This week I am talking to Reading based artist Shelley Montague.
You can follow Shelley on instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/shelley_montague/
If you need information or help about Dementia then I recommend going here: https://www.dementiauk.org/
So welcome to episode 23 of The Things That Drive Us, I'm William Mackenzie and this week I am talking to the brilliant Shelley Montague. Shelley is a multi-disciplinary artist mainly working in ceramics and clay and similar materials and she's based in redding which is coincidentally quite near where I'm based and this one was a bit of a treat for me because I actually got to speak to Shelley in person which hasn't happened since the very first one of these I did with my sister way back in the mister time but we talk obviously about her art and the Treminier show that we did together because Shelley was also part of the mentoring course at the Newland School of Art but Shelley talks in a very moving way about how she used art to cope with the effects that dementia had on both of her parents. So we talk about that and other issues and our ambitions for our art but I hope you enjoy episode 23 with Shelley Montague. So I really like the photo you posted of you snoozing with your little grandson. It was very cute and it reminded me a lot actually of your sort of climbing figure. Oh did it? Yeah it did because it had the kind of sort of same shape to it, the sort of outline. Yes, yes, it was interesting. Yeah but I don't know maybe this is just something everybody has that there's a person who reminds them of the work and vice versa. I mean do you think that's true? No, not really. I mean I suppose I'm thinking of people that I've known and students that I've known who've worked I've watched develop and I can see similarities in their ethical beliefs for example or what have you but I have seen some very very lovely lively people creating some works of great kind of stillness. So I think that's quite a deep question I probably would have to think even harder. So how long did you teach art for then? About 20, well in fact probably about 35 years but yeah adults for the first 10 years and then then I taught at Reading College taught from GCSE age up to 19 year olds with the foundation diploma. Yeah how was that? It was excellent I loved it actually. Teaching in a college is different to teaching in schools. Yes. They don't do GCSEs and A levels in art anyway in most colleges they do diplomas and the diplomas are much more fluid. They work much more in the way that artists work. Yeah, there aren't all these kind of rules and you'll produce this project next and you'll produce that project. It's very much teaching the youngsters how to think creatively how to explore and take risks and so on and so as a teacher it was a it was a great way to work very enjoyable and we well we not me personally on my own there was a team of us but yeah you know we saw some really amazing outcomes for a lot of the youngsters the youngsters who came to us who hadn't succeeded at school yes but who came to us and found that yes they were good at something and it was really celebrated and they really blossomed. It's a really satisfying thing to see actually isn't it when you're teaching someone and you see them begin to get it and they sort of come alive? Absolutely. It's the best actually I love it. Do you still do teaching sort of now you've retired at all? I'm just teaching a little bit at the adult college at the moment but I'm hoping to do I'm hoping to do some of my art projects with youngsters. Yeah. It's not in a teaching capacity as such but as in a again in an enabling them to blossom and try stuff that they've not tried before and so on. So which projects are you thinking of doing with them? Well I'm thinking of working with my son-in-law who's a musician and what I'm looking at at the moment is how working on a project which enables them to create initially for themselves a shape that they can hold in their hand which ultimately will become another board for a speaker? Yeah okay. And then the idea is that they then can play around and make their own electronics for it so Simon my son-in-law will help me with that bit because he runs synthesizer workshops. Okay. So we'll make them into this little thing that they can create their own sounds that will possibly this is a very early beginnings to this project thought but that will possibly be ways of that they can communicate feelings that they don't feel they can put into words. Oh nice. So sort of sound art therapy. Yeah in a way. Yes. Yeah. Yes and I'm very fortunate that both my daughter and my daughter-in-law are art psychotherapists. Are they? Yes they are. Okay. So they'll probably be in an advisory position as far as it goes because obviously one has to be careful. So the thing I always find intimidating about trying to do any projects like this is the sort of admin paperwork funding application, things like that. So is this something you've done before in the past then? No it's not. Okay. It's one of the things that I'm absolutely rubbish at. Yeah. But Simon has. No okay. He's an established musician and he's he and my daughter they originally met when they worked at Kids Company. Oh yes I've heard of people. And he was head of music there and so he has written a lot of proposals and had them grown. Well I don't know how many but he's had some granted by the Arts Council. So we're looking at possibly we're looking at putting a proposal to the Arts Council but also I'm looking at the Welcome Trust because it's to do with mental well to some extent it's to do with improving mental health and fostering communication. And the Welcome Trust has one grant which is more open than some of its other grants that I think we could apply for. Oh that'd be nice. That it's going to take some thinking through of the project and maybe running well the actual physical cultural side of it is quite needs to be what I need to work that out myself. So I'm looking at probably planning it over a couple of years. Okay yeah I'll probably get some artwork myself out of it during that