



Old trained wisteria vine
in the garden of Hasedera Temple, Kamakura, Japan, April 2018. 


  • [RUDI WILLIAMS]
For me, while making my work, beauty comes from flaws in the photographic process—in getting close to my vision for a work, but then letting the process surprise me and co-author the work. In other words, beauty is found when I accept loss of control and embrace a more collaborative approach.



Rudi Williams, Stain, copper, silver, acrylic, mild steel, iron oxide, 2018. Exhibited in Echo: beneath the cataract lies a stain, 2018.