Ruth Maddison - Photographer and visual artist

Ruth Maddison's visual work spans 5 decades. Her first photography exhibition was in Melbourne in 1979 and the collection was purchased complete by the National Gallery of Victoria.

Self-taught, Ruth was introduced to the camera and photo processing at the age of 30 by her house-mate Ponch Hawkes. She photographed people that she knew, processing the film and she quickly began getting paid work. Subsequent commissions and exhibitions replicated her success. 

Ruth moved to Eden on the south coast of NSW in the mid-90s and the location has influenced her work profoundly. Living in a small town, she photographed the lives of the community including teenagers, fisherman and the local chipping/sawmill industries, as well as documenting the landscape with polaroids, lumen prints and camera-less photography.

Fascinated by the lives of ordinary people, Ruth's work has moved beyond photography and now includes other image making. Her recent show at SECCA in Bega exhibited covid-related embroidered doilies, stained by unknown families and her grandmother's tablecloth. 

Ruth is still working.

{Last seconds: Sound of a wave crashing onto Aslings Beach in Eden}

Transcript

Are You Still Working?!
Series 2, Episode 6 - Ruth Maddison
===

Courtney: [00:00:00] Hello gorgeous listeners. Welcome to Are You Still Working? How to take your creative ideas seriously. I'm Courtney Collins and today I'm talking to Ruth Maddison.

Ruth Maddison is a self taught photographer and artist whose work is a celebration of everyday existence. Ruth began working as a professional photographer In 1976, encouraged [00:00:30] by her friend photographer Ponch Hawkes, to pick up a camera and use the darkroom in their share house. Ruth's artistic practice evolved to include moving image, textiles and sculpture.

She's renowned for her hand coloured photographs of domestic life. And after much of her life spent in Melbourne, she relocated to Eden on the south coast of New South Wales. where she's continued to enjoy critical and commercial success. Oh, and Ruth is 79 years of age [00:01:00] and still working. This conversation took place via Zoom.

Ruth and Lisa were on Yuin Country, and I was on Gambangia Country.

So many questions, but I guess the one that we like to begin with is, how did you learn to take your creative ideas seriously?

Ruth: Mm. That's a question. I guess because. The first series of work that I did that I offered for exhibition, [00:01:30] which took me a long time to get to that point, I mean a long time mentally to get to that point, was accepted and was shown at the Ewing Gallery 

at Melbourne University in 1979. This is a series of hand coloured photographs called Christmas Holiday with Bob's Family. And I took them to the Ewing Gallery well, I hadn't considered them in that light, but other people were saying to me, you know, this is great, go and do this. And the Ewing [00:02:00] Gallery seemed open to possibly work of that nature, they were showing a lot of women's work at that time so I did go and that work was exhibited there and was bought complete by the National Gallery of Victoria while the show was on the wall.

Jenny Boddington, who was curator at the National Gallery of Victoria at the time, came in to see the show and then rang me a couple of days later to say she wanted to buy the series. [00:02:30] And then. There was a number of series because I was doing each one and thinking, this isn't good enough, I'll do another one sort of thing.

So there ended up being four complete sets. And the following year the National Gallery of Australia bought a complete set. So that was kind of like, oh, maybe I've got something happening here, really. Because I'd started Take Photos three years before that exhibition self taught and had been working as a part [00:03:00] time driver at Crawford Productions, a TV production company in Richmond and over those three years had started you know, using the camera. Anyway, that was the start when I first thought, maybe I can drop the Part time driving because I was doing freelance work already at that stage paid work. 

After that exhibition in 79, the following year, I had an exhibition in Sydney at the Australia Centre for Photography and that was another series of photographs, black and white with two hand coloured. It was actually a wedding series called When a Girl Marries and the National Gallery of Australia bought that set complete as well. So it was like, okay, I have a career. 

Courtney: So what was the moment you first picked up the camera?

What was that about?

