Friday Focus: Beth Waite
Beth Waite is an interdisciplinary artist from County Durham, living and working in Leeds. She studied BA Fine Art at the University of Leeds, going on to exhibit as part of New Contemporaries 2021. She has been shortlisted for the Ingram Prize 2022, exhibited in Leeds Artists Show 2023 and was a part of Yorkshire Sculpture International 2022 among others. Her practice is rooted in her experience as a woman, linked to a larger shared experience of the feminine, its histories and its mysticism. Her work aims to facilitate a connection between the physical and spiritual through feminist structures, materialised as ritual, sculpture, film and performance. Sculpture acts as artefacts, vessels, props or costumes; participants as performers; performance as video. She uses fantastical narratives as a vehicle to create another ‘space’, where she can explore ways to wield the feminine energy that makes us other. Narratives within her practice may be utopian, historical, fictional or other worldly; her work does not exist in complete reality nor fantasy, but the in-between: the home of the feminine soul.
Can you tell me about your practice? How do you get started on a piece of work?
My practice is based around the idea of the space in between the physical and the spiritual being a site of feminist rebellion, to reconnect with a lost and wild feminine soul. I'm interested in world building and narrative as subversive vehicles for imagined or utopian futures, histories or narratives. I use sculpture, film and performance in ritual ways to stir an uncanny and repressed feeling of the 'other'; a feminist and queer other, repressed within a patriarchal society, but celebrated and encouraged within my work. This often is reflected by grotesque, monstrous and eerie atmospheres, stirring a discomfort within our modern world but a feeling of home and belonging for our ancient souls. The vilification of certain aspects of the feminine throughout history is endlessly interesting to me, but also the way that this is always entwined with nature. Dangerous women in myth and folklore are often seen to have a power over the natural world in an unexplainable and spiritual way, which is perhaps why we are so scared of her; this is something I love to explore and embrace within my work.
Ideas and concepts are always the starting point for a piece or body of work within my practice; lists and lists of ideas and random feelings or observations fill my phone and sketchbook until I can make sense of what I want to do with them. A feeling or concept that I want to reflect in a way that I can't fully express with language leads me to create a narrative for a physical work to then take place. I often use sculpture, performance and film alongside one another, feeding in and out of each other, and always in a ritual way. I create work as a way to imagine an alternate world, therefore employ ways of working which feel like a ritual way of entering this world, creating artefacts, costumes and props that I can use in different ritual ways to realise a narrative.
Who or what are your biggest influences?
Nature is the biggest influence within my work. I feel that I don't need anything more than to step into nature to view art- it's already there for us, reflecting us back to ourselves without judgement. This inspires me to use natural materials within my work to tell a story beyond the miracle of nature; something to reflect our relationship with it and the way that we live amongst it in a spiritual way. Surrealist art is also a major influence within my work, especially the work of artists like Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. I love the idea of viewing a work with endless interpretations, stories and narratives that make us question our everyday lives. Ana Mendieta is an artist whose work I feel infinitely connected to and I feel captures an intangible feeling in a simple and poignant way.
A strong feminist narrative that embraces spirituality, mythology and folklore is woven throughout your work, tell us more about why this appeals to you?
Stories of feminine power have been twisted and vilified throughout history and reflected in our folklore and mythology; I'm interested in reclaiming these stories as well as the power that has been repressed within them. These stories become monstrous and uncanny, asserting a feminine power as a dangerous one which cannot be understood, therefore must be stopped. I am interested in a spiritual and ritual reclamation of this power which makes us 'other', along with anyone who has been oppressed throughout history. We have an innate and inherent spiritual connection to our histories and I aim to reconnect these histories with the present.
The choice of material is very important within my work, coming after the concept and idea. Materials reflect the character, atmosphere or feeling that I am aiming to reflect, and are often natural, organic or grotesque, but also have a sense of ritual theatricality. My work aims to represent a world which may or may not exist, in the present, past or another realm; therefore, my choice of materials allow me to reflect something familiar which has been subverted in an unfamiliar way. These materials are then reflected through performance, installation, film or as individual works, all of which add another medium to distort and rebuild our realities through narrative.
I tend to use really different tools depending on my project and the specific work, but one thing that I always reach for, which I suppose is more of a material than a tool, is my stash of found natural materials. I may not necessarily always use them as materials, but refer to them when I am looking for inspiration with pattern and form and use them as a guide for ways of making that reflect their qualities. A hot glue gun and chicken wire tend to come in pretty handy when I'm making work too.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book 'Women Who Run With The Wolves' transformed my practice in a way I could not imagine. It gives words, validation and power to a feeling that anyone living under the patriarchy can connect to, acknowledging the vast array of indigenous folklore as inherent to our understanding of ourselves and centres some kind of spirituality as a necessity for a reconnection to a soul that has been lost through patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism. It offers a sliver of light to the monotony of living within our society, and offers us a power to reclaim for ourselves. I am also currently reading Featherhood by Charlie Gilmour, which captures the infinite potential for nature and 'wildness' to help us better understand ourselves and our relationships in a really beautiful way.
Finally, is there anything new coming up that you would like to tell us about?
I'm currently working on and thinking about portals and transformative objects to different worlds. I recently exhibited a work called I entered a world where women slithered, crawled and soared in Collective Unconscious, an Assembly House exhibition hosted by Seagulls in Leeds, using a willow arch as a portal to the world that my work exists within. I'm interested in different ways of inducting the audience into this world, through a ritual action or stepping through.