time but and where would you run it physically here or in London or both. We're in Reading by the way so I'm sitting in your very lovely living room. So this is the first one I've done of these in person since the very first episode with my sister. It's really nice to do in person. Oh I'm very privileged and thank you very much it's my I prefer it yes and definitely. What was your question remind me again. So would you run it in Reading here or in London where your son-in-law is or both or? I think I think the kind of trial will happen probably here and probably with youngsters that are like children of friends if you like. Because what I found is when I was looking at putting in an application to the Arts Council before is that they will not fund anything that's linked to a school. No really I think you told me that once yes because they because the schools receive funding for teaching and so on so they so what I may be looking at also is other charities that work with school children out of hours and see what I mean yeah so that that we might collaborate with them to give us that that group of youngsters so in a deprived area of Reading for example there is an organisation actually that is for sports for youngsters yeah that are from that deprived area and they can go there after school so that I think would mean that if we collaborated with that charity for example yeah we would be able to go still for funding from the Arts Council. So I have to look it up but we were taught in our counseling courses a counseling center in Reading especially aimed at young people. Number five yes that's it. That's right yes we're used to referring students to it sometimes yes yeah no that's a good idea I hadn't thought of that actually. Yeah it's a very nice project I like the idea of that but I mean because I was thinking because I've been writing up a blog very slowly since we finished the well it's kind of my way of processing it all. Yes and I was sort of you go through and you try and describe everyone's work in a couple paragraphs a couple of lines it's quite difficult really and I would just do yours the other day and I was thinking because you've got two or at least as parts you showed us it seems to me you've got two basic parts of it you've got the sort of wire sculptures and then you've got the cast tools so as I mean do think of those as being related at all are they very separate hall. For me they were part of a whole. I think that's because they were in each of those were inspired by my parents and my experiences particularly of the last what 14 or 15 years as they became more and more unwell with dementia. So because that was what was inspiring me and the initial artistic prompts came from work I did with a bereavement counselor after my dad died. For me the two worked together so the teabag figure of climbing figure was it wasn't representing my mother but it was representing that spirit that she had of warmth caring for other people that's the teabags where they come in and but yet also a real resilience and not ever giving up even in the face of the illness that she had and then the tools were I think in a way they were a way of capturing for me which only if I you know my understanding it is of it is still evolving yeah but capturing for me the the kind of essence of my relationship with my dad and and our and my dad himself who was a very gentlemanly person yeah very shy quite introverted spent a lot of his time when we were children up a ladder doing DIY okay and as a teenager I used to think it was to get away from us all you know four children rattling around but I mean it was great fun as well but he he definitely needed his space and he was I think that was up the ladder to be honest yeah so and and whereas my mama's in her illness has fortunately been able to retain her kind of very sweet and loving nature and it comes across even now when she's not able to talk and so on my dad was his his journey was not a not not a pleasant one because of the type of dimension he had he was very disturbed and it was very traumatic for him and so we as a family we we when we were with him and the nursing home was excellent but with a family one one was conscious that you were always trying to give that extra layer of care in the sense of trying to mitigate that trauma that he was kind of reliving yeah regularly and and when he was in his last week of life very fortunately the care home had set up for Sue Ryder the hospice to come in and evaluate his care needs and so on and they were amazing and he was given a mixture of medicines that relieved his anxiety reduced the paranoia and allowed him to relax and he he became much more the person that we had known yes through our lives which was a real blessing yeah such a blessing because it means you feel like you get to say goodbye properly as a person you knew absolutely yeah absolutely yeah yeah so so that's what I wanted to show in that piece about the tools went like with the video of the hands that was my sister when she came from France okay to visit them and we were she was just helping me out doing the painting of the China clay into those paper molds paper casts and it was just accidental really that it it actually spoke very much the the hands the two sets of hands were about for me about the caring how I see looking after that yeah of someone who wasn't strong anymore of themselves so these sort of thoughts you hold consciously in your mind when you're producing the work and planning it or does they come out no no in fact the planning the extent of the planning was simply that I wanted to work in other materials and ceramics I wanted to because most of my previous work has been either drawings or ceramics and the the making of the molds in the paper was just something I like it I like experimenting yeah something I just experimented with the whole thing just grew and I wouldn't mitigate the importance of the mentoring course yes yes yeah yeah you know the feedback from all of the other people there yourself included and the feedback from the artists that they brought in was very important the affirmation