Ruth: well, I was living in a group household and there was a darkroom in the [00:03:30] house because two people in the house, Ponch Hawkes and Larry Meltzer, were using the darkroom, Ponch particularly, she said to me, if you ever want to pick up the camera I'll show you how to process the film, you know, it's basically like cooking. A certain amount of chemicals in this case. Certain temperature, certain time, etc. So, made it very accessible. And I had my first roll of film. Very exciting. And then, she put me through that first. This [00:04:00] is how you start making prints. And that was it.

After that, I was on my own. So really I just started photographing people that I know, who at the time happened to be a lot of artists of various kinds. Performers in theatre and film performers, musicians, the household was a Circus Oz Pram Factory Theatre household, except for me.

And I would Hang out at the theatre during rehearsals, and process and print the film, and if there were [00:04:30] ones that I liked, I would give them to whoever. And ultimately, Before too long, really, started getting paid work for publicity shots and for acting agencies, theatre, production, publicity, rock and roll, for unions, a lot of union work, magazines health services, um, working with journalists, doing freelance work, , a lot of work for the Age and the National Times, just through people that I knew working in all of these different areas, [00:05:00] Everyone I knew needed images And then meanwhile, just photographing everyday life, you know, which has kind of always Been a main interest and subject during my career, really. because I loved it. It's like I found the camera and there was my mojo, you know, like there was my thing.

I was already 30, failed two first year university courses years before, after high school, got pregnant, got [00:05:30] married. Had two more kids, you know, three kids, got divorced, had a number of unqualified jobs in, you know, hospitality, service industry and so on. And, yeah, as soon as I picked it up, it was like entree to the world of, tell me a story, I want to take your photos, kind of thing.

You know, it felt right. 

Courtney: What do you think your career has, for four decades now, the mojo has held nearly five,

Ruth: five, 48 years. 

Courtney: Wow. It's impressive. Is the hook for you The image, the storytelling, like what are the hooks for you in the medium?

Ruth: In relation to photography My primary interest has been, [00:07:00] the lives of us who don't make the headlines, who don't run the war machine, who aren't the politicians, who don't have bucket loads of money. We are us. I'm interested in recreational life, domestic life, family life, working life, and tell me the story of your life, and I will use some of that text with the image.

That's really often how my social [00:07:30] documentary work has been. 

I'm really interested in all the things that unite us rather than the things that separate us.

And I credit that primarily To my grandmother, I grew up in an extended family. three of my grandparents, one I didn't know, my father's father, who was Russian, died way before I was born when my father was very young. But my mother's parents also both Russian.

Well, one [00:08:00] Odessa, so Ukrainian now, but Russia at the time. And I grew up in an extended family. And my grandmother. would tell me stories about growing. She left Russia as a teenager in the late 1800s, so Tsarist Russia. Went from Russia to Odessa, to Kremenchuk, to Lebanon, to Melbourne. So this incredible life 

And she would tell me stories. you know, like we are all a mixture of ordinary and extraordinary is something that I often say because I [00:08:30] just believe that and I always want to know the story. Tell me the story of your life, because it's of interest to me.

So the camera just opened that up. 

Over the years my photography work has expanded beyond that to include image making as well.

Courtney: So Ruth, I understand that you are self taught, what are the ways that you taught yourself?

How did you find a process that worked for you?

Ruth: I guess I'd say it's like [00:09:00] everything else that you learn by repetition. like, the way you learn anything is by doing it, and doing it, and then critically looking at the product, the outcome, and thinking about that. 

you look at the image and then, If you feel like it's not working or something's not right I guess the process you're going through consciously, unconsciously, is why is it?

what's not working. So it's about learning [00:09:30] what's in frame, and when you look through the camera, instead of just point, shoot, point, shoot, you look through the camera and you kind of run your eyes around the four edges of that frame, , despite the fact that Very often you get surprised that there's something there that you missed but somehow becomes integral, you know.

