A conversation with the Australian-Malaysian-British painter Nadine Talalla
'I paint women because I'm searching for myself. And actually I think it's what all women do with imagery of our sex: We search for ourselves, whether it's in advertising, porn or art.'
I met Nadine Talalla at a New Year’s Day brunch at a mutual friend’s house in Queen’s Park, North West London in 2018. We both had toddlers in tow, which meant a) we were the only ones at the party not devastatingly hungover and b) we spent half the party changing nappies together in the sitting room with Paw Patrolblaring while the rest of the guests got on with administering a hair-of-dog cure in the kitchen.
And we hit it off straight away. She’s clever, effervescently funny and talks even faster than I do. Following Nadine’s train of thought often feels like trying to catch a firefly in a jar, but my god, it’s worth it. She’s one of those rare people who manages to be both charmingly naive, almost bubbly, yet somehow also mysterious. The reason, I think, is that she’s just impossible to categorise. Her looks are arresting (thick dark hair, ENORMOUS eyes, accent like Princess Margaret) and she seems to somehow be from everywhere in the world all at once (Australia, Malaysia and Britain). It actually took years for me to piece together Nadine’s unusual backstory and one of the reasons I wanted to interview her on Juvenescence was to give her forum to unpack it in full, for the record — both for you, my readers, and also for posterity. It really is like a kind of Dickens tale for the 21st Century, so I hope you enjoy it.
I became curious about Nadine’s work as a painter after we organised a fundraiser together for the local nursery both of our children attended. Nadine generously donated several pieces of original art to the charity raffle and I managed to win one of her watercolours (Dusk Lady — pictured below).
It now sits on my bedroom mantle, one of my most treasured pieces in an otherwise rather haphazard ‘collection.’ Now when we get together we mostly talk about art and books and cinema and craft and process and work, and far less about the sort of ‘mum stuff’ that brought us together in the first place. Frank and Ella are still the best of friends and their frenzied giggle-drunk play often seems like an extension of bond between us as women. I so love it when a ‘mum friendship’ evolves into something richer and more lasting.
A few months back Nadine texted me out of the blue and said she wanted to collaborate on a project. I was slightly hesitant (as a writer I struggle with cooperation in the sandbox). But we arranged a lunch and after we’d ordered I turned to Nadine and said bluntly I did not want to disappoint her but I had no interest in doing a children’s book.
“Oh god! Nor do I,” she said laughing and making a sour face. “Is that what you thought I wanted?”
So we’re officially not doing a children’s book. However we are collaborating on an upcoming project. It’s very exciting and currently underway and while I can’t reveal much too much about it yet but I will say it involves me writing, Nadine painting and me, um… taking my clothes off, which I find strangely easy to do, probably because I’ve been laying myself bare in words for most of my writing life.
If you want to hear a bit more about our little project, an unedited transcript as well as the audio of our interview — which we conducted with me in the bath and Nadine sitting on the toilet of the upstairs bathroom in my house in Kensal Rise — is available for paid subscribers on the homepage of the Juvenescence. Just hit the button below and upgrade to paid if you’re curious.
(Apologies in advance for the bit where my elder son comes in to talk about football practice. I couldn't be arsed with editing it out and it’s actually rather on-point in terms of the way Nadine and I have always blurred the lines between motherhood and work in our relationship.)
You’ll be seeing and hearing more from Nadine, but in the meantime, consider yourselves introduced. I hope you enjoy our fascinating wide-ranging conversation. You can also follow her on Instagram at @nadinetalallafineartstudiowhere, among other things, you will find a couple of images of me — with my clothes on.
LM: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
NT: I’m a forty-two year old artist, I’m half Australian and half Malaysian… from childhood I was educated in Malaysia and then I went to boarding school in England. I am a painter and I paint primarily pictures of women and I don't paint them for a male standard of perfection.
LM: Are you comfortable telling your backstory, because it’s quite amazing and backstory. You don’t have to go into it in detail.
