AD School Matters Episode 4
with Anastasia Vorgias
Welcome to the AD School Matters podcast. Each episode we feature an interview with a creative from the student community at UNSW Art & Design. We aim to capture the diversity of our community, whether you’re studying locally or abroad we aim to build connection that extends beyond campus walls. Let’s embrace the diverse ways we study, create and play.
This week, guest Anastasia Vorgias reflects on the impact of dyslexia on her art practice; and forming the Bloody Bean art collective. Also: Discomfort and confessional art, fumie tiles and Indigenous representation in school curriculums.
Hosted by Aria Joshes
Mixed and edited by Aria Joshes
AD School Matters logo by Art Start volunteer Marissa Yang
Anastasia Vorgias (she/her)
“Definitely Dyslexic” Artist Anastasia Vorgiasis is known for a text-based practice in autopathography surrounding her experiences with dyslexia. Her work uses a mistake making process to “create the visible out of the otherwise invisible”, providing her audience with an insight into her everyday. There is a childish humour in her embrace of mistranslation and her ironic relationship with the written word. An embrace of this mistake-making process through Vorgias’ works is connected with a common theme of red, a tribute to her graded high school papers drowning in a sea of red corrections, symbolising her errors and mistakes.
Anastasia Vorgias on Instagram
Anastasia Vorgias Website
Anastasia is interviewed by Aria Joshes
AD School Matters Ep 04 Transcript
with Anastasia Vorgias
Aria Joshes (AJ): Welcome to AD School Matters podcast. I'm your host Aria Joshes Waterford and today I will be interviewing Anastasia Vorgias.
Hi, Anastasia and thank you for joining me in this podcast today. Welcome to Arc’s AD School Matters podcast.
Anastasia Vorgias (AV):
Thank you for having me.
AJ: You're welcome. Could you introduce yourself to the audience at home? Who are you? What are you studying at UNSW Art & Design and when did you start studying here?
AV: Yeah, so my name is Anastasia Vorgias. I am a dyslexic artist. I started my studies at IArt & Design in 2017, straight after graduating from high school. I completed my Honours year last year and are now studying a Masters of teaching on Main Campus.
AJ: Can you tell us more about your creative practice?
AV: Yeah, so for me a big part of my creative practice is my dyslexia and my experience through that sort of lens. I was diagnosed when I was in year four. And obviously it was an important part of my schooling and something I did struggle with a lot when I was in school, I came to sort of already began accepting it in year 12, when I focused on it for my major work looking at the social expectations of women specifically and also through the dyslexic lens in the schooling environment, and from there, it sort of took off.
When I started my degree at UNSW, I continued to look at it through quite a few of my courses. I did a major in printmaking, and sculpture, performance and installation and played a lot with that experience a lot through text works, which was awesome, especially in printmaking, playing with of course, like, you know, there's a quote I once heard in this awesome TED Talk, which discussed how the invention of the printing press is almost like when we started recognising and seeing this issue with language and with dyslexia, and that miscommunication and mistranslation. So it was a interesting point to play with through my work.
AJ: Wow. So how is your practice been changed or impacted during the global pandemic?
AV: Well, a major part of it was impacted during my Honours year. So I completed that during our first big stint in lockdown last year. And it completely changed the direction I was going in. Of course, I was focusing on the dyslexia and I did a lot of research into autopathography, which is where an author or artist uses their experience with mental illness or disability through their art and tries to recreate or use it to inform their practice.
And so doing a lot of that from home meant that while I would have probably done something heavier in print, I didn't have access to the studio. So a lot of my experimentation was using or creating my own methods of print at home. I did that through creating my own letter stamps, almost in a sort of dyslexic alphabet. I spent a lot of last year accepting every mistake I made, it became pivotal to my practice, that in every element, whether it was through the understanding of assessment structures, or the... my own way og note taking or the production of the actual work itself and mistakes in the practice, I tried to accept it all and embrace it all, which was really interesting.
And in the end, I did get some access to the printmaking studio. So some of my work was intaglio etching-based. But yeah, it was definitely an interesting time and I definitely don't regret completing my studies during that pandemic, it put a whole difference in my practice.
AJ: Yeah, that's awesome. Do you mind sharing with us about the collective you started?