And you start to realise over a period of time that you have a particular style, which can also change, you know, [00:10:00] but you do what you do because you're you.

Courtney: Hmm I love that. Is there a sense that the finished work or the work that you want to present pleases you that it's passed through those criticisms and self, judgments and standards that you're setting. 

Ruth: Yes, you feel good about it. I mean, if it's in there, it's because you feel good about it. my biggest problem is I make so many goddamn prints of the one thing. It was the same when I was in the darkroom and now [00:10:30] digitally, because I think I make a print and that's not good enough, that's not good enough, that's not good enough.

And then I finally have one that I think is good enough. And meanwhile I have this pile of prints And then, months later and I look at them and go, what the hell was wrong with number one?

It's this terrible thing. 

Courtney: Wow. 

Ruth: I do have a reason. It's not like that's a shit print. I can look at it and say, Oh, maybe a bit more saturation or maybe a bit lighter here, or [00:11:00] I didn't fix up the highlights, you know, like it is kind of all sorts of reasons at the time.

It's just later when look at these six discarded prints and think at least four of them would have been totally fine. What a waste of paper and ink. 

Courtney: You have to be satisfied. 

Ruth: Yes.

Courtney: What are the ideal conditions for you in terms of, creating and the way you like to work?

Ruth: To have a brain that produces an idea

I mean, it's just living my life and, being open to [00:11:30] what comes in.

You know, you kind of pursue, you pursue, it's a process. You just have this idea that comes from the idea box that lives back there invisibly but something jumps out. 

Courtney: So, what are you doing now?

Ruth: I have an exhibition currently at SECCA, South East Centre for Contemporary Arts Bega Gallery. there are a couple of, inkjet paintings, prints in that show. But basically it's entirely different work. It's a series of 61 [00:12:00] embroidered doilies, COVID doilies. doilies that I sourced through op shops, and chain stitched 61 COVID related words and expressions onto. So, repurposed, abandoned, beautiful women's work. Doilies stained by unknown families.

And I've kind of bought them out of their abandonment and done other work on them also. associated with women's [00:12:30] work, embroidered in a contemporary context. And in a way, that body of work, although it's made entirely differently, new, never done anything like, never embroidered before, let alone, you know, done a project like that.

But in a way now when I look at it on the wall, it seems not so far away from the photography social documentary because the whole concept of working from home, which we were all doing, the connotation of working from which had always [00:13:00] historically been associated with women's work and to a certain degree, therefore, denigrated. but suddenly, men were working from home and children were schooling from home. So it's kind of shifted the context of working from home forever, you know? But that work somehow encompasses all of that, 

So that's one huge part of the show and the other part of the show that was entirely new to me was doodling, doodle drawing, as I came to call them, [00:13:30] which came about when I had an accident and was pretty much, immobile for quite a while. I was in hospital for three weeks, came home, not doing very much moving, couldn't go down to my studio, And, just started doing these doodlings with white pen on black paper and the connection becomes kind of threads because the doodles are a bit like all the ends of the embroidery thread. That I was cutting off at the end of each piece and every surface in the household was covered [00:14:00] in bits of embroidery thread and I don't know if you know about embroidery thread But if you kind of drop it, It just immediately goes into this squiggle like soft spaghetti or even more so because it's very light and The doodles the drawings are a little bit like that as well And there's another connection then to do with making marks and my grandmother's tablecloth, which is there as part of the show. 

Courtney: I love that. terms of social documentary and the fact that you've been [00:14:30] working in that space since the 70s, are there any subjects that particularly are memorable for you that still have a strong hold on your imagination?

Ruth: I would say there's quite a few, but I would say there's Maybe a particular standout because of the circumstances of it is a large project I did here in Eden called Girt by Sea, which was about Eden's commercial fishermen, those who were no longer in the [00:15:00] industry and those who were still in the industry.

