NIKKI LAM

Nikki Lam

Growing up in Hong Kong, Nikki Lam dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. But, at the tender age of sixteen, she began to paint. “One thing led to another and I believed, at the time, that I wanted to become a painter,” she reveals, almost surprised at her own beginnings as an artist, “So I applied to do Fine Art at Monash. It was the only course listed on my preference list because that was the only thing I wanted to do. My mother was not too pleased about that.” She was accepted into the course and soon began exploring photo-media, eventually deciding to take it as her major.

In 2008 at an artist residency in Prato, she started thinking more about themes relating to her own journey, identity, and sense of belonging. Soon after, she employed the use of video to explore the very themes that have now become the staple of her work, “If I have to pick the seed of my practice, it was probably there in Italy.”

After exhibiting for a couple of years alongside interning at galleries and holding down a day job, Nikki longed to be more hands on in the arts sector. She enrolled in the Executive Master of Arts at Melbourne University with the hope to champion diversity in the arts and support under-represented artists.

Today, Nikki Lam upholds a long list of job titles. She is an exhibiting visual artist; the Artistic Director of Channels Festival, Australia's video art biennial; Visual Arts Editor at Peril Magazine; Founder and Curator at The Curious Other, a hybrid project on contemporary art and culture; and a freelance curator and arts manager, where she has worked for arts organisations such Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool.

Nikki Lam no doubt has a lot on her plate, but she also has a lot to say. The dedicated visual artist and articulate curator shares her thoughts on the artistic process, the paradox of her multiple careers and the sometimes troubling state of the arts industry – and the simple joy found in preparing a delicious brunch, tending to the garden and watching a film on her home projector screen. 

Friday evening probably sounds a bit boring, but by the end of the week I just get so exhausted from working I will just have a really quiet night. A lot of the time Scott and I might go to a restaurant somewhere in Footscray and watch a film. We have a film projector at home, which allows for a nice set of introverted activities. [Laughs]

I tend to sleep in a little bit on Saturday and wake up around nine-thirty. For some people they have pets to keep them in schedule, but I really don’t have a routine! 

Footscray Market is really great – everything is really fresh and cheap. It can get a little chaotic on weekends as it is closed on Sundays, but we would usually go there and grab some ingredients for making brunch at home.

Breakfast is actually one of my specialities. I’ll make baked eggs with spices and oyster mushrooms, or poached eggs with quinoa salad, and slow-cooked balsamic portobello mushrooms.

We sometimes make rice rolls for brunch as well. You can get them quite fresh in Footscray. Imagine the texture of rice noodles but in a sheet – think Lasagna­ ­– rolled up like a piece of paper and cut into pieces. You can either steam them for breakfast so it’s nice and light, served with sesame sauce, soy sauce, chill, and onion. Or you can pan fry it with spring onion, fresh chilli, Chinese broccoli and some mushrooms so it’s a whole meal.

We try and do drinks with friends or dinner parties on Saturday. We recently had a hot-pot party here – everyone was extremely full but we still had a whole table left of food!

We keep joking that we should open up a restaurant. It would be a fusion café with really good coffee with maybe congee, which is this rice porridge for breakfast in Asia. You can put anything in there – the classic would be chicken congee, but you could put seafood, shallots, spring onion, it’s a really light dish to have in the morning. It would be hybrid arts space too! [Laughs]

Sometimes we try and get out of Melbourne if the weather is nice. We might go do some vintage furniture shopping in Geelong, or go to the hot springs or just go for a drive.

When you are working so much you really need a change of scenery. Especially when you’re working from home. Otherwise we might do some gardening, plant something delicious and just spend the day doing that sort of thing.

BEHIND THE SCENES

On imagining an eighth day in the week…

I would love an extra day to just focus on my art practice. Being a curator as opposed to being an artist requires two very different mindsets.

I find that when I do set aside a day to work on art, I spend half of it trying to get to that point where I can actually think about my work. It’s just a change of pace, and I find the act of organising can change the way you create.

I start thinking,  "How am I going to write about the work, or how is it going to be shown."  These are important thoughts, but I think when I am still developing the idea, it is better that I don’t consider them and instead just focus.

On art as the opposite of productivity…

From a productivity perspective, it can be hard to allow yourself time to get in the zone of creating. I was born in Hong Kong and it’s a really efficient city – sometimes I have these emotions where I’m just like, “Agh, I wasn’t productive enough today!”

But at the same time, I think making art is kind of the opposite of productivity. There has been a lot of discussions around how laziness is potentially an essential part of being an artist. Not ‘lazy’ in a classic term, it’s more so that you need to be in a state where you are seemingly not doing anything.

Art making is a very personal process, and it is often internalised. You may just be sitting there having a cup of tea, or spending a couple of hours in bed just lying there thinking, but that is part of the process. There are a different set of scales when it comes to creativity

On the decision to branch out into arts management…

There is an existing structure in the arts that can be discouraging for artists. When you think about it, where do the opportunities come from? Why aren’t artists ever paid enough? How does the industry fund its artists and art workers? How do we encourage public engagement? 

Behind the champagne trays at opening nights and powerful speeches about the arts sector from politicians, inequality, misrepresentation and funding issues happen every single day.

These are all big, complex issues. I guess I wanted to facilitate, or attempt to anyway, a sort of practice that genuinely supports diversity in the arts. I wanted to be in a position that allows me to provide opportunities to under-represented artists, and to generate dialogues around issues that are not spoken of.  I was interning at galleries at the time and realised that it was something I wanted to do as well as being an artist.

On the relationship between vulnerability and creativity…  

I guess I feel a little bit vulnerable whenever I struggle to create. But it’s interesting because – for me anyway –  it is when I feel vulnerable and a little bit emotional that I make things.

There is this personal, intimate relationship that I have with everything that I make. It’s usually a reflection of my journey or my experiences and a lot of the time it is a reflection of my past, my history.

In order to get to that place where I can think of ways to explore those themes, I need to feel a little bit scared, a little bit vulnerable.

I think the better art I have seen creates this sort of emotional connection with its audience. 

As an artist you really need to reveal a lot of yourself in order to connect emotionally with the work, and by extension with the viewer.

On comparing yourself to other artists…

In my first few years of making art I compared myself with others a lot. But somehow now I don’t compare anymore. 

With my work, it has taken me a long time to understand that it will forever be subjective – and that’s how art should be. So when you see trends of certain art forms being popular, a lot of the time it's just timing and just so happens that the gallery likes that kind of work, or that many curators have similar interests at that point in time. 

There are so many factors at play, so for me I will still pursue opportunities, but at the same time I want to focus on making what matters to me the most, and eventually that will come across for others to see.

On juggling being an artist and an arts manager…

I think jumping between different roles of an arts manager and an artist can be difficult. I get used to a certain level of productivity and find it really difficult to get to that state where I am just with myself and my thoughts. 

Making art is almost like meditation, you become really aware of what’s going on in your mind. There is a certain kind of discomfort when I am alone with my thoughts.

I think finding a balance is really important as well. At one point I was having back-to-back exhibitions and I didn’t enjoy it much. I think it made me realise that I was serious about my art, but I wanted to pace it out so that I could be thorough with each project before feeling the pressure to exhibit.

When you are pumping out shows one after the other, you tend to lose that creative process and it becomes all about project management.

I enjoyed the project management side of it, but I thought I should separate the two and focus on developing ideas for my art projects and managing someone else’s