AV: Yeah. So during my Honours year, part of the program with UNSW was that they offer you an opportunity to be a part of the Annual which is an end of year exhibition that they run and myself and a large group of the graduate students from that year decided to boycott that, and we held the Anti- Annual, which some of you may have visited or heard of, which was an amazing success. And from there, a group of us decided that we wanted to remain in contact and continue the hodge-podge small artists collective that we've created through the Anti Annual. and so we started what we called the Bloody Bean which was actually a joke name at first, and then it stuck and now that's just what we are. And it mainly consists of quite a few artists who also studied SPI sculpture performance installation. So we have a great background in curating. Part of the assessments for that course are in curating exhibitions and installing your own works so it's great to have a really resourceful team that knows how to, you know, start off an art collective basically.
And so from there we had our first little show at one of my friend's apartments on the rooftop. It was a video installation evening with quite a few performances by Billy Posters, Emily, Maurice, and I believe Kai also did a work that night, I can't quite remember. And from there, we proposed quite a few other exhibitions but things have been put on pause again with a lockdown so we had to cancel ahh...we had this amazing Garden Show organised that was going to be held in my backyard, and was going to look at private versus public that sort of intimacy and relationship between the private dwelling and the public, and... oh! We were so excited for it. But obviously, things have had to be put on pause now.
I'm sort of hoping that our collective will come back together at the end of lockdown and reassess everything and get back to it. Because it's really important to have these sorts of small self run groups that are working with those emerging artists, which was basically our whole motto, we wanted to be engaging and working with students who are just out of uni, and that sort of awkward transition from uni into the art world and supporting them through that. So yeah.
AJ: Can you describe to me a meme that made you laugh so hard you cried?
AV: Hmmm, I’m not huge in on meme culture and stuff like that. But I guess I did really enjoy... I enjoy the little videos that I find which sort of expose the everyday life that we so often don't talk about. And there's this one video where a woman has just given birth, which of course you don't see on the footage, but she's just talking to the fact that, you know, she's trying to enjoy the blessing of life but she's too distracted by the pain of having just given birth and pushed an entire child out of her vagina. I think that that one cracks me up every time... just talking about that sort of everyday and making everyone more human and understanding that life is the way it is and difficult, and we should talk about all of these things.
AJ: Yeah, definitely. I feel like there's a little bit of stigma talking about the female experience at times.
AV: Definitely, definitely, there needs to be more of it, which is why I love art as an avenue for that, t's so great to see some artists be so self-exposing, which is a huge part of what I enjoy myself. In my own art I do a lot of self-exposure works particularly around the family unit and understanding that relationship. And then also other great artists like Lucas Christian who is constantly opening himself up in his own works and exposing himself to his audience.
AJ: Yeah, awesome. Yeah, comedy, comedy is a good one for female self-exposure I reckon, I I feel like a lot of shame in the female experience has been starting to get de-stigmatised with a lot of popular female comedians.
AV: Oh, definitely Yeah, talking about their own experiences talking about their friends’ experiences, or just sharing the mundane and silly things that happen every day.
AJ: Yeah, definitely, like Tiffany Faddish and Amy Schumer come to mind?
AV: Definitely, yeah. Among many others, especially some smaller ones that you're finding now on Instagram, and other platforms that just allow smaller artists or creators to share content.
AJ: Yeah, definitely. What's your creative go-to activity at the moment?
AV: A bit of everything. I've currently got quite a few commissioned works going for my state board designs, I paint directly on skateboard decks with acrylic paints and seal it with a marine varnish. So I've got a few coming up at the moment, I have two orders. One is a standard trick board and the other is a longboard deck. So that's been really interesting playing with the graphic design and stuff like that, with those works.
And I'm also trying to keep up with my more conceptual works in terms of working with my dyslexia and the theme of red that has been quite a major point for me, which links to my experience in the education system, and the use of red as a reference to error and on marking in many of my assignments and submissions when I was in school, it almost like a sea of red and drowning in it.
