In the studio with… Nicola Rae

How long have you been at APT?
Since 1995, when the King George Street artists came to Deptford Creek and doubled their number of artists becoming Art in Perpetuity Trust (APT).

Describe APT in three words...
Community, Collective, Co-creative

What is your practice and how do you like to work in your studio? 
My practice involves a range of media and is often site responsive or led by an interest in scientific experiments and research data. Since 2008 my installations have included sound visualisation, projection and analogue equipment.

Working in the studio takes place in cycles usually in response to preparing work for exhibitions. Currently I am in the process of making work for SPACE Lab [co-creative art astronomy experiments] opening on 16th and 18th February at APT Gallery. Co-curated by Ulrike Kuchner and myself, this has been a year-long project of developing collaborations between artists and scientists as well as workshops in four local schools (see links below). My collaboration has been with Gravity Lab based in Nottingham and I am developing a series of experiments inspired by their analogue research into black holes. Some of the processes that I am working with are complex and often fail in some way and so each experiment has to be adapted (again and again!). My husband Paul Malone, who also has a studio at APT, is incredibly good at helping me to develop technical solutions and we often discuss possible ways of making ideas happen over a cup of tea.

Which artists have influenced you?
Seeing Steina and Woody Vasulka’s work at Raven Row in 2016 has been an influence more recently. I was amazed that I had not heard of them before this show and how they founded The Kitchen in New York. Another artist whose work interests me is Pavel Buchler particularly his work with analogue equipment like Eclipse.

What is the most unusual thing someone might find in your studio?
1995 is my 1981 Sanyo cassette recorder and radio. It still works although one of the aerials has broken. The masking tape line is so that I can easily find Resonance FM, my preferred listening in the studio. I have never bought a more modern one as this one works fine.

My interest in working with older equipment in my installations started in 2015 when I included my Dad’s cameras and projectors in an exhibition in Italy called ‘Perduto Padre’. My Dad never used tripods as he liked to capture the moment, but his cameras became a presence on the 1950s tripods in this exhibition. This was when my collection of older tripods started.

Scroll down for details of Nicola’s up and coming show at APT Gallery, SPACE Lab