Image via Grow a Brain
Joy Hopwood admits to being sceptical when fellow artist Joolie Green first suggested collaborating on a painting.
Hopwood is also an actor, author, and filmmaker so she is used to working closely with others in teams, but her artworks had only ever been a solo affair.
‘I’d never done a painting with someone before so I was a bit scared of the end result,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want the two styles to look conflicting in the one painting.’
Green’s enthusiasm (she had collaborated with other artists on a painting for charity) convinced Hopgood to give it a go and now she’s glad it did. ‘It was like receiving a gift of some kind just to see the end result and find that actually our art styles complement each other,’ says Hopwood.
The paintings produced by the pair under the name JoyJo depict contemporary Japanese Kokeshi dolls in various holiday locations around the world. Hopwood paints the holiday backgrounds then Green adds the Kokeshi dolls.
Their artworks debuted in AIR Gallery in New York and they are now represented by Art Atrium gallery in Sydney.
Since experimenting with their initial piece, the collaboration has taken on a life of its own. One of their artworks, for Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, featured Moore’s face on the Kokeshi doll. That set off a chain reaction of people wanting their own faces on the doll. ‘We were thinking this is a totally new market that we didn’t expect,’ says Hopwood.
As art forms merge and technology becomes more complicated, collaboration is increasingly common. The Australia Council has recognised the trend with its recent changes, de-emphasising separate art form peer review boards and enabling more flexible peer review of projects that cross art form boundaries.
Indian tabla-player and world musician Bobby Singh has collaborated with a diverse range of musicians over the years including drum and bass band The Bird; western classical guitarist Slava Grigoryan; and blues and roots musicians such as John Butler and Jeff Lang.
But in 2011 he took a different collaborative tack working with contemporary dancer, Miranda Wheen, on an intercultural music-dance work Game On. Their collaboration represented a major learning curve because their two art-forms didn’t really connect. ‘So it was like: I’m going to try and follow what you do with your movement and find a language in my repertoire that responds to yours,’ says Singh. ‘That was an amazing challenge to have and to find a solution to.’ Still on his wish-list: collaborating with a poet or a painter. ‘It would be interesting to see how the tabla would influence painting and how the painting would influence tabla.’
Composer and sound designer James Brown has crossed art form boundaries in many directions. His collaborations include Celestial Radio, a sailing boat that broadcast a radio show to mark the reopening of the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2013, to Jane Campion’s mini-series Top of the Lake. He has collaborated with dancers, theatre groups, and performance companies as well as his own group Unhappen.
He particularly loves collaborations that allow him to get a different perspective on creating. ‘I really love working on projects where people open up other aspects of the work to me rather than just music or sound, where I feel like my input in direction or design, is also appreciated.’
So what have they found it takes to make the collaborative process work?
Chemistry and connection
‘First and foremost I think it comes down to personality,’ says Singh, adding someone can be the best musician, dancer or choreographer but if you tend to disagree in general conversation within 10 minutes of sitting down to have a cup of tea together it’s probably not going to work.
‘You can make it work, you can force it to work but it’s not going to be real in my experience.’
‘For me, the only successful collaborations that I’ve done and been involved with where I think it went somewhere…are the ones where the artists involved have love and respect for each other.’
That’s why he thinks his collaboration with Wheen worked. ‘Since we’ve known each other we’ve just had the best understanding; we just have a laugh together and we always hang together; we want to eat together; even her partner, Tim, I know him really well; so that friendship and love is there.’
Hopwood agrees that connection is important as are common values. It’s important to her that any project reflects diversity, creativity and joy. ‘If those three elements are there then I’m always willing to give it a go.’
A turn-off for her? ‘I’m really sceptical about working with people who have an ego so that would probably be the only turn-off for me: if I find someone arrogant.’
Respect
Brown likens the collaborative process to the complex dynamics of a romantic relationship. ‘I think generally when you collaborate the most important thing for me is to have a kind of openness and generosity. On a fundamental level it’s having respect for the people you’re working with.
‘I’ve worked with people where the work would be really good but there’s sort of a lack of respect for the other people as humans in some ways. I think some artists can treat other people almost like their tool. It’s almost like an emotionally abusive relationship in a way,’ he says.
Communication
A collaborator’s opinions about your work will not always tally with your own. How those differences are handled can make or break a creative partnership.
Hopwood has suggested ways Green might tweak her work to make the overall result better and vice-versa. ‘We’re pretty easy-going if something doesn’t look right,’ she says.
Brown, too, says he’s pretty relaxed when someone criticises his work. ‘I quite like it because I think a lot of the time people just say they like things regardless of whether they do or not because they don’t want to upset the person.’
That kind of open communication can be a by-product of collaborating with the same person repeatedly. Brown has worked with Matthew Day on six or seven projects, including his trilogy Intermission. ‘I think now we’re comfortable enough with each other to really bluntly say when something isn’t working.’
A lack of communication can make a collaboration unravel. ‘If you feel like you’re consistently trying to make a point and it’s not getting across or if you’ve gone away for a few days and someone completely changes your work without consulting you that’s a pretty big red flag,’ says Brown.
