Pip Stafford

Pip Stafford is our brilliant print artist in issue 5 – SEED to SKY and has most recently been navigating the complexities of life as a new mother artist. Pip is a media artist who works with sculpture, performance, installation, video, electronics, computers and paper. She makes work about networks, systems, communication and rituals. She was the 2013 MONA scholarship winner and exhibited A Rats Nest an experiment in sound and form, chaos and control, warp and weft in the MONA Library Gallery late last year.

I think I imagined that motherhood would happen like another art project. I would direct, create, organise, respond and things would go in a chaotic, yet somehow predictable and orderly manner. I now know it is nothing like an art project. Chaotic, yes… Relentless, absolutely. Sid is eight months old now and I’m still working out how to function as both an artist and a mother. They are not incompatible roles (I refuse to believe that), but are often at odds. There’s a rocker and some books in my studio, but Sid has always wanted to be part of the action, so they have gone largely unused. My son drives me to be a better version of myself.  I want to make things and be a person he can look up to. It is very motivating and very, very challenging.

We have long loved Pip’s impossible cities and are thrilled to have one growing in our pages.  You can purchase SEED to SKY here and receive Pip’s gorgeous print you once lived here tucked into the pages.

‘you once lived’ here by Pip Stafford