I don't know how you felt will but the affirmation that one got from people that understood one's work was really excellent that that was incredibly helpful yes so it's and then the other interesting thing is when people say things they're getting out of your work you're not sure whether they're putting in or you're putting in but also I find useful is when people make suggestions about where you should go and you think it crystallizes actually that you don't want to go that way that is so true yeah very true yes yeah so the cost was a of your dad's tools and yes yeah that's right because those kind of artifacts can be very powerful can they I find more and more the negative space element of things is very powerful okay yeah because it's it's um it's it's speaking about something that has been yeah and it also enables the viewer to place their own thoughts in that piece because it's not too descriptive yeah so one of the things about that installation as well that was really important to me was the was the way the space was organized and the lighting on the figure where the figure was making two other figures yes in effect on the wall with the shadows yeah the shadows and and every time I found every time you put an exhibition up that you found the same the work remakes itself totally it looks very different um and even if it's just your own work you put it in a different space yes and you look at it differently because you're evaluating it as you put it up yes but it's also just there's a great deal I mean that's kind of what you produce it for isn't it to be displayed in some way oh absolutely yeah yeah there's a satisfaction in doing that yeah and I I have found that I think early on in my um life as an adult when I um stopped nursing I went to do the foundation diploma my myself as an adult um that foundation diploma a it blew my mind it was just amazing but also every month we were given a Friday to go and and told to go and see as much art as we possibly could in London so I used to race around I think my maximum was 18 galleries one day I mean what whether you actually get what you should out of it when you're going at that speed I don't know but one of the things it did do was it it um it gave me um sight of all sorts of different art yeah yeah and they recommended um galleries like the white chapel which had a lot of radical stuff yes and so on yeah I saw a lot of very very different arts so then over the years I think that in that affected how I thought about my own art and when I went and did did my degrees each time I was pushing it a little bit further towards what I realized now that I was pushing towards making installations but it didn't know I was at the time if you see what I mean I do so how old were you when you did your foundation then? I was 22 okay and I felt so strange because everybody else was 18 I think it shifted now you get a lot more people of a diverse range particularly I think doing something like that yeah that's good I think that can only be good actually yeah and in fact it's one of the things um then a number of people on our course of marks on that it was nice having quite a diverse range of people from different ages and different backgrounds and things like that I quite agree yeah so I think probably Jasmine was the youngest um how old was he 25 26 maybe Kate was the youngest I don't know one of those two I know I have no idea I wondered if Callum was but I have no idea what anybody's age he might be he might be yeah but um yeah so it was nice having that sort of different range of people coming from different areas and yes yeah well it just means there's much more going into the pot isn't there because of everybody's different experiences I think well that's true and it's I always enjoy working with a range of people but particularly young people I find very interesting yes they take on things it was great to be exposed I suppose the advantage of doing it at sort of a level equivalent and foundation is the people who don't want to do it aren't doing it anymore that is so true and that's where teaching the foundation diploma was great I ran it for five years and it was just so so lovely you didn't have to deal with students that really didn't want to be there yeah because I for a while I did after school clubs oh did you yeah but they were for very young kids from age four to age eight and the ones who wanted to do it they were a joy to teach but there were a certain number who were just there yeah until their parents could pick them up and so that was quite frustrating because you had to keep them under control which went you were neglecting the ones who wanted to yeah that's the story of teaching actually yeah yeah yeah um so but I as opposed to that I had this one guy I was teaching individually and because he wanted to do it was giving up his time to do it yes it's a whole different level it is it really is and it's it's a very rich experience I think when somebody is really engaged yeah you can well you can give them so much more can't you yeah so how much sort of teaching do you now now then because you mentioned you're still doing adult I just do a monday morning a wednesday afternoon and wednesday evening alright monday is a sculpture class wednesday afternoon is for supported learners adults and the evening is a general poetry class okay ceramics throwing yeah making it's all yes it's all well we do a bit of drawing sometimes if someone's interested but generally it's different types of ceramics I'm really as you know into paper clay so yes quite a lot of my students get into paper clay as well just because that's oh you could try that with paper clay yes I don't actually know what paper clay is I have to say is any clay body that you add a paper pulp to oh I see so you just I just for that because it burns out afterwards in the kiln the reason you do it is that it's very it's much stronger when you're making it because of the fibers of the paper no it helps to hold the clay together so for sculpture for example it's much stronger so you can get more varied forms and just boiling or on a wheel yes absolutely