Smoking Out The Window Of A Glasgow Tenement.
Molly Hankinson’s colourful work can be seen around Glasgow, from a 16-piece street poster exhibition to part of a new mural trail in the Southside. Ana Hine spoke to the artist about murals, authentic representation, the London art scene, and, of course, her street-art approach to the pandemic.
You’re from Lewisham in South London, why did you decide not to go to Goldsmiths just around the corner?
I think I needed to go ‘fly the nest’, and Goldsmiths is literally 5 minutes away from where I went to school so it seemed a bit too close to home. I’d been hanging around in that area since I was about 15 so I felt like I needed a big change and a new city for uni, and Glasgow was my top choice!
You seem, at the moment, to have decided to stay in Glasgow and settle down at your studio at SWG3. Do you think this is a decision a lot of artists are making, and do you think you can have a successful career in this city?
In comparison to London it is actually possible to be a professional practicing artist in Glasgow because the cost of living is so much more manageable. It’s sad that I’ve essentially been bought out of my own city, because there’s no way I’d be able to afford to live independently in London at the moment, maybe not ever? But Glasgow also transcends a lot of the elitist bullshit that the London art scene has, and it makes it way easier to make a name for yourself by working really fucking hard and getting involved with anything and everything you can! You could do that in London and still be invisible, if you don’t know someone who runs a gallery or have enough money to fund your own solo show etc. It’s that DIY approach that the Glasgow art scene has that I love so much, and there’s creative talent literally everywhere you look.
Do you think it’s possible for women artists to make work that’s completely outside the male gaze? What does a female gaze look like to you?
It’s a hard one because it’s something you have to always be aware of and constantly re-assessing when looking at creating authentic representations of the feminine experience. For me the female gaze comes from showing and sharing stories and experiences that we can all relate to, and I think this tends to be defined by overcoming our collective struggles in strong, fun and often empowering ways. It’s those little wins that we can all celebrate, whether that be growing our leg hair out and watching people’s reactions when they clock you on the subway (I love this), or just being completely comfortable in and owning the spaces you occupy. This seems like a simple concept but for many women it just isn’t a reality, due to the pressures that society puts on us and the everyday misogyny that people face. This is even more so for trans women, or women of colour who have to navigate whole other swathes of oppression interlaced with misogyny. So un-paralleled and celebratory ownership of the spaces we occupy then starts to look like a bigger ask than at first glance when you begin to approach your subject matter through an intersectional lens.
Your work features women and people of other marginalised genders who come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. How do you approach representing a diversity of lived experience from your single position? Do you ever feel unqualified to draw someone?
I think when you’re representing bodies that don’t just look like yours and lived experiences that aren’t just your own, there comes a certain level of responsibility to ensure that you are doing your best to keep advocating for these communities, using your platform (however small) to lift up and promote artists, activists, organisations and business that are from these communities... It’s about donating where possible, sharing projects and opportunities directed towards black or other minority ethnic artists or businesses for example, or people from the LGBTQI+ community, and generally understanding that in order to do your best to be inclusive in your subject matter and your representation, that this also must be reflective in your every-day activism, whether publicly or privately. The work never stops! As a white woman and feminist, knowing that you will never understand other forms of oppression, oppression that your existence often upholds by default, can be a hard pill to swallow. But it’s about recognising that and knowing that you’ll never be right all the time. For me I will always listen and believe people when they tell me I’m wrong, and keep self-educating.
How has the pandemic affected your practice? Have you relished the chance to concentrate on your work or bemoaned the lack of physical exhibition and networking opportunities?
To be honest I’ve been very lucky and have had work coming in enough to keep me afloat throughout the pandemic. As a self-employed person with literally no help from our government you have to be resourceful. My private commissions properly took off last year and thankfully kept me busy and in work… I think once people were forced to spend time in their own homes they started thinking about what they might like on their walls! I’m so so grateful to everyone who supported me last year and bought a print or commissioned a piece. Especially with all my markets and print fairs cancelled! For this reason, developing my own practice has actually taken a backseat, but with things opening up again and a couple of larger illustration commissions hopefully on the way this year I’ll have more time to make some more of my own work too.
How did your 16-piece street poster exhibition with the Jack Arts initiative, ‘Your Space Or Mine’, come about?
I was approached by Jack Arts who were looking for local artists from each city that their poster sites occupy to use their spaces to show their artwork in a city-wide poster campaign. They had seen my work in The Alchemy Experiment’s ‘Love in the Time of Covid’ zine and also knew about the Affordable Art Exhibition and Auction that myself and fellow artist Michaela McManus had curated and organised in February 2020, in aid of the Australian bushfire relief. It was amazing to see my work on that scale and all across the city… I think that some of them may even still be up!
Your practice is interdisciplinary, encompassing painting, printmaking, hand-drawings and digital illustrations (and presumably combinations of those). Which of these mediums do you find the easiest and which do you find the hardest? What about the most and least satisfying?
My process of hand-drawing my illustrations on paper and then filling digitally mainly came out of a necessity to be able to work more quickly and efficiently, and therefore keep my pricing as accessible as possible after coming out of a Fine Art course where they taught you nothing about how to actually make a living as a visual artist. Trying to navigate that after being told that the business side of it ‘doesn’t matter’, and ‘as long as you’re authentic, the money will come’, is really hard. I know that if I’d carried on creating big oil paintings like I had at uni and just sitting around waiting for something to happen then I wouldn’t be working full-time as a visual artist. There’s a balance though because I also don’t feel like I’m being inauthentic either. So I would say that analogue painting mediums are the most satisfying, but the thing that I have the least time to dedicate to, because I need to pay those bills! The reward of adapting my practice and self-learning these new skills is that I get to draw and be creative every day for a living.
What are your artistic ambitions over the next few years and what are you working on at the moment?
Having said that one of my main aims is to get more involved in analogue mediums again, I’ve recently completed my first couple of large-scale outdoor murals which has been so exciting because they combine my illustration style with actual painting instead of sitting behind a computer all day! So to get the opportunity to develop this side of my practice would be amazing. The impact of large-scale public art and being able to celebrate people and spread important messages on that scale also ties so well into my own interests and sensibilities, and it keeps art accessible and free to engage with too which I think is so important. I’d love to go back and implement my skills back in South East London too, as well as in Glasgow.
