We caught up with artist Madeline Rae during her stay at Ace Art's Cartae Open School residency which Rae completed along with four other resident creatives earlier this summer. The seven month independent learning program allows for creatives working from distinct directions of interests to share and produce work in a single environment and subsequently exhibit their work at the end of the program. In the below conversation, we speak to Rae on her keen pursuit for working through film photography, her interest in performance, and video as way of working through ideas of sensuality and intimacy.
Madeline Rae works predominantly with film photography, video, and performance. Her work tends to explore sensuality and all of its facets—different pronounced moments you might face in life whether it being grief, extreme amounts of joy. For me, it seems she looks into how sensuality can be a tool to work through these moments in life. She often uses herself along with others in the work. —Talia Shaaked
Photo contribution by Laina Brown
Luther Konadu: Can you remember your very first introduction to the film medium?
Madeline Rae: Yes, I got into video in high school and that was my first introduction to the medium and I soon realized that I was in love with it. I wasn’t much into photography- because I didn’t really feel excited by digital cameras or digital still images. With video, I felt I could do more: I could incorporate audio, performance, installation, etc. And I enjoyed the process of editing. I started performing in front of the camera for my videos before I even knew it was performance. It wasn’t until I got in post-secondary art school then I started taking some film photography classes, which got me really interested. I just ‘nerded out’ in the darkroom. I loved it. I just got obsessed with the physicality of it and I took subsequent classes where I could use the darkroom. It just spiraled from there! '
Photo contribution by Laina Brown
LK: Before you knew you were doing performances what were you thinking you were doing in those videos?
MR: I just thought of it as though I was acting. I started using my body more and more in what I was doing because I realized it was taking me to emotional places and it felt really freeing and cathartic in a way. But then I started to also know more and more about artists like Marina Abramovic and Carolee Schneemann, etc., whose work began to shape my idea of performing. Then I took a performance course with Sharon Alward, and I started to learn exponentially about the importance of performance as a medium for myself as an artist. Then I started to make more sense of what I was I doing with video.
LK: Now that you have a defined understanding of what you were doing in the videos…how does that change how you think of what you do with your body and video? Because you weren’t aware that you were doing performances but now that you are aware, how do you approach working with your body?
MR: It definitely makes me aware of my emotions. I pay more attention. Overall, I feel more conscious of what I am doing and I think about the audience too.
Photo contribution by Laina Brown
At this point of the conversation, Rae takes us through a series of her photographic work and describes the processes she takes and why she takes them.
MR: I shot these with a Polaroid FP-100c film [She shows us images of the printouts]. I am really interested in pushing film photography. I recently ran a workshop where I spoke about alternative photographic processes and cyanotypes. This is a cyanotype here [she shows us an example]. I don’t usually make cyanotypes but I’m getting more interested in that. And the Polaroid film process can be experimental, especially if you start bleaching the backs to make negatives. Doing that can be a way of doing more with the film, and keeping the image longer, as a starting point.
Photo contribution by Laina Brown
LK: When did you make these [a series of the enlarged Polaroid works that hangs at her studio]
MR: I made these a while ago for a final project in Lisa Stinner-Kun’s Colour Photography course. I wanted to do something very technical and experimental. At the same time, conceptually, I am performing through the spaces that I am in. This one here is actually the living room of some of my friend’s. It has the original 70s décor all over the house from the couches, to the carpet, and the wallpaper… but at the same time you see these modern day phone chargers on the floor and I just found it interesting and weird. But overall the project wasn’t conceptually driven; it was more of a technical undertaking- I feel that is important to note.
Photo contribution by Laina Brown
LK: Talk to me about that image with dark background [I point to a striking print of one of her photographs hung on her studio wall]
MR: I really love that shot. I think it’s one of my favorites I’ve ever shot. It my friend Jade; she’s just so stunning. It was my first aesthetic push into this abyss-like exploration of darkness with fiber paper. Fiber paper takes on black so nicely…
[Rae looks at the print and thinks about something for a few moments]
…A lot of the film cameras and the film I’m using are discontinued or they are really expensive to use which is so sad. But anyways- with the Fiber paper I was using, you get a really nice rich and deep black space. And I became very attracted to that and it sort of inspired a wider series which was essentially the solo show I had at the GOSA Gallery in March. I became very interested in looking deeper into sensuality and vulnerability in this abyss-like space, which for me started out as this place of extreme pain and grief but then the more I explored that space, the more it became a place of strength, sensuality, and catharsis.
Photo contribution by Laina Brown
LK: How do you see the increasingly obsolesce and cost associated with using the film camera in making work moving into the future?
MR: It makes me more methodical and slow. It’s become more precious to me. I am very careful about what I’m doing each time… well, unless I feel spontaneous. Digital cameras do still not exhilarate me, although I do play digitally with my scanned negatives sometimes. I really enjoy the physicality, and getting your hands dirty in the darkroom is so important to me. And yes, it’s so expensive, but I like the slower process. There’s no way around it being an expensive thing. I try to get everything I can out it. The negatives I made out of the Polaroids are one way I do this. I take my time to bleach the backs and make them, and that’s something people for year and years never did, because there was an abundance of Polaroid film. I always keep all my backs and all my negatives. I try to document them the best I can. I look to people like Sally Mann, who did the wet plate collodion process which was from the 1800s and that was certainly a dead process. And she was able to find a way to get access to that equipment and do it. There are definitely ways around it.
Another reason I really enjoy working in the darkroom is getting to understand the chemistry behind what I do. I think there are always alternatives to getting things done yourself as well, if certain chemistry or film is unavailable. You can actually make things yourself. It’s not impossible. There’s a way you can actually create instant film yourself… There can be a cyclical nature to art forms too. Think about Gerhard Richter and painting. I don’t think mediums ever completely ‘die out’. I always find it funny when people say “it’s [photography] like a dead art.” They isn’t an abundance of artists really pushing experimental film photography right now, which is another reason that encourages me to work and still with it.
