I first met Charlotte Haywood in a dark gallery space with My Neighbour Totoro playing in the background. It was the afterparty for the NSW Emerging Visual Arts Fellowship Ceremony, a competition that she was a finalist for. Though it was our first time meeting, we had initially spoken—via her agent—some apologies for a rescheduled interview. Our initial chat was scheduled for a few days prior to the event, but due to some issues, had to be moved to the week after. My worries of interviewing her were, unsurprisingly, at an all time high.
With her eccentric taste in style and warm bright smile, thankfully Charlotte shooed all my worries away. Her passion for the environment and protecting both the people and land have made her a beacon in our arts scene. So it’s no surprise that she has come so far in her very fascinating career. Speaking to her about this and more on an early morning call gave me an insightful look into what art should mean to ourselves, and the community.
Writing by Rahemma Azwar. Images courtesy of Anna Kucera and the artist.
Mythkit: resonance + manifestations, 2024, Charlotte Haywood
Rahemma Azwar: Congratulations on being chosen as a finalist! How did you feel about being shortlisted for the fellowship?
Charlotte Haywood: It felt great as a regional artist, and as an independent artist, as I'm not represented. And I dipped in but mainly dipped out of the institution. So it's great to be up there with such incredibly diverse voices and practices. The other artists made the journey so much more exciting. Within the fellowship, I've heard that can be quite catty or competitive. But it just felt like this beautiful little family.
RA: It’s so nice to hear that within your group there was such strong companionship. I want to talk about your art piece. When you walk in, it just engulfs you. How did you decide to explore these future ecologies through the different spectrum of orchid varieties? What made you want to explore all these environmental themes?
CH: I've been exploring orchids for the last few years and working with the Daintree Rainforest Observatory and the Australian Tropical Herbarium. I'm interested in how orchids have been represented through the gaze of commodification—it aligned with women and the female form, and that commodity of fetishising women and nature. I also worked with some really interesting artists and musicians up in Kuku Yalanji country. For me, the underlying intention is: what is our relationship to the living Earth, each other, and non-human species? And it's nothing new. It's how most or all indigenous peoples have existed in the world in the right relationship with the planet and the animals.
RA: What was the soundtrack you used at the exhibit? I'm so curious to know did you come up with it. What was the development process of making the sounds that we would hear when seeing your work?
CH: That piece was very intuitive. It was really about this idea of bringing together these really diverse practitioners across science, music, cultural knowledge systems, and bringing them to a unique spot. So it's a very awkward and vulnerable space because often, but in setting the right intentions, it can be great.
One of the harpists led by working in resonance. She was responding energetically to these opposites and allowing everybody in that space to feel a frequency within their body, and then on the count of three hum it, and everybody had the exact same note. It was beautiful to witness that. Aside from that, I'm recording in response to that environment. The final process for me is to sonically weave those elements together because weaving is a big part of my practice. I use that in the sense of weaving collaborators or ecologies together. I feel like it embodies the nature of life itself.
RA: You speak about it like this project is your baby—you’ve put your heart and soul into this, but it's also such a collaborative effort. It feels like it's the outcome of a community. When you're in the space itself, you can really feel that.
CH: All art and artistic practices are like that—there's all those networks and communities that are built. You don't stand alone as an artist. Especially in the future, it has to be about that collaboration. It’s symbiotic cultural making, and we are the fruiting bodies of these relationships and networks and stories that build those outcomes within the gallery spaces. They're not where the real crux of the work is. It's those relationships that are so important.
RA: Your multi-disciplinary work doesn’t have one specific medium. What your journey into art and getting into this space? What how has it led to today, making the work that you do? And what little influences have you picked up along the way?
CH: I studied at East Sydney Tech and took a fashion design. However, I never operated well in an institution—I felt always like an outsider. But I was very interested in textiles, so I spent six months afterwards in India working and living with different families and these master weavers. I found that a deep immersion into somebody's everyday practice, where they're living and breathing for their community really resonated with me.
