Izzy Waite: Collaging useless, utilitarian objects, architectural vignettes, and Kesha, Niki Colet

June 2023

A few days before our interview, Izzy Waite texted me to ask about ice cream. “I’m making you a sundae for your studio visit,” she said. Later, as the sun set through the bay windows of her Lewisham home-slash-studio, Waite told me, “I’m making objects, but I’m also thinking about what to do with them.” She gestured towards a set of ceramic bowls she had made, pieces crafted as part of a larger collection of “useless, utilitarian objects.” Waite’s works pose the question: What does it mean for an object to be a vessel for a moment? “Today, I wanted to invite you in with a sundae specifically because I made these bowls… they’re funny little versions of 1950s diner sundae bowls that I can intentionally put ice cream in to have a moment with someone. That’s a special time.” Charmingly clunky, with rough surfaces that undulate, Waite’s ceramic pieces reflect subtly unconventional notions of everyday objects, familiar but ever so slightly off-kilter. A banana bowl with a pit in the middle to prevent bruising. Not-quite ice cream bowls for sundaes with friends. Objects that hold, but also reflect how we live — our tendencies, annoyances, little thrills. Oh, to pick up a banana from one’s kitchen counter and enjoy it completely unbruised!

The comment about orchestrating (and curating) special everyday moments was in the context of a conversation about Waite’s journey towards her current practice as both artist and curator. “I started making works about these intimate moments I was having with people. They all are representative of a memory and I try to show the feeling of that memory. I don’t want to be representational, but I’m still trying to represent.” Her work, on both sides, explores the sublime found in everyday life, the euphoria of intimacy in ordinary experiences, yet acknowledges the fictioning present within these recollections.

While illustrating the nuances in both artistic and curatorial trajectories, Waite explains that what one had, the other didn’t, and vice versa. Throughout her masters in curation at Goldsmiths, curating was formalized and theoretical — mentally stimulating but removed from the act of creation. Artmaking felt dynamic and fun but what made it satisfying for Waite was the potential of connection that she found most prominently in curation. “While studying curating, I kept finding myself wanting to be the artist. I wanted to plan it, and then I wanted to do it. I still wanted to work with other people but I couldn’t fully be just the planner. So I started to see my two practices collide, and that’s where I’m at now. I’m making objects but I’m also thinking about what to do with them.” Since pursuing her masters, Waite’s curatorial practice has included projects such as Pigeon Pavilion (2020), a park-based exhibition series featuring work encompassing a range of mediums meant to engage pigeons, in order to provide a safe space for people to go out, see something, and interact in the middle of a pandemic as well as How Do You Say Yes? (2020) for Cubitt Artists’. How Do You Say Yes? was a recorded conversation series between Waite, her collaborator Ciar O’Mahony, Cubitt Artists’ Director Amal Khalaf and Canada-based Agnes Etherington Art Centre Director Emelie Chhangur which created a space to discuss the similarities between Khalaf and Chhangur’s use of the institution and its role as material to develop programmes and new ways of working.

How to create moments that examine ways of living, or simply celebrate moments of joy, alongside the emerging role of authorship within recollection— this is what seems to preoccupy Waite’s practice. “I’m starting to facilitate these daily moments of interaction. The work no longer becomes something you have to go and see. In a way, it’s finding that place between craft and fine art. I would say the difference that separates the work from craft would be that I have an intention for this interaction I want people to have with it. It’s not just ‘I’m making a bowl, you buy the bowl, you know what to do with a bowl.’ The object becomes a part of your life, and you create a memory with it.”

Alongside her ceramic pieces are a set of paintings about personal, deeply formative moments for the artist. Waite’s paintings, in her own words, are glimpses into moments of intimacy through dissections of architecture. One canvas (painted to resemble a home’s facade encountered by Waite during her one-hour state-sanctioned walks during lockdown), sprawls out into cracked brown tile and mossy green foliage. “[During the pandemic] I was following the rules really well. I would go on these long, solo walks. Any type of interaction was between me and inanimate things. I’d be on the phone with my parents, but then to find joy or have a moment, I started noticing how many textures are in England versus where I came from. There was this one house on Telegraph Hill that I would pass. I was so enamored by the way the light would hit it,how all of these different textures created all of these shadows… It was like you could touch it and feel a thousand things. So now I’m trying to create that feeling.”