NT: Well it’s a very long and convoluted story and I certainly don’t want to bore your readers —
LM: Oh just give us a taste. The reason I ask is because I feel like you are one of those people I’ve occasionally come across in London in the sense that you’re sort of from a whole bunch of different places, meaning you’re a real child of the world.
NT: Well it sounds more international than it actually was because instead of travelling around to these places and having homes in each one I sort of stayed in one place for quite a long time before moving to another place and I became a citizen of each place.
So I was a product of a teenage mother in the Outback of Australia. She came from a very working class, low socio-economic background. It was very different because there was no interracial marriages in that area. There were Aboriginals and they lived in one area and then there were white Australians. So when my mother happened to get pregnant by someone from Malaysia who happened to be passing through town in this very obscure area of rural Australia, it was quite shocking that I was of mixed parentage. And I ended up living with my grandparents who are Malaysia. I went to boarding school in Malaysia, it was called the Royal School. But it was quite complicated politically in Malaysia because my father’s family were from the Christian minority and because of that they did not believe in me having an education where women weren’t given the same rights as men. So they decided to educate me in England, so it was decided that I should move to the UK.
LM: Of course, England. A completely free and equal society in every way…
[caustic laughter]
NT: Well unfortunately my grandparents weren’t aware of a thing called the nineties and something called electronic dance music so it fell through a little bit.
[more caustic laughter]
LM: So were they expecting to get back this lovely demure English rose?
NT: Yeah. And that’s not quite what they got. Most like a rotten rose.
LM: You went to a very posh En called Stowe, what was it like?
NT: Well it was very English and ‘establishment.’ And in the late 80s, early 90s there weren’t many children of mixed race in traditional boarding schools either so it I was again the odd one out.
LM: Would that be different from today?
NT: Oh yes I’m sure. Now those schools are much more international, but back then it was much more of a homogenous landscape. I would say I felt like an outsider, but having said that I really enjoyed it. I had a very haphazard traumatic childhood so having that sort of structure and support and being in a wealthier strata where there was a lot of art and I could do lots of different activities. It sort of made me into the person I am today. I think it was a real privilege.
After boarding school I felt completely anglicised so I decided to take a gap year to China because my grandfather’s brother had been an ambassador and we having some Chinese background and Mandarin is so important, so I was able to study at the Beijing Language Cultural University and I was able Chinese painting and language and cultural studies and that was wonderful. And afterward I wanted to come back to and go to art school in London, but my grandparents decided that they weren’t going to waste a whole bunch more money on me if I was going to go do a Mickey Mouse course like painting. So they tried very hard to make me do a law degree or an accountancy degree or some sort of degree that was more socially acceptable from an Asian perspective. And so when it became clear I wasn’t going to do that I was told that I could go to Australia because being an Australian passport holder it was free.
LM: Wow. So it was like, ‘We want her to have all the choices in the world… just within certain very strict parameters’ then?"
NT: I would say that the defining characteristic of Asian parenting is control. [laughs]
LM: But you did go to art school then?
NT: Yes, I went to Melbourne which was considered the cultural capital of Australia. It’s very European and in many respects it much like London. And they shoot a lot of period pieces for cinema there because they have a lot of Victorian architecture that wasn’t destroyed by bombing…. it’s really like a small contained version of London.
LM: Is that where they shot Picnic At Hanging Rock? The one about all those girls who just mysteriously disappeared?
NT: No that was in the countryside in Victoria, so same state but different place. love that movie too, you know it’s based on a true story… it’s a cult movie.
LM: Absolutely chilling. Anyway — you go to Melbourne.
NT: Yes, I went to Melbourne and stayed for seven years. I did a BA, I did an honours then I did a Masters. So I studied a lot of art and I worked for a theatre company.
LM: You’re awfully educated for an artist. I’m beginning to worry your youth wasn’t very misspent.
NT: Oh I assure you it was. And Melbourne was a wonderful place to do it. It was very egalitarian, I was eating at high and low restaurants and listening to all kind of music and getting a real taste of cafe culture. I learned a lot about not just about art, but music which is a huge scene there, and I learned a lot about food and it really was a stepping stone to London in many respects because it was so much more sophisticated and cultural than say, the Outback.