Eventually, I moved out of the city and have been out up here in Byron Shire since. I've been doing a project recently where they've been working on this space of creative disaster recovery. That's one of my big questions and drives: what is the role of art and the artist in an ecological crisis? And how can we be of service to our communities?. And across all that, there are all various degrees of collaborators. It's that idea of weaving all these sorts of different ideas and processes to create something new together that feels life-giving and emergent.
RA: You mentioned that you have a really big passion for biodiversity coexistence, and how as artists, you can help out the environment during a crisis. What sparked this passion for the environment and meeting in this space?
CH: I'm first generation Australian, and I was looking into the history of invasion and genocide. I’m looking into that and going “Look at these atrocities and histories that haven't been told properly. Look at this land management that hasn't had the care and understanding for this place.” Those stories relate to plants and culture, which gave me that lens that I've been looking into—the historical relationships with people in plants and land. And having worked through the floods up in the Northern Rivers and the bushfires, coming together as a community and just seeing the impacts of the climate crisis and what's to come becomes more apparent. I really felt as an artist that I'm not making art to sell. It's there to have an impact on my community. And I think that's how art and culture was, and then the commodification of it took over like everything else.
RA: You looked a lot at the history of land and people. During your research was there anything that has stayed with you?
CH: I realized the implicitness of being a first-generation Australian and the atrocities that humans can do to other humans. I’m complicit in my heritage and the injustice to various cultures. That is at the crux of it: Justice. Do I carry that with me in the land? Maybe it is still me being incredibly ideal and naive. But you can't stop the fight, you have to fight to the end. And I think that's the same with climate activism. I am an activist, but I'm softer. There's all different roles for activists and I'm probably more on the side of “How can I care for and nourish those activists at the frontline?”.
RA: People don't realize how important those who are caring for the people are to the movement. With the whole group together, that's what makes the movement much more powerful, rather than just individuals.
CH: It isn’t an individual hero situation. It takes a community and there's a role for everyone. I always thought “Oh, you've got to at the front,” but my anxiety levels go out. So I decided to make some food and music. How do you still bring joy to those really volatile spaces? I really think as the future comes quickly, we need to find those little glimmers of joy with each other and cultivate those, otherwise you burn out.
RA: The term traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) repeatedly pops up with your projects. Can you talk about TEK and how it impacts your art?
CH: It's quite slippery because it's sort of a non-Indigenous term. I worked with Australia's leading ethnobotanist, who works to elevate and secure Indigenous knowledge so that it's there for future communities to look at. When you look at that TEK in any place, it's the knowledge that has been there since the beginning of time, it's thousands of years old relationships. It's not like Western science, where biology is siphoned away from each other. I work with people to try amplify the voices of those knowledge systems to sit alongside Western science— to say this is just as valid, if not more. It’s mainly through orally told and not written down, so it’s seen as not valid.
RA: Looking back at your career, what are some of the most memorable moments or projects that have been significant in shaping your artistic identity?
CH: My last show Future Nostalgia I feel really was a combination of my work as a costume designer, my work as a tapestry maker, my love of food, and how that brings people together. I like that idea of the people I met working on this project now, which I'm calling an opera of the senses, playing with that idea of democratizing opera. What is opera? And then how can we work? With the more than human world? How can we work in a sensory way—all your senses are switched on: smelling, tasting, seeing.
RA: How do you envision your work evolving in response to the ongoing environmental crisis and the societal changes?
CH: I would like to see more artists and more creatives involved in creative disaster recovery. I just think that in an ecological crisis, we need more creative collaborative minds working together to either bring ideas or cohesion. How do we get more creativity into those spaces? That's sort of advocacy as well.
RA: Making sure that your art has an impact. It’s not just to be seen and look pretty.
CH: It's moving beyond that now. It has to be. Before art or culture had a real place in the community. And so how do we bring that back?
Explore more of Charlotte’s art on Instagram at @charlottehaywood and https://www.charlottehaywood.com.au/