Mina Young
What was your first encounter with an artwork? How did this affect you?
The first art work I really engaged with was as a small child. I am still mesmerised by it. It’s entitled The Batcatchers (rather strange timing with the COVID-19 pandemic) and was probably made in the 1930’s.
It is a small painting, in gouache or watercolour, that my grandad had bought on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia on one of his trips from the then Ceylon, where my father’s family lived in the 50’s.
The Batcatchers, Unknown Artist, (193-) ~30cm x 20cm
My grandad was a research scientist who ran the Ceylonese Government Rubber Plantation up in the mountains opposite Adam’s Peak - where the family also lived. The Batcatchers sat on a wall behind my grandmother at the dining table.
It is a small, finely painted, romantic picture of a mysterious private scene depicting two adults and two children in a lush forest with nets catching bats. The colours are dreamy and the actions the people are undertaking looked rather strange to me but still fascinating.
It created a magical feeling within me, and I can get lost in the colours and shapes without even seeing the actual picture. It’s exotic appeal recalls strange and exciting family stories of life in Sri Lanka.
Bats are caught and eaten in some parts of Indonesia and China to help heal people with diseases of the lung and respiratory system to this day.
What or whom are your inspirations and/or heroes (if any) or inspirational figures when making artworks?
I feel as though I have had a rather eccentric upbringing, and my family stories and legacy are my main inspirations.
My brother particularly has been a constant source of inspiration to me, always building or creating ingenious kooky inventions and artwork where everything was possible.
My father was a psychiatrist and I grew up on the grounds of a Queensland Psychiatric Hospital. My first address was “No 1. Loony Lane”, which has kind of set the scene for my life so far. Originally named as a joke, my father as a young registrar, put forward a list of names for the streets of the hospital grounds which were accepted by the administration who had had no success making previous names stick.
One artist who has always inspired me is Andy Warhol, whom, to me, really embodies life as art, creating then documenting and capturing group happenings, strange potent interactions, events and objects. I always enjoy revisiting his work.
Mikaela Dwyer is another visual artist I’m drawn to, in the concepts, themes and abstraction used in her work, to her placement, scale and arrangements of objects and the amazing immersive environments she creates. Her work has a strong autobiographical method to it and her idea of positioning herself as an artist working as a medium is intriguing. Other artist and filmmakers that inspire my work are Claire Milledge, Sophie Calle and Mike Kelley; and auteur directors David Cronenberg and Lars Von Triers.
The work of these artists enters terrain beyond the realms of conventional life. Their productions either deliberately evoke alternate versions of reality, or force the viewer to reconsider their own interpretations of it. The two main art movements that I feel a strong affinity with is the Outsider Artist Movement and the Surrealists. I am fascinated by the Outsider artist James Hopman, who built one of the most famous pieces of American folk art the “Stand from the Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millenium General Assembly”. He did this over a period of nineteen years while he worked as a janitor, assembling an amazing construction from old bits of scrap foil and other waste. Hidden in a garage, unintended to be seen by the public, this amazing piece is now housed in the Smithsonian.
Your work manifests as a series of snapshots or glimpses from a magical world where people appear to be interrupted in undertaking, with great seriousness, actions that appear to be without sense. How important is a sense of narrative for your work?
I tend not to follow a linear or traditional way of thinking, preferring to use rhizomal research methods which allow room for my love of the non-sensical, surprise and chaos to enter the process. I draw fragments from my memories and experiences contextualised by concepts of psychogeography, autobiography and objecthood. Of course, visual memories and events from growing up in the hospital stay with me.
Please Be Seated Doctors Will See You Shortly 2, Mina Young, 2020. Still for Digital Video, incl. pencil drawing and false eyelashes. Dimensions variable.
In the heterotopic space of the hospital, strange happenings, haphazard chaos, dreams, the occult, telepathy, magic , dreams, visions, hypervigilance, hypnosis, ghost stories, exorcisms, utterly absurd, funny and scary events, were all a part of everyday life, thought or discussion. At the time I often questioned whether what I was seeing and hearing was real, possible or true.
There’s always a fine line between reality and fantasy in my work and on a deeper level there is room for more eerie possibilities of the phantastic to enter my process and practice.
The works seen here reference secret worlds, fragments and visions of people in the process of making or doing.
The neurodiversity of the sensory world and interpretations of it are all important in my process.
Your use of the photographic medium in this sense combines its evidentiary function and yet also myth creation. How do you balance these elements?
The construction of an event is very important to my art, through bringing together a range of memories and objects that are the catalyst for adding to myth creation. I usually have an idea relating to a physical place, a strange memory or story and a state of mind, perhaps sympathetic to altered states of consciousness.
I can catch snippets of new concepts through photography and enjoy all sorts of surprises when I look back at the work. I often work in a reportage style, but have more recently created situations in controlled or manufactured environments.
I try to balance the ambiguity by being in and capturing a threshold state. I’m not necessarily focussed on photographic techniques and things will distract me from being in the situation, the reality of the there and then. I suppose I enjoy apprehending events that none of us will never know are real or not.
Your work also balances the clean pared back aesthetic with the mystic. How did you arrive at this approach?
I’m a devotee of physical movement: I have practiced Yoga for many years, and once upon a time was devoted to ballet. I find that movement and its artistic corollary, video, can become a meditative form in some ways. For example, I find long loops of repetitive action, while I hope they are aesthetically intriguing, also encourage a meditative, open minded state of awareness.
I don’t really think of myself as a photographer as such. I trained in drawing at the VCA, and we were encouraged to use any mediums we wanted. I was focussing on hand made work, small sculptures of micro-worlds using craft techniques. At one point I photographed small dioramas and was surprised at how well they worked as larger 2D images. They had an eerie quality which did start to hint at mystical states or “otherness”.
I think the mystic can be quite simple when getting into a flow state, such as a zone for making art and appreciating it’s outcomes. For me, it’s getting an idea, starting it quite quickly , developing my ideas visually as part of the process, and often not knowing the full meaning until its finished further down the track.
How important is it to you that an audience is left imagining their own explanation for the puzzling enigmas that arise from your work?
Imaginative interpretation is something I enjoy both as an artist and a viewer of art. When you are looking at an image, imagination can be a form of psychoanalysis. However it’s not important for me to feel my work is understood in a certain way by the audience.
Your work from time to time also includes elements of installation. How do you negotiate the relationship between two and three dimensional works?
Although I started working in 2D, paintings and drawings, I actually really enjoy craft and 3D work! Most of my work has some 3D element that I’ve physically constructed in it. I always prefer to have something hand-made in my videos and images or the process of it. I do like to capture and build environments, and I am working towards creating more immersive installations.
How important is temporality to your work? Do you refer to past occurrence in a historical setting?
Please Be Seated Doctors Will See You Shortly 1, Mina Young, 2020. Digital Video, black obsidian. Dimensions Variable.
Temporality is not really important to my work. I do draw from historical occurrences and settings but tend not to refer back to these sources specifically when making new work. I like the here and now, just going with: the moment, a feeling; and subconsciously, ideas and associations sometimes appear in the work through serendipity. I mentioned The Batcatchers previously as an admired work from my early life, and now I realise that the focal point of the work of mine you see here actually looks like a bit bat like! It’s not surprising really, I think of experiencing art like a Rorsharch or TAT test. These associations can be drawn from our subconscious.
Cover Image; Please Be Seated Doctors Will See You Shortly 3, Mina Young, 2020. Still from Digital Video, incl. pencil drawing, false eyelashes, black obsidian. Dimensions variable.
