Video transcript
ARTEXPRESS 2021 - Student interview - 02. Emma Francis

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EMMA FRANCIS: Hi, my name's Emma Francis, and I studied visual arts at Willoughby Girls High School. So my body of work, Sideshow, is about the subconscious, and how that dictates how we feel about other people. And how we can't really control it, and how it dictates our actions, and everything that we do really. My body of work is three vases, and they're all decorated with a bunch of faces.

Some inspired by real people, and some just a bit made up. And it's got a lot of colour in it and is heavily decorated with symbols and elements and patterns and colours, and it's very chaotic, and it's all over the place. But I wanted it to be that because that's what human life is all about. It's chaotic, and it's not straightforward.

Well, I started off really lost at the start of Year 12, and I knew I wanted to do ceramics. And I knew I wanted to look at feelings, and then the subconscious came up, and the idea that we can't really control our feelings, and we can't control our subconscious. And so those two linked together really well, and I started pretty much with just my forms. And I decided I wanted a grand scale. So I wanted really big pots, and I knew that I wanted to make multiple.

I got this idea of faces, but I wanted to distort them a little bit and make them more like caricatures. And so I started doodling those away in my art diary, and then I tried to transform them into 3D images. And at first, I didn't really know how to work with textures in clay. And so my teacher helped me with that to explore that through using different materials and tools and imprinting them into the clay and then also making it more 3D by adding things onto it.

As I moved along, that got a lot easier, and I found tools. I used chopsticks and things to imprint into them, and that got really fun. And then at the end, I went in with colour, and I wanted to make them really colourful because it was all about emotion. And for me, emotion is often mimicked in colour, and especially, in the art world.

So then I went in with an oxide because I wanted it to have a bit more depth. I wanted it to bring out the crevices and to make it have a bit more shapeliness and form and for that to really be a big feature in it. In making my artwork, I think I was my teacher's most stressful student. Partially, because I just didn't start until really late. But then when it came to actually making the pots, I came across a lot of challenges like cracking in the clay.

And when I was trying to stick all the pieces on, sometimes they wouldn't end, and they'd fall off, or I'd let the pot dry too much. It was really important that I organised my time in making them, and that I really put that first. In creating my body of work, I think my biggest artist inspiration was Jackson Pollock. He also did a lot of ceramics, and so obviously, that resonated quite well. But then also the way he decorated his pots.

He had the same kind of chaotic energy that I wanted to have. I liked the way that he told stories in his artwork, and we watched the documentary in class. And I remember watching that, and it really stuck with me. And it was all about how he'd interview these people, and learn their personal stories, and then he'd transform it into an artwork. And he'd gift it to them, and I thought that was really beautiful. And so I wanted to kind of do a similar thing.

So students going into visual arts in Year 12, I think the most important thing is to be ready for change. Don't be stuck in the same spot. A lot of people, I feel like, they have this idea going into Year 12, and they're like, I love it. But you have to be able to adapt that to the new things that can come in and make it more complex, make it more interesting, make it more aesthetic, aesthetically pleasing. And so I think that's really important to be able to adapt to change.

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