Hannah Beasley // Meet the Artist (Zig Zag Q&A Series)
June 2023
We recently announced our upcoming exhibition at The Mixing Room Gallery—Zig Zag, a chromatic exhibition of abstract painting by artists Al Munro, Hannah Beasley, Ham Darroch and Kate Vassallo.
In anticipation of this intellectually robust and compellingly chromatic exhibition, we’ve sat down with the exhibiting artists to discuss their artworks, philosophy of beauty, and perspectives on Canberra as a place for creative practice.
First in the series, our interview with local contemporary artist Hannah Beasley.
Hannah’s creative output is characterised by her thoughtful and intelligent engagement with Islamic geometry, mesmerisingly refined during her time living in Tehran throughout 2016-19.
Hannah’s ability to contextualise the qualities of sacred geometry in Persian architecture, through her hand-drawn and hand-painted works, imbues a tangible softness and femininity increasingly rare in contemporary Australian art. This results in a unique experience of artistic engagement, where the eye is drawn but cannot hold focus. Instead, one finds oneself a participant in what Hannah describes as a “cinematic process of looking.”
We hope you enjoy this Q&A series and hope to see you at the Zig Zag Opening Night at The Mixing Room Gallery on Friday 30 June 2023. Book tickets for the opening night here.
You lived in Tehran between 2016 and 2019. How did you end up living there and how has this influenced your creative practice?
My partner Hamish was posted to Tehran with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, so we ended up moving there together. I couldn’t work in Tehran without rescinding my diplomatic passport, so I was able to study Farsi and paint full time. I’ve always been interested in art and languages - I studied Painting and Arabic at the Australian National University and graduated in 2012.
I started off doing Farsi classes and serendipitously, in my first week, I met a British girl who was completing her Masters of Persian Studies at the University of Tehran. We became fast friends immediately and she introduced me to everyone I ended up knowing! She was dating a Persian rockstar and was absolutely hilarious. The week after I arrived she was doing an art tour of Tehran with a Canadian/Iranian artist, so I tagged along. Then we got asked to a party afterwards. It was at this party that I met another painter with a spare studio, and I ended up going to her place to paint every day.
It lent a wonderful cadence to my days because Tehran is particularly gnarly in terms of traffic, being home to some 15 million people. A fifteen minute drive could take as long as two and a half hours with traffic. This studio was only five minutes from Hamish’s work, so we were able to travel there and back together each day.
I then started doing a Masters of Painting at the Tehran University of Art. I began developing my current body of work in my painting class there. Sadly I didn’t finish the program because it was very theory heavy and it was all in Farsi. It got to the point where I wasn’t painting at all because I was spending all my time trying to read about Islamic aesthetics in Farsi and it was just way above my level! So I dropped out and continued with this work.
You’ve previously described your geometric artworks as providing a sense of infinitely unfolding space. Persian architecture is notable for its use of sacred geometry to create proportions reflecting what is characterised as ‘divine beauty’. What role does Persian architecture play in your work?
I’m completely obsessed with Persian architecture, but this came long before moving to Tehran. My current paintings are based on ‘muqarnas’ which are the vaulted ceilings you can find in the mosques. When you’re physically present in a mosque and looking up at the ceiling, you are entranced by the illusion: the ceiling always looks much larger than the space it physically occupies.
I am compelled by this sense of expansiveness. Everything is so detailed in these ceilings - it’s hard for your eye to stay centered, or focus on anything in particular; it all slips away, comes back together, and slips away again. I love that feeling of slippage. I wanted to replicate something of that spatial effect on a 2D plane. But I also wanted to move away from the patterns specific to islamic design. So the basic pattern of heptagons and hexagons which I am using is based on hyperbolic geometry, where you can have a 2D plane expanding in all directions. Then I have incorporated another pattern of checkered triangles over the top.
I want to have multiple systems of pattern overlaid on top of each other; they sit separately, but occupy the same space, within the same structure. As a result, you can only focus on one at a time. Like the vaulted ceilings, I want things to sit so nothing is stable. I like making paintings where the eye has to flicker across many different ways of looking at the surface. It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking you’ve seen a painting in a single glance, in a way you can’t with more temporal art forms like music. But they open up when you look slowly, they’re not static. You end up with a cinematic process of looking.
“I’m completely obsessed with Persian architecture, but this came long before moving to Tehran. My current paintings are based on ‘muqarnas’ which are the vaulted ceilings you can find in the mosques. When you’re physically present in a mosque and looking up at the ceiling, you are entranced by the illusion: the ceiling always looks much larger than the space it physically occupies.”