That came about via, I was hanging out in the local pub, you know, with the camera and did a lot of stuff in the pub. But then a lot of the guys, the fishermen, started saying to me, Oh, have you seen so and so's photos out on the boat? And I, you know, what do you mean when they're at work, like on the fishing boat? Yes. So, That was an incredible hook to me because in my experience, I had never heard about, a [00:15:30] workforce that documents, that photographs their own work processes and their own work environment. I'd never heard of that. And this is fishermen, commercial fishermen on their boats. So I went, wow, bring me your photos.

Can I have a look? And so. The guy started bringing me their photographs in dirty old shoe boxes, all these dirty little six by four colour prints. this was, early 2000s. like now it wouldn't happen because now they have phone photos. They never have prints anymore. [00:16:00] And also the quality in terms of size. Some of them bought me Negs. They didn't have prints.

So I just started going through, looking at this stuff, saying, Okay, guys, you know, Can I borrow these? Can I scan them? Can I crop? Can I do this, that and the other? you will all get something. A print, whatever. Well, the finished project that went up on the walls and subsequently purchased complete by the State Library of New South Wales is a series of their [00:16:30] photos that I have scanned and either cleaned up or not cleaned up, colour enhanced or taken colour out, cropped or not cropped.

and most of those are dated, they know, where they were and what they were catching And then I did black and white film camera medium format portraits of those men and asked them to tell me about the best and the worst of their job, And that text goes with the portrait.

So for me, the whole thing was just incredible to see their [00:17:00] photographs, you know, which, are stunning. I mean, it's just a mixture of hilarious and really beautiful and very touching. And this person died when their boat went down. And this is a boat that did go down and, people die putting fish on that plate that you may eat, so don't ever complain about the price of fish, you know, yeah, just that thing about they had, documented their own working lives was so [00:17:30] amazing for me.

And they work in an environment that their friends can't go and see and mostly their families can't go and see either. And the things they do and the things they see on the ocean are just incredible. And they work incredibly hard in all kinds of weather.

But after I'd done the fishermen, I thought, well, you know, I need to do the timber workers. There's two mills here, sawmill and chipmill. And those two industries are obviously both very contentious [00:18:00] industries. but in a small town, employment's really a complex issue, and everyone just wants to pay their bills et cetera, and the fishing and timber industry had sustained the economy of Eden for decades, absolutely decades.

It doesn't now because the two industries have been cut back a lot, So, yeah, then I went to both of those mills and said, Hi, I want to do....  Yeah, sure, whatever you like, 

I only moved here in [00:18:30] 96, but you know, I was becoming local. But the first one I did here was actually a series of teenagers. Tell me about growing up in Eden and where you see your future. Cause that was interesting to me. In Eden, there's no tertiary. There's not a lot of professionals as examples, especially for women.

And, I just was wondering what happens if the youth leave a town like Eden, what happens to the town? So I'd done that project. the first one here. [00:19:00] And that was exhibited first at the old Bega Gallery, and then at Stills Gallery in Sydney, and then the State Library of New South Wales bought that set.

But in Bega, people in Eden saw that exhibition, like saw their kids. saw those photos, framed black and white photos with text, and a lot of them had never ever been to the Bega Gallery, although they'd grown up here. So that was kind of how I started to become incorporated into the town, 

So by the time then I did the [00:19:30] fishermen, and we showed them first here down at the wharf in Eden. And I could, announce to people that hey, the State Library has bought these, you can see them, your family can go and see them forever. So then when it came to the timber, it was like, yeah, come right in, whatever you like.

And no one ever asked me about what I thought of the industry itself, either of those industries, And so then I did inside both of those mills, which was incredible for me, and I had open slather, photograph [00:20:00] anything. And again, did portraits of a number of men, asked them about the best and the worst of their working life, and quite a few of those men, I photographed them at home as well.

Courtney: Every time you say Eden, it's a very evocative name and a very, you know, I live in Eden now. In moving from the city to the coast did it impact on your creative approach?

