Bow Arts chats to artist Isabelle Pead, one of the winners of the inaugural Mick Bateman Memorial Award, on metal explorations, sonic ephemera, studio community, and finding inspiration between art forms.

Introduce yourself and tell us a little about your practice?

My name is Isabelle Pead and I am an artist working across sound, sculpture, performance and moving image. My work is concerned with sonic exploration, primarily using the voice as a tool to navigate the social, personal and emotional. My work is research based and takes a range of forms, often resulting in multimedia installations which consider the relationship between object, image, space and sounding body: delighting in the curious, spectacular and sublime of sound making and sonic ephemera. 

What’s the drive/motivation behind your work? 

This is quite a difficult question to answer. I think primarily I’m a maker, and for the longest time art making is all I’ve wanted to do; it’s the best tool I have for exploring, expressing and decoding the world around me. I suppose I’m always trying to inhabit the grey space between music, art and theatre, I find work more interesting when it’s not just one thing, but belonging to many. I also often work collaboratively, with other artists, makers, musicians and writers as I find that collaboration or community environments are really motivating and creatively generative.  

Can you tell us more about your interest in sound and sculpture, and how it developed?  

I’ve always had an interest in singing and performance: I can’t remember a time when music wasn’t entwined with my life, especially choral singing, oratorio and opera. However, when I first went to art school, I found it very difficult to place this within a fine art context, so instead developed a more material based practice, learning different material and sculptural processes, like printmaking, welding and metalwork. It took me a little while to find my feet, but I started to experiment with performance and sound, bringing them into the studio/gallery space and combining them with sculptural objects. Since then, I’ve become fascinated with the emotional animism that can be placed on objects, their ability to hold memory and narrative especially when thinking about inhabiting space and how they could relate to/ harness more ephemeral media. I’ve been particularly drawn to metalwork over the last 3-4 years due to it’s resonant properties, as well as exploring the relationship between the organic tenderness of the voice and the seemingly hard or cold surface nature of the metallic.  

Could you introduce us to some of your artistic inspirations or influences? 

Meredith Monk has been a massive influence for me, especially her pioneering experimentation with the performative voice/vocal instrument and the entire visual universe she manufactures through props, costumes and objects. Additionally composers and performers like Elaine Mitchener, Éliane Radigue and Jennifer Walshe have had a huge influence on my appreciation and understanding of sonic/performative possibility. Jesse Darling, Simeon Barclay and Prem Sahib are all artists who I greatly admire, particularly for their ability to navigate the personal, social and political. All of them find ways capture pathos and vulnerability though sculptural objects and installation. I’m also greatly inspired by theatre, ballet and live performance and take great inspiration from set design, props, lighting, theatres etc. The theatre company Complicité and choreographer Pina Bausch have always had a huge place in my heart. Also club culture, dancing, electronic music, friends and writing always end up influencing the work.  

You’ve been part of the community at Bow Road for a while. How will the support from the Mick Bateman Memorial Award towards a studio affect your work? 

I’ve been a studio holder at Bow Road for just over a year, and I really like it here. Sharing a studio with my partner, as well as having friends in the neighbouring studios really makes for a supportive environment. Also having just had my first open studio, I’m starting to feel much more entrenched in the community here. Support from the Mick Bateman Memorial Award is going to be really beneficial to my work. Not having to worry about paying for a studio for 2 years is a massive weight off my shoulders, it gives me a lot of stability in terms of space, and allows me to plan a bit further ahead with the guarantee that I’ll have the space to produce work. I think the award will allow me to realise some works on a larger scale as I’ll be able to invest more in materials and spend more time in the studio, which is something I’m really excited about.   

Could you guide us through some of your previous experiments and creations in metalwork, and tell us more about what you’re looking forward to at London Sculpture Workshop? 

Last year for my degree show, I produced a set for 4 steel speaker stands, Quartet 2023, inspired by the traditional classification of voice: Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass. Each stand has 2 or 3 welded legs at different angles to create individual stances. They’re spindly and fragile but command space as static performers, caught somewhere between human physicality and sci-fi creature. Recently in the studio, I’ve been making a series of experiments in lead, working on embossing and shaping sheet lead over MDF structures. Inspired by ex-votos, (small metal offerings given to saints as a Christian tradition) these sculptures take the form of ears, kidneys and mouths, yet made of lead that has been draped, hammered and embossed. I’m really excited to get back into a metal workshop. I’ve been thinking a lot about megaphones and horns as instruments for amplification and channelling sound, and am planning to create a series of functioning horn like sculptures that could be activated by performers or used as props. Additionally, I’m looking forward to learning a few new skills at London Sculpture Workshop, like pewter casting and copper beating.   

Where can we find your work? 

On my Instagram @isabelle_pead or my website.

Bio 

Isabelle Pead (b. London 1996) is an artist working across sculpture, sound, video and performance. She received her BA from the University of Leeds in 2019 and an MA in Fine Art from The Slade in 2023. Her work is informed by actions of storytelling and collectivism, exploring the relationship between the voice and the sounding body through considered installation. Drawing on her background in choral and operatic singing, she combines sculptural objects, images and electronic/synthesised sound with her own singing and vocalisations, exploring the material and relational properties of sound and the interaction between performer, space and object. 

More about the Mick Bateman Memorial Award