LM: And how did you end up coming back?
NT: Well I almost didn’t. At the time I was considering going into arts administration. I was very interested in physical theatre at the time, circus performance in particular.
LM: You mean you almost became a circus performer?
NT: No I probably would have started my own circus. But the point was I think I knew that ultimately I was just a freak. I was very happy with my life in Melbourne, it’s a delightful place. I got very used to the seasons of the city and the arts community there. But then as I was finishing my master’s something very strange happened… many of the people around me who were very wild and crazy and artistic, they got married and started having babies and then they all moved to this horrible place called ‘the suburbs.’
[general laughter]
And before I knew it there was nobody really left except for crazy women like me who didn’t want to get married and other sorts of reprobates. Homosexuals and so on. And I realised that if I stayed in Melbourne I was probably going to end up in a state of arrested development as an artist because marvellous as it was, it was ultimately the sort of place where most people just eventually grow up. I mean most places are like that. So if you don't want to do that, you need to look for your people in bigger places. And then just around the same time some friends from boarding school came to visit — they were backpacking — and they told me all about this wonderful place where they lived called London, and I just thought… well I’m just finishing my Masters and I thought well I’ll just pop over for a tiny while. So I ended up coming to London for a short amount of time, just as a little stop gap before I went back to Melbourne and got a job. And I arrived here and basically I never left.
LM: Did you go to art school here as well?
NT: Well I studied. After some time here I did a very fascinating course which was called Turps Banana. It’s a studio program where you’re mentored by YBA’s — you’ve heard of the Young British Artists?
LM: Oh right the Groucho Club people.
NT: Yes, very much the Groucho Club people. [laughs] And the course was organised like a master’s but it wasn’t actually accredited. It was about painters helping painters. And that was enormously helpful because one of the problems of an arts education is that the actual practice and craft of painting, from a material perspective, it isn’t actually taught. So a lot of people do do master’s of painting and maybe they don’t even know how to mix a colour.
LM: Wait so they’d pre-mix the paint for you?
NT: In some cases yes. What I’m trying to say really is that the craft of painting is really a discipleship. You need to learn about not just the craft but you need to spend a lot of time really observing another painter to really understand it. And if you’re in a program where maybe your supervisor is not a painter it’s not going to happen. So there’s a real gap in the market in arts education in terms of teaching young artists the skills you need in order to become a working painter.
LM: I can see that. I didn’t go to creative writing school but I think even if I had it wouldn't have taught me half the stuff you really need to learn right off the bat as a writer — for instance how to guard your time, how to prepare and invoice, etc.
NT: Exactly. And I was lucky enough to be under Neal Tait, Marcus Harvey and Peter Ashton Jones… One of the interesting things of having mentors like that instead of being in, say a regular master’s program, is that these tutors were actually artists and had exhibited internationally and were prolifically exhibiting at the same stage as tutoring me and often that’s not the case. You might have a very good tutor but not one who actually practiced art.
LM: So it’s a ‘those who can’t teach’ sort of situation.
NT: Well I don't want to be unkind. But yes essentially.
LM: I suppose there are many people who are just wonderful teachers of craft even if they aren’t successful artists themselves and by the same token wonderful artists who just aren’t hardwired to teach…
NT: Yes, and being taught my practicing artists it was probably a little bit more chaotic but I definitely got a lot out of it. Oh, and I had another tutor I forgot to mention in that course called Anne Ryan who is a wonderful painter and tutor at the same time. I definitely got a lot out of that course. It was what jump started me to get a studio, which I did at at Tannery Studios which was fantastic and has a lot of very, very successful artists. And yeah, I just sort of went on from there.
LM: So this is going back to what? The early 2000s?
NT: 2007/2008.
LM: Interesting because I really came to London permanently around that time too. It was an interesting period wasn’t it? It felt like the end of a very decadent period before the crash.
NT: Yes, I do remember the all the nice champagne and the buoyancy before… you know.
LM: It was The Last Days of Disco basically. So what was it like then starting your apprenticeship as a painter in the middle of economic disaster?