And so I'm trying to continue on with that which I also linked to this silly experience I had as a child, I went through multiple testing with my dyslexia. And one of them I did this small guinea pig test in someone's garage in the most strange environment where they were testing, it was a scotopic test, looking at the light sensitivity and the pigment behind my eyes, and which one was the predominant one, basically, to determine which colour would make it easier for me to read and understand information. My colour of choice apparently is blue. And red being the opposite of that I was told by them would make me angry if I wore it or make it harder to read if I saw it.
So as ridiculous as that sounds, and as weird as the test was, I have done a lot of playing with red throughout my works as a sort of continual theme with the dyslexia. So I try to continue with that as much as I can during lockdown while doing my next degree.
It's very interesting particularly now as I'm studying my Masters of Teaching and looking at all of this and my experiences as a student now from a teacher's perspective, particularly when it comes to different students and making sure you're differentiating your teaching style to assist with all learning styles. So particularly when it comes to writing on the whiteboard, or presenting texts on a monitor or projector screen, it's um... I guess really interesting how much you need to take into consideration the font size, the colour of it, how many students need to be closer to the board or provided this information in other formats?
Visual learners, auditory learners, people who need printed out versions of whatever you're working on, the information you're trying to teach. And it's interesting how I'm now recalling all of the differentiation that was done for me as a student in the classroom to assist me and now using that in my own classroom for my own students.
AJ: Yeah, I think the psychology of the colour red is quite fascinating as well...
AV: Definitely!
AJ: ... because it is quite an alarming colour, you know, like, it's the sign of “Stop” when you're crossing a road, but then it's also, you know, a provocative colour that arouses people. So it is kind of...
AV: There’s also the cultural element of it as well, like, yes, we study in art, particularly in high school, looking at the way different cultures understand the meaning of colours. When we look at old Western art works, paintings, and things like that, and comparing them to other cultural understandings of the colours. Red is a very interesting one, when you look at it from different perspectives. And it's something I'm definitely interested in looking in more detail and seeing how that changes the meaning of red to me, and through my work
AJ: Hmm, I really like how you've got such a simple element in your work that's so prominent...
AV:...Consistent!
AJ: Yeah, consistent and strong.
It's really interesting how just a simple element like that can really make people feel strongly about something or capture people's attention, I find that the red in your work really does capture my attention a lot. Like if I'm scrolling through Instagram, I'm like “Whoa, there's this red thing and I have to look at it!”
AV: A whole sea of red in my Instagram posts at the moment do tend to be quite red. It’s fun! I try doing a sort of journaling activity with my art sketchbook working only in red,
So even taking notes and scribbles on measurements and proposed artworks all in red, just to really really embrace it. So wasn't allowed to pick up any other colour pen, but red!
AJ: Wow!
AV: Certainly made things interesting.
AJ: Is there anything you're looking forward to most when going back onto campus?
AV: Gosh, I mean, the social element, of course is a huge factor. Particularly in terms of again, talking about my learning style, as a dyslexic, for me auditory learning as my best way of communicating, but via conversation with tutors, or with peers, bouncing back ideas until I find the common vocabulary that makes sense to me, so that I can fully understand the information.
So something I found really hard, while learning online is that most of the time we're being lectured at and don't really have that opportunity to ask them questions. And so yeah, that learning cell for me is just not coming through. And then of course, I'm also too anxious to put my hand up in a lecture and say it in front of the whole class while we're all on Zoom. So having that experience where I get an opportunity to ask my questions, one-on-one is definitely something I'm looking forward to.
AJ: The last guest I actually interviewed, or last guests are with two people who are actually designing some workshops for people who are neurodiverse and we were talking a bit about learning styles and, and learning as well. And like the adapting of the academic learning system to be more inclusive of neurodivergent people. So I find it really interesting that you're talking about different learning styles, because I think that's an essential thing that all... all learning systems should consider before they come up with a curriculum and I don't feel like they do do enough of that.
AV: 100 percent, yeah. I mean, looking at it from now I'm studying the teaching element of it, we do talk about differentiation and it's extremely important that we put it in every element of our assessments and our practice and things like that. But I do think it could be talked about even more and talking about the different styles and really having that discussion and really understanding all the different styles is essential to including and allowing that equitable learning for all students and yeah, within all neurodiversity.
AJ: Yeah, definitely. What learning style is most comfortable for you?