Another, a painting that zones in on a detail — the pattern of a wall of her boyfriend’s former home — is a flare of green, ensconcing the viewer in a sense of serenity before a commonplace, homely-kitsch palm tree pattern. Its backdrop resembles a textured paint wall, evoking nostalgic memories of times marked by earlier architectural and interior trends. It is difficult to separate the work from its tender backstory, a souvenir, almost, of the fragile and intense first beginnings of a new relationship. “This is a replica, an abstraction, of a wall in my boyfriend’s flat when I met him. He [had] moved to this really dingy place in Bethnal Green right next to the station. The entryway had a really dirty, textured, palm leaf-like scraping. It was almost a fresco but badly done. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. because when I was thinking, ‘I’m going to see Michael,’ I was also thinking of this grungy building. When he moved to a new place, I felt like I would miss it. This wall was a reminder of a place where we experienced a lot of early intimacy and where we really got to know each other. He had a really stressful job at the time, so we were meeting up at like midnight and leaving at six AM because we had to go back to work. This, for me, symbolized those early difficult days and I needed to remember that, that we got through it, and it was there, in that dodgy little place.” 

Niki Colet: Where did your current practice as an artist and a curator start to develop, while you were studying Fine Art at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design?

Izzy Waite: I was really struggling with my thesis in undergrad because I was trying to introduce certain concepts to my work and I didn’t know how to. One night, I got really drunk with my roommates. We came home, turned on a black light in our living room, and we put on these funny gold outfits. We turned on some Kesha and started dancing and dancing and dancing, trashed, under this black light. We didn’t even move the coffee table. We were just dancing in circles around it. The feeling in that moment was so strong that I felt like I had to remake it. And so I started making what I felt would be a representation of the moment. I went on to isolate other moments that had a similar effect on me and began creating somewhat architectural vignettes or collages of these moments that I started to notice.

What was it about those moments that you wanted to capture? What kind of feelings were you trying to hold on to?

I think it was the platonic intimacy. In those moments we felt free. I felt like I had connected to this person or people and there was a general feeling of being safe. A lot of these moments are usually at the beginning of a friendship. It’s usually that moment when I realize, “oh, we’re close now.” And then I need to capture it. The older I get, the more I want to highlight the good stuff. We live in a time of complete uncertainty. And then you have these moments between each other where you can remember that other people are the only thing getting us through anything right now. Most of the people I know don’t lean on their family a lot. Especially in a place like London, where most of us are transplants. So you have to find family. There’s this queer aspect of needing to form some kind of unit, and a lot of these moments happen in these formations.

I get that. Things can be light. So what happened after undergrad?

I was noticing some of these curatorial tendencies I was having. Especially with my thesis and the work I made right before that. I started to create bits and pieces of more, say, installations, to try to piece together my experience for the viewer. So much of that relied on installation and space and creating external elements like sound. How do you create an atmosphere? I had also just formed a collective. It was more curatorial … we were doing a lot of local event planning and ran a biannual zine where we would highlight community submissions. It was the sum of the things I found myself doing which made me think I needed to lean into the curatorial side of things. So I came to London and studied Curating at Goldsmiths.

With your thesis do you feel like your practice became more curatorial than practice-based?

It felt like these actions were still art-making but I was learning that maybe the objects themselves didn’t matter as much. I had this breakthrough of, ‘I don’t need to paint, I can just make these sculptures’. Then it was, ‘what if I remove them altogether’. Throughout my masters, my curatorial tendencies were formalized, which I enjoyed, but I kept thinking, oh, based on what we just learned today, I’m so inspired to go make this thing. I kept finding myself wanting to be the artist. I wanted to plan it and then I wanted to do it. I wanted to work with other people but I couldn’t fully be just the planner. So I started to see the two really collide and that’s where I’m at now. I’m making objects, but I’m also thinking about what to do with them.

What were things you did or went through or learned in your MFA that changed how you were thinking of things?

At one point I was introduced to the theory of friendship as practice. It’s kind of anthropological in that you can accomplish so much by studying a person or a thing or environment but you have to do it through true friendship to actually get to a place of trust and comfort. It would [entail] actually getting to know communities affected (for instance, by Covid), becoming close with them, learning what affected them, how they were affected, what the long term consequences are, and then creating based on those deeper emotions and deeper understanding. Actually having that connection strengthens whatever you’re doing.

Do you think the theory of friendship plays a role in your current practice? Because I feel like there are so many parallels…

I think it does and I think that [it was good to] finally put to words a way I was working… [and] into the idea that there is merit to creating from a place of knowing and care and platonic space.

Izzy Waite is a London-based artist and curator originally from the United States. Across her creative practices, Izzy questions the agency of intimacy through the facilitation of dialogue and creation of objects which refer back to her own lived experience. She holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London and a BFA in New Studio Practice from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.

Niki Colet is a writer, musician, and cultural producer based in London. A recent graduate of the Central Saint Martins MA Culture, Criticism and Curation, Niki's curatorial practice is rooted in a passion for social engagement, collectivity, care, intersectionality, and accessibility in the arts. Her background as a singer-songwriter, poet, and contributing arts and culture writer cultivates a particular fascination with the romance found in the everyday within all forms of art. More of her writing and music can be found on her Substack newsletter, Voice Notes.