NT: Well I think it was quite a lot easier than Brexit actually. I think Brexit has changed the scene a lot more than 2008 did. Because back then although the money dried up, there were still a lot of people from other countries, and while that’s still true of London, a lot of people have up and left.
LM: That’s interesting because one of the things I take great comfort in living here is that when the economy goes to shit, which it just seems to do every five or six years like clockwork — if you believe the tabloids here, every single winter is the Winter of Our Discontent. Anyway when that really happens, London just becomes very grim. But the grimness, the shitness of it all is really London’s natural state. It’s a place that does luxury and grandeur well but it’s also fantastic at being gloomy and depressing, so much so once you get used to it, you can really get into it. Just like, marinate in it and there’s a strange comfort and pleasure in that… do you know what I mean?
NT: Oh yes. Yes absolutely.
LM: But when that happens and everything goes to shit, rent often goes down and people leave and then you start to notice a proliferation of young artists moving in and squatting or whatever, because London is just one of those cities where young artists will always want to be and the reason why is simple: There’s just so much art, and you can see a lot of it for free, or almost free.
NT: Well I have a couple of things to say about that and the first thing is that yes it’s true that when people leave and rents go down it does provide an entree for young artists to move in but unfortunately from an arts education perspective the polarisation of society and the increase in tuition fees means that what happened in the YBA period in which people could go to art school for free is not happening anymore. And the result has been that the art world in London has in many ways gone back to where it was post-war where there aren’t any working class artists, at least not ones who went to art school, and so the art world becomes quite polarised between the haves and have nots.
LM: Yes it’s interesting the whole debate over tuition fees. I mean it makes perfect sense for accountancy and dentistry students to accrue a debt because they’re studying a profession that will enable them to pay it back. But if you’re an artist that’s not necessarily true. And yet an arts education is often very integral to the careers of most working visual artists, isn’t it?
NT: Yes exactly. And another complicating factor is that fact that these courses are very hard courses to maintain. They require a lot of space and equipment. Each student needs their own studio and so on. So from a university perspective it’s very tricky because they don’t have the same numbers of people going into paid employment and yet they have to create these expensive courses… and in the end it becomes a lot less desirable from an institutional perspective.
LM: It’s a common complaint that for a while not the whole London art scene has been infiltrated by international rich kids. Do you consider yourself one of them or not?
NT: Well yes and no. Certainly in terms of my public school education, that was certainly a school for very rich international children. I wouldn’t say it was an amusement park exactly but it was a privilege that’s not open to everyone.
LM: How did you settle on your dominant subject matter: Women?
NT: Well when I first started painting women it wasn’t very trendy or cool. I mean women have always been painted but it’s usually in a domestic setting so perhaps because of that it wasn’t really of any interest to anybody. But over time that began to change. From a very young age I’ve been very interested in women from the past and they ways they’ve managed to subvert the system and not conform to gender.
LM: A lot of your work has a very period feel.
NT: Yes, and it’s interesting because I don’t belong to that period. There are two different reasons for this and the first one I think is mystery. One of the things that I find so interesting about many pictures of women from the past is that a lot of the time no one really bothered to say who they were. It’s not like with pictures of men where you get all this information. I started off going through old archives in the British Library and elsewhere and finding photos of women who no one had bothered to name or describe yet someone had taken the time to photograph. So that was very interesting because it enabled me to reinvestigate them and give them a story from my own perspective.
Secondly I think I’m searching for myself. And it’s what most women do with imagery of our sex, whether it’s in advertising, fine art or porn. And for me this was especially true because I’m a child of diaspora, a child of trauma. I didn’t spend a lot of time living with my own mother. I was sent to boarding school from a very young age. So I guess taking these pictures of these women, women who seemed ordinary, or dramatic or familiar or maybe women that I myself wanted to be like or look them — I would taken these women and I would sort of work with them, dissect them, reinterpret as a sort of process through which I might be able to find out who I am. And I don’t just work from photographs but other paintings, the Renaissance in particular, and also stories, fiction. Anywhere I can find women into whom can sort of insert my own narrative and get a better understanding of myself, if that makes sense?
LM: Yes it does.