Ruth: I wouldn't say there was a difference to my approach, [00:20:30] but what it did do was open up a whole way of thinking and producing work relating to landscape, which had never been part what I did. But I've made a huge body of work in different ways.

Mostly camera less photography. making landscape work. Oh, the first lot was a Polaroid camera. And I just kind of walked around pointing and shooting and like there's eight, I think, in that series, of what to me [00:21:00] is abstracted, Landscapes.

so that was kind of the start. And then the next lot I did was started by accident in the darkroom when it turned out some chemical that splashed onto the paper before it actually went into the tray. 

and it looked interesting to me. So I just started playing with that unexposed paper, but splashing chemicals onto it, splashing paint onto it, drawing onto the paper first and [00:21:30] putting them through the chemicals. And yeah, that produced a fantastic. set of images that are definitely for me landscape related, 

Eden must be one of the windiest places. Places on earth when the wind is up, you know, it's very easterly point and it copped some really heavy wind. And there was that kind of turbulence and movement in these images.

set was made 96, 97, Like, I mean, I'd only been here less than a [00:22:00] year. And my own emotional state. It took me a while to kind of feel like, okay, I think this can work living here, coming here to this little town with no rye bread.

Can I make it?

Courtney: Has that situation changed? Can you get your rye bread?  

Ruth: I can go to Pambula and get rye bread. Yes, it's only 17 clicks up the road. It's like crossing the river in Melbourne, But then I did a huge series of, lumen prints, camera less prints and photograms, of algae. 

Lumen [00:22:30] prints are when you take the photographic paper out into the light, any kind of light,

you lay objects over the top. In my case, I was hauling big pieces of algae from the beach, home, laying them out, etc. And you just expose it to light. And, Depending on the type of paper, like the Brand of paper. And the type of light and how long you leave it in the light, bright sun or shade or whatever, the tones [00:23:00] reproduced on black and white photo paper vary, beautiful range of different kinds of tones.

And then that paper only needs to be fixed and watch. It doesn't go through a developer, the image is already there. 

the algae series, called Girt by Sea, is exhibited at, MAPh, they're called now, Museum of Photography, in Melbourne.

also a big series of, um, Gum leaves and operculum called Girt by Gum. And [00:23:30] grasses, I just kind corralled the word 'girt' for everything that I did, you know. 

Courtney: Made it yours.

Ruth: Yeah 

Courtney: I want to ask you the same question you ask the fishermen, which is, is the best of your job and what is the worst of it, do you think? 

Ruth: The best is that, you know, I do it, I can do it. And although I have lived forever in the feast or famine economy, because either I've got money and I'm spending it because it's like, what? Money? Here I go! Or I haven't [00:24:00] and I'm not spending it, So I can live in either. but I mean, I just love it.

It's given me. a life really, you know, it's given me, it's given me a life on that level of a passion of producing and earning good money now and again and just taking me on this journey of

Learning, learning, learning and problem solving processes to produce work. And going, wow, look at that, And it continues, like, the fact [00:24:30] that now, after 45 plus years of photography, I've got this exhibition, it's basically got really nothing much to do with photography at all. and I just go, wow, you know, that was fun.

That was a whole new, thing to go through and learn. the worst of it is about do as a producer of artwork In a broad sense, it's very often not seen as work. it's frustrating because you're part of a community [00:25:00] of artists that you do and don't know.

And you know that everyone is dealing with that. Everyone is dealing with the irregularity of income. mostly, 

You love your work and you're passionate about your work and you're happy to, you know, like sometimes you don't know what day it is because the weekend's not any different to the rest of the week and that's fine. that's where you're getting your thought process, the juices are going, you're making, doing, playing stuff.

It's hard to say what the worst of it is. Is there a [00:25:30] worst of it? I don't know what it is other than that, 

Courtney: Why do you think there is that, inability to see it as work or value it as work?