In Persian and Arabic, the term ‘hindisah’ (the common word for geometry) has the meaning of measuring and it is used for both the sciences of geometry and architecture. Do you measure and plan your work geometrically - that is, is your creative process mathematical at all, or does it unfold more spontaneously?
Not at all; although they are based on a geometric system, my works are more organic than they look, I think. In terms of my process, I hand-draw heptagons surrounded by hexagons as far as I can - there is a natural limit as they get smaller and smaller towards the edges. I take a section, put it into Photoshop, copy and reflect it to create a larger composition, then I get some acetate on my screen and trace it out, then repeat the process with an overhead projector - very old school! I then go through with pencil and map out the various patterns before I start laying down colour. The colour I apply more intuitively, trying to get different areas to hang together or pull apart, or to read as a shadow of a neighbouring section. My painting is all by hand, so you get that contrast between high precision patterns, interconnecting geometric shapes and a softer, more organic execution.
Geometrical analysis of many Persian historical buildings shows that a complete knowledge of proportions, in particular the golden ratio, was widely used and was the basis of Persian aesthetics. Were you able to witness the construction of any mosques or other examples of new traditional Persian architecture while you were in Tehran? Do they still build in this manner, as this did in the past?
Traditional buildings like mosques are definitely still being constructed with these principles in Iran although some of the building methods have been updated. I have seen some of the construction techniques for the tiled Muqarnas and they are quite incredible. It’s impossible to look at the finished Muqarnas and work backwards to understand its construction. They look so mind-bogglingly intricate you kind of have to see behind the facade to believe they are hand-made. Although they are seamlessly integrated into the architecture, the tiled muqarnas in Iran are usually not structural and are created by cementing a dizzying network of metal pins or wooden sticks into the dome, then attaching the tiles to the other end. Behind the perfect tiled surface, it almost looks like a half finished game of pick up sticks. I don’t really understand how they stay up!
It is incredible to remember that these entire structures were originally designed with tools as simple as a compass and ruler. Very simple geometric principles can be used to build a much more complex system. As it grows and gets to a certain size more complexity emerges. I feel the same way about my paintings. For example, I don’t know what my artworks will look like when I start them; I don’t ever begin with the ‘completed’ result in mind. I start with a basic principle and the patterns emerge as I work.
“It is incredible to remember that these entire structures were originally designed with tools as simple as a compass and ruler. Very simple geometric principles can be used to build a much more complex system. As it grows and gets to a certain size more complexity emerges. I feel the same way about my paintings.”
Have you previously worked in a figurative style and found yourself transitioning, or have you always worked as an abstract artist?
I did lots of figurative painting up until my Honours year and absolutely loved it. But after a somewhat brutalising crit session at the start of Honours I did a complete u-turn, went and chucked it all in the bin and decided to start again from scratch. I made up 50 or so little boards and tried to work on some different optical effects on each, just figuring out how we look at different elements in a painting. I was interested in camouflage and the way a shape may be able to appear and disappear when looked at in different ways. This followed through to an interest in Islamic geometry and patterning, and looking at the way patterns could have multiple different ‘appearances’ all sitting within the same space.
I still love figurative painting and continue to do a little bit of it just for fun. It gets more frustrating though - you do need to practice to keep your facility, as it is really a technical skill in many respects. It’s the same with my paintings - I need to keep at it, consistently enough, otherwise it’s too hard to keep the colour relationships fresh in my mind and everything takes longer, and feels harder than it should.
You’ve recently become a mother. Has this changed your relationship with your practice? Has this changed your perspective or approach to making art?
I do feel like I am getting some sleep again now so I am getting some of my brain capacity back. So far, motherhood has made me realise I will need to get better at dipping into my artistic practice for shorter periods of time, where I can.
I prefer a long-session of meditative, fully immersive painting, where I can work for 6 or 8 or 10 hours at a time. I will still be able to make art, but working like that will be difficult now. I will need to have some planned sessions where I can devote myself 100%. But then other elements of execution can be done in an interrupted way. For the critical reflection and planning stages, I will need good chunks of time.
In terms of the time commitment that my painting requires, I usually make work depending on what work I need to make. It’s more responsive in terms of upcoming shows etc. Before my last show in November 2022, I was working full time then painting 7pm - 1am each day to get my paintings ready in time. But I won’t work like that without a deadline.
Another strange thing about integrating motherhood with painting is that, although I may not get as much time for painting as I did beforehand, I’ll have more time for it overall because of the commensurate reduction in my other work commitments. So it is all working out.
Do you think beauty is objective and absolute, namely that all humans are hardwired to recognise beauty, and that there is nothing subjective about it?