and for example I've in the past used a type of wire that can go into the kiln called nichrome wire as a an armature for sculpture and as long as you wrap newspaper or whatever around the wire and then you put your paper clay on because the newspaper provides the shrinkage rate it burns out in the kiln which means that the clay can shrink yes but the paper clay itself will support itself much better than an ordinary clay and you can join dry to wet or wet to dry which you can't do with ordinary clay yeah so it's it's much much more versatile yeah and I just love it also if you like me and you make quite big stuff sometimes it's it means say you put um you always do it by mass if you put you can put up to 40 paper into your clay body okay well that's 40 percent less weight yes so you can produce something much nicer easier to move and yeah exactly yeah so there's lots of bonuses to it no it's it's fascinating I spent last week doing an archaeological dig and digging out some more bits of ceramic and the different ways people manipulated it over the years and yes yeah well it's such a it's such a very useful material isn't it and England has got so much of it under there under the soil itself and my garden I've made stuff out of the clay just take picking it up out of my garden yes it's the Thames Valley is full of the stuff no I know I know and great lots of britaines I think yeah so what made you move away from ceramics to the sort of casting was it just you wanted to try something different or um well I've I've made big moulds in the past I had plaster Paris for working with ceramics but they again are very very heavy yeah and now I'm in a smaller house I don't have room for these big big moulds yes so I wanted something that I could use that would be light to carry around and that if once I've made them I can just melt them down again into paper pulp yeah and then dry it out wait until I want to make the next mould no okay I see it means I don't it's another transition for me as well in that I've decided that I don't want to hang on to my well I want to hang on to it in my working away but in another way I don't want to hang on to it I want it to become a bit more transient I don't want to be worrying about what's going to happen to it in the future and all that kind of stuff if you see what I mean yeah um so the paper is a great way of working where you can remake what you've made if you want to for another exhibition quite easily and quickly yeah and it's like to carry around but you don't have to store it yeah you can store it in sheets of paper nicey yeah I mean I know what you mean one of the things I most enjoy actually is painting overall paintings yes you can become something else I think it's quite healthy you know well for me anyways it's almost like a way of letting go and the work not being so precious that's true and it also solves the practical difficulty of buying new surfaces and storing everything absolutely yeah quite right that's a very good reason for doing it so what kind of material then the project you were talking about whether that would be would that be with paper or would that be with well well it's going to be with this is this is again said without having done any experiment and project a sound onto a material yeah it bounces back yeah depending on the material it bounces back differently yeah so I don't know if it's going to work but I'd be quite interested to lay a leaves for example um and play with them when they're green and they let them dry out and play with it again when it's when they're dry and record the sounds yeah um also how do you can you create a circuit board out of something that's made of leaves do you see what I mean there's a company that when Simon's doing his synthesizer workshops he um he uses them and and he designs the circuit boards and then they create it for him yeah and I'm just wondering whether I might work with that company and work with different types of material it might be completely impossible but I'd quite like to try there are all kinds of people who are completely obsessed with those kind of things I knew someone who used to collect old synthesizers oh do yeah yeah yeah strange things that you had to tune and all those kind of things yeah I mean I don't really know enough about it and it may be that the synthesizer bit of it is not what I do yes if so I mean well that's why you need a collaborate exactly that's why I need a collaborate well I think these things are more satisfying working with a collaborator because I did a coupleish I did the solo show this year which was all right but it was much more satisfying doing the Tremeneur show and exhibiting with other people and doing things with other people I quite agree so I don't think I'll do a solo show again for a while I think I'd look to do things with other people yes yeah I think that I agree with you entirely yeah and um I don't know how it's going to work out but I'm hoping that we might actually bring together a little collective yeah to do this particular project that might do other projects as well yeah because if it's so much it's so stimulating when you're talking to other people that are very good at what they're doing but what they're doing is so different yes that's true too yes it's really really stimulating so I like that very much yeah but you don't want too many people because then the project begins to balloon and yeah no absolutely I reckon three or four at the most yeah I think that's very wise we'll see it's a very nice idea and I hope it comes together I hope so so what I mean are you like me suffering from posts show a bit of a blip trying to work out what happens next other than the big project yes yes I I certainly have had a few days when I was feeling flat I think is the word and my brain was I think because with trimming here my brain was just going at such a rate yeah I know exactly what you mean and because I didn't have time to kind of be what they call it well anyway to come down yeah in kind of in a timely way and just got jumped straight into looking after my daughter and her new baby um I think it just