Ruth: Well, I suppose I should, qualify because for me personally, I experience a lot of respect for my work now. It's really well done. known in certain areas.

Let's take just Eden. I mean, when I was first here, hanging out in the pub with the camera, if you said you were an artist, 

you know, I would say I was a photographer, [00:26:00] but Bob, my partner at the time, if he said he was an artist, then the response was, oh yeah, bullshit artist. but see, because I've done so much local work and it has gone out public and it is in collections that has made people recognise what I do as work.

I meet people when I do projects. You know, I'm commissioned by single mothers and their family, or I'm commissioned by various organisations [00:26:30] or groups that I go to photograph.

I have intense time with them. I walk away, I never see them again, that kind of thing. I send them prints. and my life then, and up until I left Melbourne, was basically confined to a groups of like minded people. Fine, that's, how mostly we live. But in Eden, it's just a completely different mix of people in this small community.

So I do keep seeing the same people, and I do interact with these very different kinds of [00:27:00] people Most of the people I have a history with do not live in Eden, And that I still see because I go to Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. I travel. And some people, my old friends come here and new friends come here as well.

But I'm in a really different pool here. And that pool has come to understand and respect what I do as work because I do it of them and with them and did I move away from the question? 

Courtney: No, you answered that beautifully. 

[00:27:30] So in terms of your, creative community in Melbourne, in the way that you're describing Ponch Hawkes as a, key person in, putting you on your path and now, decades in, are your, friends still productive in that space and how do you inspire each other at this stage of your career?

Ruth: most of my, creative friends in Melbourne, and Sydney, still do. And it seems like we just keep going. and also I [00:28:00] have subsequently met in Melbourne, other artists friends that I maintain contact with and see, quite a lot younger, like decades younger than me.

and I'm very interested in the work that they are making and that they are creating. I mean, we know about each other's work and continue to be interested in each other's work, but I think that maybe a lot of older, friends are not necessarily aware of everything I've done in Eden, but the other interesting thing in relation [00:28:30] to, my particular age group of friends is that some of us now have conversations about, I don't know if I care that much anymore, and I get the feeling that for some of us, maybe there's a bit of an elephant in the room that individually might be thinking about, oh no, I just wanna do different things. Now I've, I've had enough of that, but. It's hard to [00:29:00] acknowledge that to your peer group, who maybe are actually feeling the same.

You know, I don't know. This is just something that I've kind of started to know. And I now also feel like sometimes like, God, bother with another exhibition ever again, you know? And then suddenly I had this work that I was just. Doing that suddenly was like, Oh, okay, you know, I ran some of that past a few people and went, What do you think of that?[00:29:30] 

Yes, this is exhibitable work. Suddenly there it was. So you just do what you do. But I feel like if I never did anything again that went public, It's fine because I've done heaps. No, I've done heaps. And it doesn't matter. It's not about I don't have the energy or I don't want to. I mean my energy is shifting but it's not that I don't have energy. But it's more about I don't feel a need, what happens will happen or what doesn't because there's plenty of other things. That [00:30:00] I can do that don't have to go out to the world. Yeah, without ever knowing. what will happen next, an idea presents itself. meaning that I am wandering around in the world or sitting down on the couch and suddenly I'm thinking about something.

Or somebody says something to me and it sparks off something. It's just living my life and, being open to what comes in. To me, or out of my little [00:30:30] brain, that's still managing to function. 

Courtney: Thank you for sharing your not so little brain, Ruth

Ruth: Oh, thank you You too, Courtney.

Courtney: Are You Still Working? is an independently produced podcast by me, Courtney Collins, and producer Lisa Madden. Special thanks to photographer Lyndall Irons for recommending Ruth to us. Lyndall, Ruth was just as brilliant as you said she would be. If there's an artist you'd like us to interview, do let us know through Instagram [00:31:00] @areyoustillworkingpodcast. Till next time. 

{Sound of a wave crashing onto the beach in Eden}