Growing up during the collapse of linear time, Emma Pryde founds artificial artefacts or sterilised objects with an aesthetic mask of memorialisation.

Can we start by you telling me a bit about the path how you came to discover your style and practice?

When I was young what I really wanted to be was a philosopher. The first artist I fell in love with was Salvador Dali—his work showed me that its ok to see the world in your own way. The more I learned about individual artists, the more I began to realise that art is actually a vehicle for philosophy. My practice is about looking for patterns in my visual experience, so my style has emerged naturally out of the things I love to look at and think about. I work intuitively, the physical output is self-generating at this point. Every time I make something it leads to something new.

Do you think our taste in food and scents is linked to our taste in visuals and art? What do you think your work would smell of? How would it taste?

I would say yes—I like complex foods so my cooking strategy is all about creating combinations of opposites— there is a lot of decoration involved and contrasting textures and flavours. My acrylic work would smell sterilised, like rubbing alcohol and white vinegar, but if you licked it, it would taste like a hard lollypop. My ceramic work would smell like an abandoned temple. Sandalwood, black tea, and frankincense with rotting fruit and dried flowers. I imagine incense smoke billowing out of the eyes of my characters, luring you in with an appetising sweetness. You take a bite, imagining that it will taste soft and delicate, but it is hard as a rock and will break your teeth.

Your work is very ethereal. It has youthful features like the incorporation of soft toys and ribbons, and then what feels like a glaze of eternity, with layered colours, uneven surfaces and long-lasting materials (for example, plastic and ceramic). Does time play a conceptual role in your work?

Some of my work is very precarious and temporary, designed to be assembled and dismantled in various configurations. Other works are more permanent so ideally, I want them to able to withstand the test of time. My work is in conversation with useless objects of no real value—like plastic filling our oceans—just as much as it is conversation with relics from history—like a carved stone statue of a snake goddess. My fantasy is that a future civilization will dig up one of my ceramic creatures on an archaeological expedition. Mistaking the figure for a representation of a god, they will construct a religion around the object to try to understand our society.

““You take a bite, imagining that it will taste soft and delicate, but it is hard as a rock and will break your teeth.””

Can you tell us a bit about the concepts you tend to work with? What are your main inspirations?

I am interested in the concept of the artefact, the religious object, and the toy—all of which represent vessels of ideology and social order. My main inspirations are artists and thinkers whose practice contains a spiritual element or philosophical undercurrent, artists such as Alejandro Jodorowski, Mariko Mori, Piero Della Francesca, or Daft Punk. Artists who are able to build and communicate their own cosmology give me hope that no matter what happens on the outside, an artist’s inner life can be infinitely meaningful and transformative.

You work through a wide range of mediums – installation, sculpture, jewellery design and more. Do you feel particularly connected to one form of artistic expression or are these creative mediums intertwined? What guides the medium you choose to work with?

Different materials serve different purposes as I populate my world and create various environments. I really love ceramic because it is so intuitive and simple, a mistake is even more beautiful than a controlled gesture, and the firing process enacts an alchemical transformation. With laser cut acrylic, it is all planned digitally, and I am unable to physically manipulate the substance, so it makes me feel like a machine. The material I use for a given project is determined by whether I am producing an artificial artefact or a sterilised object relating to methods of mass production.

Some of the creatures you create remind me of Neopets. You create unidentifiable beings with unearthly faces, reminiscent of digital art, in more traditional artistic mediums like ceramic – you blend tradition and the future. What do these creatures represent?

I think of these characters as deities, reflections of belief systems of a generation that consumes constant data through a screen— making sense of life through images, animations, virtual games and simulations. My generation was the first to grow up during the collapse of linear time. We perceive reality through a digital space where there is no clear past or future, where everything is decontextualised and fractured. I use traditional media or historical style as an aesthetic mask of memorialisation. Tradition represents death in a culture that has destroyed all tradition.

I personally love this blend of digital-style visuals with fine art. I think it is a good representation of how the past, present and future can come together to create a new type of beauty. But, have you thought at all about experimenting with digital outcomes?

I work a lot with Maya to make video work. I 3-D scan my sculptures to put them into the digital space or use green screens to add myself into virtual environments. I like the idea of the work existing in multiple dimensions, things coming in and out of the physical world. I have a three-track music video that I have been working on for the past two years, which is a combination of my electronic music and Maya animations.

You tend to work with pastel colours, often lilac and baby blue. What is the reasoning behind this?

I often use colours that are associated with innocence or naivete. My palate represents illusion and childish desire, like a seductive veneer. I use translucent or reflective materials because they produce a magical experience by diffusing or refracting colour and light. Pinks, blues, and shimmery rainbows create an opalescent quality like that of a sea shell or a mirage. I believe that these colours are meaningful in the way they are used as devices of manipulation, having the ability to trigger feelings of powerlessness, attraction, or divinity.

Going through your portfolio of work, it almost feels like you are building your own world. What would you name your world and what would the people in it be like?

My world would be called 2000 Cracked Egg. It would look like a gigantic cracked egg floating in the sky. Everyone would live in the year 2000, which represents birth and a new beginning, but every year would cycle over and over again through eternity. The characters would dress up in elaborate cosplay uniforms. They would have abundant fruit trees and flower gardens, with flowing rivers and many mystical pets who would lead them on legendary adventures around the planet. There would be a giant iridescent fountain in the middle, just like in the Garden of Earthly Delights.

What is next for you?
I’m working a few new projects. I’m finishing up a series of porcelain multiples and working on a new line of jewellery, but also developing new video work and installation plans.