Image: Nat Penney, ‘I almost fell off my chair!’, 2022, stainless steel, European Beech timber, brass, Bus Projects, photograph courtesy Christo Crocker.
Nat Penney is based in Tarntanya (Adelaide). Combining processes from timber furniture-making and metal fabrication with found and formed objects, she considers the sensory desires in things, looking for subconscious object impulses. She’s driven by an obsession with psychological states and their reciprocal exchange with our relationships, environments, and the objects we engage with.
Her practice often incorporates materials weighted heavily in nostalgia, such as tiles from her childhood bathroom or her parents’ wooden tennis racquets, embedding personal histories into sculptural objects. These materials act as communicators of memory, yet memory and nostalgia themselves are malleable, and sometimes irresponsible, reshaping perception and altering what we take to be truth.
How would you describe your practice in 5 words?
subconscious object impulses, confusion, trust
Why have you pursued a creative career and what are your aspirations for the future?
Perhaps material understanding and making is something I find easier to grasp and I’m always drawn back to it, despite the dips in confidence around the path. I am lucky to have an understanding or a deep interest in how things are made or constructed and am very satisfied by the moments of clarity or in solving the confusion around how or what something is trying to say or do. I’m actually always trying to understand if I am pursuing it as a career though and what that even means.
For the future, continuing to seek out what I want/what my practice wants; the tiny moments of interest. Where and what feels good. Reaching a place of contentment in sharing and collaborative thinking, of excitement around ideas with others and excitement around others and what we can contribute to the world, that’s not a blatant detriment.
What does a day in the studio encompass?
Usually a muddle. Administrative jobs, invoicing, quoting, CAD drawing, meetings with other artists to discuss their ideas and how I can help, opening 20 new tabs of 20 new directions to consider for my own work. Chatting on the way back from making my second coffee for the morning. Juggling metal fabrication jobs for an income and trying to justify time or brain space for my own. Taking Lola outside to the toilet. Trying to get Lola to stay in her bed. Asking when Lola last went out to the toilet. Cleaning up a Lola wee..because I missed taking her out to the toilet (Again). Looking at Lola. Getting other people to look at Lola. Somehow most of my time is spent at the studio/in the workshop and it never feels like I get very far, perhaps because my practice isn’t done with a knowing or understanding of the direction, it all unfolds as I go.
How do you work through creative blocks?
Talk to interesting people who spark thinking or fun or enthusiasm. Run and run until it starts spilling out. And then it dries up before it’s fully done and I run again. Open books. Close them. Create a deadline. Apply for exhibitions, until one sticks. Just find a space to have the things, to see them properly! It doesn’t have to be a gallery or somewhere with a reputation. It’s just space to get more clarity. Put myself in an unsustainable pressure cooker of time. Frizz out for a day and have to stay home to lie flat on the grass and message someone to say, “What am I even doing? How does any of this mean anything right now? I’m so confused and anxious about being confused. I’m lying on the ground hoping to be absorbed to understand.” Listen to podcasts of people who are just as confused.
What’s one piece of advice you would share with your creative peers?
No human or space is an unreachable superstar, people know what they know from the knowledge they’ve been given (and the capacity to absorb it) and this is all shareable between us. Hierarchies are invented, so try your best to not hold them close. Admire those who think or see or interact in ways that get you going but speak to them in an equal exchange, they’re no more than you are for knowing something you don’t in the moment before you learn it. If they’re not willing to meet you there, perhaps they’re not worth admiring. (And I am still working on all of this)
Trust your own path.
Images: Nat Penney, ‘tell me they’ll tell you she’s a man of steel‘, 2024, stainless steel, gripwell cambuckle tie downs, treadmill, castor wheels, 1500x3000x700mm (approx.), photograph courtesy Sam Roberts; Nat Penney, ‘tell me they’ll tell you she’s a man of steel’ (detail), 2024, stainless steel, gripwell cambuckle tie downs, treadmill, castor wheels, 1500x3000x700mm (approx.), photograph courtesy Sam Roberts; Nat Penney with Lola, photograph courtesy the artist.