hit me a bit when I did stop when I did come home yeah um but what I've actually thought is that I am going to give myself a holiday good idea I'm in the middle of sorting the house out but I'm going way towards the end of August and I'm going to have a bit of a holiday yeah and then I've actually still got I forgot that I have got a sculpture that's on the go at the moment which is quite experimental and which isn't resolved at all so I think I thought well maybe I'll just enjoy joy working on that and pottering yeah and and the process of applying for funding is takes quite a long time it's a very big document to fill in and as Simon's the baby's dad he's very busy at the moment so I'm not going to land that on his straight away so that can wait for a bit I might start playing with the different materials the leaves and other and a wire seeing and so on um but but I'm going to I'm going to work on the sculpture and the painting that was a painting that I ripped up and I'm just I'm just trying to work out why I like it like that but it's not finished if you know what I mean it's not a it's not a finished piece but there's something about it that I want to carry on working on well I mean it is quite nice to just sort of occasionally have the non-directed thing isn't it yes but it nice to also have the sort of going to do this and yeah yeah definitely and I need to get a website made so when the photos and videos come from trimming here I'll I'll get on with that as well not myself I'm no good at that kind of stuff but yeah yeah there's a few things in the pipeline yes yes to be done sent us away with quite a lot to do then yeah absolutely loads when I was looking rereading that then what I wrote from the talk yeah um Mercedes yes that I was looking to see wow that's a lot to do so do you have sort of any ambitions to be in galleries or things like that it's gonna sound really I don't know really bad I think I would like to have a space in Kate modern ah yes I'll buy fair enough I don't think it's going to happen necessarily but yeah it would be nice to get it would be really nice I don't it's not for the money point of view of anything like that I just liked to get the workout there to be honest yeah no I get the feedback it's that's what's so interesting when you put workout isn't that's true that's true you might have to make things quite a lot bigger because they've got some very big rooms in it you're right maybe I should start planning that well this is something I've talked about before which is galleries like that they reward people doing bigger work yes and I think they're probably looking for bigger work just because they've got a large space yes yes of course um and but sometimes going to sort of smaller galleries like um I really like the Dolly's Picture Gallery yes I do as well yeah yes that's a really special actually yeah it's a lovely gallery yeah but they often will put up smaller works um partly I think because they've got a smaller space so that yes that's a good point actually well yeah yeah so I think about that quite a lot when you ever go and see a particularly the paid exhibitions unless it's someone like within Blake then they tend to be very big canvases yes or sculptures or whatever yeah that's true yeah the only exhibition I can think at Tate Modern recently that wasn't like that was one showing the workings of art so there was a lot of not a lot but there were some parts of it that were just all the photographs that had gone into making up the yeah you know the completed piece yeah and actually they were much more interesting than the completed piece so one of the most interesting pictures I saw in a recent show of John Singer Sergeant which I really liked but you had one partially completed portrait of a woman and you go well why did you stop and it was and the sort of decisions she was making that and then they had an almost identical completed one maybe that's why you stopped to abandon it once again yes but it can be quite interesting very interesting I love what goes on behind yeah yeah it's really interesting the way people develop their work I think it's yeah as interesting as the work itself yeah um it's something I think about quite a lot which is to get for that kind of space you do have to be in the position where you're producing installations that are quite big and like yeah and ambitious I often wonder how people start doing that um maybe they just find a space and do it and then destroy it all afterwards I don't know maybe yeah I suppose so yeah there's an artist called Sildome Rares and he he was at Tate Modern and they had basically three or four rooms that were of different were the rooms themselves were different installations yeah I did think that possibly one could you could design your installation if once you've kind of got to the creative point where you know what you're wanting your space to be like you could do it small and actually put forward a drawing in a design of it yes illustrating it before because how do you you know how do you do whole rooms unless you've done it in some other galleries before well yeah I mean I've often wondered about this um well maybe you just start off doing it in odd spaces and hope people come that's quite not quite like that actually the odd spaces yeah yeah yeah yeah why not yeah well I mean that would be great I'd love to go to the tape. Wait I know her yeah of course you do well don't hold your breath so that was Sildome Montague who I think said some very interesting and moving things in that episode I will as always put links in the description to um Shelley's instagram account I also put links to the Dolly's picture gallery in Tate Modern and to Sue Ryder and some other dementia help charities so if any of you listening to this are being affected by either dementia yourself or have relatives who have been then you can access those and hopefully there'll be of some help to you but I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope you enjoyed episode 23 of the things that drive us please like and subscribe it really helps and I look forward to listening again
