Sula Hancock lives in the English Lake District. Hancock makes sculptures, installations, and images of fictional worlds that explore the lived experiences in our own absurd, shared world. One day we’re born, one day we die, and there are infinite versions of how life can be lived in between those certainties. Hancock wonders what the fundamentals of life are? Why and how do we keep going? Is there a right way to live it? What is time well spent? How free are we to determine our own meaning, outcomes, and happiness?
Hancock has complicated relationships with purpose, time spent, and acceptability. It is more accessible to experiment with the lives of characters than her own. I hope they don’t mind.
Her interests in world-building, materials, and processes combine and influence each other. Play is a big part of her process, which in itself is questioned by society as appropriate use of adult time. The sculptures and installations are usually modular and like toys, everything can be rearranged for new exploration and interpretations. When making characters Hancock finds herself adding and subtracting human traits to experiment with different ways the absurdness of the world could be interpreted by them. Worldbuilding helps Hancock see beyond what is presented to us as the world and the ways we are expected to live within it.
Previous work has involved themes of pilgrimage, looking to others for direction, royalty, and mental health.
Self-taught or art school?
I studied Contemporary Art Practice at The University of Leeds (2010) and MFA Fine Art at Wimbledon College of Art (2014)
If you could own one work of art what would it be?
Hmmm, I’d quite like to holiday in a house designed by David Altmejd, with the bed, bath, and kitchen integrated into the work! That doesn’t actually exist, so if we are talking about existing works it would probably be a Francis Upritchard figure or dinosaur or a Tove Jansson original.
How would you describe your style?
Detailed, playful, thoughtful, and optimistic.
Can you tell us about your artistic process?
All of my work is to do with world-building, where I think about what it means to be alive amongst different environments and expectations. The Land Lumps is an experimental project of creatures who live a much simpler way of life, yet don’t need to give up their intelligence. They are my idea of the ideal intelligent life form where they make better choices than humans because they don’t have those inbuilt ‘we must progress no matter the cost’ kind of feelings. I hand-draw these images and colour them in photoshop to get the smooth, stroke-free effect. I like the cleanliness of digital images, but I still hand-draw the outlines because digital lines look far too polished.
My sculptural work and darker line drawings have been more about looking for and maintaining meaning through pilgrimage and monuments. When making sculptures I like to be messy. It’s often a chaotic process and very different from how I work when making images. I make kits from stuff like plaster, pigments, plastics, and glass that make up hundreds of individual objects that act as building blocks to make installations. These can be arranged however I like, it’s great fun. It’s relaxing and exciting at the same time. Each object acts as a variable that can be moved to have an effect on the environment and therefore it’s meaning. The meaning is ever-changing and interpreted. This approach goes well with the themes of my work because I am questioning how much we can define our own meaning by exploring the ever-changing variables of life.
Is narrative important within your work?
Yeah, I’d say narrative is important. My work is pretty much all centered around the timeless, global question of ‘what am I supposed to do now I’m alive in this place at this time?’. I make little stories of different life forms trying to figure that out. We understand our world via narrative so when making fictional lands it becomes an inseparable part, whether it’s clear or ambiguous.
Who are your favourite artists and why?
I like artists who have very strong artistic languages, who are able to create new spaces of feeling. Charles Avery, Pendleton Ward, Julia Pott, David Altmejd, Tove Jansson, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Kusama… Imagined worlds tell us so much about ourselves and the world.
What or who inspires your art?
My main inspiration is the absurdness in everyday life and how people get on with it regardless/in spite of it. I think each of us has been plopped onto the Earth with no ultimate direction. We have to interpret ourselves in relation to our surroundings, experiences, and what people have done before us, and how that has been recorded. It’s a scary, messy thing being a human and I am interested in how we create frameworks to live in. It would be easy to drown whilst thinking of an absurd existence, but I choose to stay afloat via a system of beliefs and a certain kind of energy that needs maintaining through hope and play. I like pretending to be different types of life forms, even a slightly different person of someone who gets their nails done. I feel like I’m playing and exploring someone else’s world.
I balance my thoughts and feelings by transforming them into gorgeous things. Colour and form make me feel the most awake and reactive to life.
I was born in the Lake District and have been back here for the last three years. It is impossible not to be inspired by the natural forms and simpler life. I would like to take so many things off the Earth, attitudes, expectations, unnecessary objects, that I can’t do in reality, so making my own world enables me to do that. I feel a constant pull between enjoying the quiet of the Lakes and the desire to be back in a bustling city and that pull creates creative energy.
I am really inspired by cartoons such as Summer Camp Island, Adventure Time, and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Watching them is like sprinkling sugar into my bloodstream, they switch me on and make me excited to be alive. I also love absurd fiction by Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams.
Where’s your studio and what’s it like?
I currently work from a desk in my house. It’s small and cozy with enough room for everything I need for image-making, with my Mac and scanner at the center of my universe. I have lots of notebooks where I collect thoughts, notes, and sketches. My dream studio would have a ventilated sculpture workshop, lots of light, probably a sandpit, and giant containers of pigment or stuff like lentils that are fun to stick your hands in.
Do you have any studio rituals?
I like to clean my space, watch cartoons and eat before I start. If I don’t eat first I can go all day and forget and then get really sleepy and sick. I listen to music or work in complete silence. I like to make a huge mess when working with sculpture so I prep my way to the shower before I start.
What are you working on currently?
I’m working on Land Lump commissions. I want to get back into sculpture asap.
The Land Lumps are creatures that live in Floralumpi, a place stripped of all the extra stuff we have on earth, the excess that is clogging us up and squashing us, like packaging, microwave meals, and hate crimes! It certainly skirts around the edge of some utopian ideas, but I’m not trying to make utopia as I’m too human and know we seem to need that good and bad balance.
Where can we buy your art?
On my website www.sulahancock.com.