I think it’s a little bit of both. It’s a super interesting question and I am often wondering how and why I make certain aesthetic choices, particularly around colour in my paintings. When I first went to art school I got a bit depressed overthinking all the small aesthetic decisions I was making because I often didn’t know how to justify them rationally. There is an aesthetic element to a huge number of daily choices too, from choosing what to wear to something as basic as how you arrange food on a plate! Ideas also have an aesthetic component. For me anyway it has a powerful impact on how I make decisions. But why is it that some options seem more beautiful or more aesthetically pleasing than others?
The concept of beauty can seem sort of naff sometimes but I think there is something pretty interesting underneath. I think something appears beautiful when it holds a certain harmonious balance between meeting and subverting your expectations. I think that makes it really hard to define. It needs to interest and compel you; it needs to “do“ something, but that will manifest differently for everyone. It doesn’t cause me so much stress in my painting anymore! I let myself enjoy playing with colour now and use aesthetic judgments to identify interesting colour relationships.
What have you observed about living a creative life in Canberra?
I love it here. I am also a musician and I’ve always found the music and arts community in Canberra to be super welcoming. But it’s also still small enough that you can go to everything. This is really nice because everyone is involved in the one scene. Admittedly this encompasses lots of different types of art and music, but people are comfortable across all of that. People older than me have been really generous with their time; welcoming and engaged. People really show up in Canberra, there’s an extraordinary level of support.
What do you love about living in Canberra's Inner North?
Everything! I’ve not lived outside the inner North since moving to Canberra for university in 2008. I like being able to ride my bike everywhere. I love that almost everyone I know lives within a 15 minute drive. I love Black Mountain peninsula. I especially love all the food and the night life that has taken off in Civic. There is way more on than when I first moved here - lots of bars and music and it’s cool to be able to ride down to gigs. Especially when I was a student, it was so great having everyone I knew within a few suburbs and being close to the uni. There is a great diversity in the inner North that you don’t get elsewhere.
If you have the opportunity to go out for dinner in Canberra, what are some of your favourite restaurants?
I am pretty obsessed with Ramen so my favourite place is Ramen.O in Belconnen. They make the best authentic Japanese Ramen noodles and gyoza dumplings. Thip’s Thai is right next door and also great - my favourite dish is the chilli basil beef mince with fried eggs. I also like Uyghur Cuisine down on the lake. They have delicious kebabs and fried eggplant.
In Dickson I really love Flavours of Jiangnan. It’s super good - they do thick homemade noodles, Chinese-style, in a broth. It’s run by a cheerful older Chinese couple who don’t speak English and the guy wears sparkly purple Doc Martens. I think it’s maybe their niece who helps them run it - and she speaks English!
There are really so many places I love eating. For fancy dinners we typically go to Lazy Su or White Chaco in Braddon. But there are also such standout unassuming places like Raijin Japanese Cuisine at the Mc Kellar shops and the Nepalese momos at Canberra fast food and Momo House in Gungahlin, as well as a Singaporean place in Franklin: Lion City. The far North of the city is really wonderful and multicultural and has some of the best restaurants.
Which local artists are you currently most excited about?
There are so many great painters in Canberra, this doesn’t even scratch the surface but I just went to “Between Things” by Joel Arthur and Dioni Salas at CCAS (Canberra Contemporary Art Space), which was awesome. I also loved seeing Kirsten Farrell’s “The Anything You Want Machine” at ANCA (Australian National Capital Artists). I’m a big fan of Ruth Waller’s work. I really love all the people I went through art school with; Annika Romeyn has a beautiful show “Body of Work” at Belconnen Arts Centre. I am lucky to have a huge painting of Gregory Hodge’s which is incredible.
What role does art play in your home environment? Do you decorate and live with it? If so, how?
Oh my god, yes. I’m really a more-is-more kind of girl. We have been renovating our place, and the whole project started off with me impulse-buying crazy colorful, encaustic tiles for the floor and working backwards from there. I absolutely love embroidery, pattern, tiles and murals. In our house, every wall is covered in art. I have been collecting all my favourite Canberra painters, but I’ll never have enough! I love living with art and having it everywhere. I have declared a “war on greige” and I’ve been painting geometric murals on the walls of the house; in the kitchen, behind the fireplace and around the stairwell. My style is not for everyone, but I love it. Decoration is hugely important to me and whenever I get in a new space I have to spend time making it my own.
Words by Ebony Levy.
We hope to see you at the Zig Zag Opening Night at The Mixing Room Gallery on Friday 30 June 2023. Book tickets for the opening night here.
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