Mirror, mirrorRosslynd Piggott and Rudi Williams 

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


Melbourne, July 2024 
Installation view
Rosslynd Piggott and Rudi Williams
Mirror, mirror, 2024
Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
Photography Andrew Curtis

The Exhibition: Mirror, mirror 2024



  • [Sue cramer]
Let’s start by setting the scene. You are artists from different generations, and longtime friends. Your collaborative exhibition Mirror, mirror 2024 at Sutton Gallery in Melbourne takes its name from Ros’s earlier series of three diptychs Mirror, mirror I-111 created between 2008 and 2009.
  • Rudi’s photographic images capture the transient and ambiguous reflections in the mirrored surfaces of these works. Taken over a period of eleven years from 2013, these photos evoke, in distilled and evocative ways, the variety of interior locations where Ros’s works were displayed.
  • Can you each say a few words about how this exhibition came about and your points of artistic exchange?

  • [Rosslynd Piggott]
Yes, the project is very much based around our lives both individual and entwined. I have known Rudi all her life—indeed, you could say since before she entered the world when her mother, a friend of mine, was pregnant. One poignant art/life fact I recently remembered is that one of the vials in my early work Collection of Air 1992-93 was titled ‘Air near Annette’s pregnant belly’, which was the in-vitro Rudi. 
  • Rudi grew up around a bunch of creatives, (of which I was one), engaged in all sorts of art-related activities. I lived in an old unrenovated Victorian worker's cottage in Prahran for 25 years. I had arranged each room like a kind of constructed space or atmosphere, featuring walls of different colours, art collections, darkened light. Rudi has since told me that even as a young child she was fascinated with the spaces I had created. When I had to leave, she came over to take photos of the rooms. 
  • Around this time, I was invited by The Johnston Collection, as part of their ‘House of Ideas’ series, to make a house museum installation in Fairhall House, which I did in 2013, resulting in the project Murmur. Rudi came to take some photographs in Fairhall, specifically the interior scenes reflected in my Mirror, mirror works, which I had included in the house installation. This led to her photographing my PhD exhibition Cumulus (mirrored) in my studio and apartment in 2017, and then to her capturing images of my survey exhibition I sense you but I cannot see you, at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2019. More recently, she photographed selected interiors of my studio and apartment. So, the process of developing the exhibition has been intuitive and organic, stemming very much from our lives, and our cross-generational friendship. 



Rosslynd Piggott, detail - Collection of Air 2.12. 1992- 28.2.1993. 1992-93 air, Hock Maple wood, glass, transparent synthetic polymer resin, satin, cork, cotton, sealing wax, cotton, ink on paper, keys, French viscose tassels. Cabinet construction David Poulton.

    • [RUDI WILLIAMS]
Growing up, I was fortunate to observe artists who communicate partly through words, partly through creating their work, and partly by constructing the environments around them. From a young age, the relationship between people and their lived environments has interested me, particularly the way these environments are often abstracted reflections of thoughts, intentions, and methodologies. I have early memories of Ros’s domestic spaces, which have always been like architectural paintings or installations. When I was in high school, I used a twin-lens reflex camera to create a series of environmental portraits titled Habitat in which I captured my subjects within their living spaces. Ros agreed to sit for me as a part of this series in 2011. Then, in 2013, when I was studying photography at the Victorian College of the Art s (VCA), she asked me to document her home of over 20 years before she moved out. I photographed this potent space both with my 5x4 and digital cameras.
  • Later that year, I asked Ros if, in a similar capacity, I could document her exhibition Murmur at the Johnston Collection. This is when I initially photographed the slumped mirror surfaces of two works from her "Mirror, mirror" series using my 5x4 camera. It wasn’t until 2017 however, when Ros asked me to document her PhD exhibition Cumulus (mirrored) that I made the next image. Using my 5x4 camera, I took another exposure of Mirror, mirror III, documenting the reflection in its surface. 
  • By this time, it became a pattern for me to photograph Ros’ mirrored works. Two years later, while walking through her survey I sense you but I cannot see you at the National Gallery of Victoria, I saw another chance. The work displayed in this exhibition was Mirror, mirror x 3 2008, which I photographed using my 35mm camera. Not until 2023 did Ros and I actually discuss making these photographs into an exhibition. We then made new photographs in Ros’s studio and apartment through the reflections in Mirror, mirror III, formalising a method that emerged intuitively.  
     



Rosslynd Piggott, Alfred Street, 2013
Photograph by Rudi Williams