AV: Yeah, I think I have varying ones that work really well for me that I've slowly been learning and tailoring over the years at the moment, I finally figured out how to use this text to speech programme. So obviously for me, auditory learning is a lot easier than attempting to read it based on the fact that with the dyslexia I can misread or mistranslate information, especially you know, on that computer screen looking at the horrible fluorescent lighting and everything like that.
So I use this text to speech programme, which is fantastic. It's called Natural Readers. And that was designed for dyslexics so even has the dyslexic font that was designed quite a while ago. Personally, I'm not a fan of this font. I don’t know what other dyslexics think of it but I find it hard to read. It is designed basically to put the weighting or the the main weightings... A strange way to describe it! Like the the main density of the letter is at the base of the word to weigh it down and sort of prevent that vibration or moving of words which a lot of dyslexics experience and to hold you in place, which is quite interesting. Personally, not a fan.
But yeah, so I use that text to speech programme a lot. And I've figured out now that I can upload the PDF documents and texts I need to read and it'll read through the document for me, which is fantastic. But then yeah, so for me, my best mode, which I found really interesting during...during my art degree, was that to and fro of conversation, so I would discuss my art ideas with my peers and with my teachers over and over again, asking repetitive questions or discussing things and seeing all the different options within each element of my artwork.
I do the same thing with my theory work sitting there and having that conversation until I understand every single element of an assignment. And it all sounds... I feel sorry for my teacher sometimes because I think it sounds like I'm asking repetitive questions but just changing the phrasing or the order of the words or the word I'm using to then link that knowledge and information to vocabulary I have stored in my working memory. There's a lot of interesting theories on this all and studies on at all which I'm coming across now as I'm doing my teaching. Like I find that it’s putting all the pieces together for me even personally, just understanding how the brain works and how personally with dyslexia it's very memory based. So my understanding of information comes through with the vocabulary that I have ingrained in my brain over the years so when it comes to a new word, it'll take me a really long time to I guess add that to my working memory and add that to my processing and understanding of information.
AJ: So, last question. What inspires you right now and do you have any advice or a hot tip for our creative community?
AV: Ooh what inspires me at the moment? Mmm, I'm really interested I guess because of the exhibition the Bloody Bean was going to have in that private versus public relationship especially since my...I find my family is quite private. My mum's side of the family is very British and I guess still has that old fashioned sort of “You don't talk about it” idea of me being the most open book does a point where I overshare dirties I should probably not tell it's a really interesting topic to me to delve into with that self-exposure and then inevitably because I'm okay with self exposure, I'm exposing my family which then they're not so okay with.
So that sort of idea of whose secret belongs to who and who can tell what has been really interesting. And especially you know, with our current situation in lockdown, it's interesting to see how our relationships are changing how our connection to people has changed for gotten stronger or... and that sort of dynamic between friends and family.
And I guess hot tips for the creative community? Never give up, constantly write down every stupid little tiny idea you can think of. Talk about it with friends and family, discuss your ideas, talk about your stories and experiences, because there's always other perspectives that people can bring to your art. And I really, really appreciate the collaborative nature of art and discussing that with peers, and getting their perspective, I couldn't think of anything better than chatting about it, and really getting into detail with it with peers, family, friends, whoever. Because it's interesting to see the different perspectives people bring to that, that cultural perspective, that upbringing, “Where did they come from? What is their background? What is their understanding of the world?” And how do they bring that to your work or to your understanding and your perspective,
I did a really interesting work, quite experimental, back I think in my third or second year of my art degree, where I wrote down my memories of events, and what I had interpreted from my experience with my parents divorce, and obviously it being biased, and from my own emotional reaction, which of course, you know, I didn't react positively to what happened. And then I got my mum and my dad to correct or write over it, you know, linking in that sort of dyslexic experience and correction of misinformation and mistranslation.
And it was interesting to see how upset they got at my interpretation of actions or things that they had done during the divorce proceedings and everything that unfolded. And yeah, you know, my dad got pretty angry at some of the comments that I'd written and corrected them and said “No, that's not what happened. This is not correct. The correct memory... blah blah blah”, but, of course, this is interactions that I'm talking about from my childhood. So there's going to be things that I'm going to forget or add in and manipulate a bit because it's my own memory. It's not, you know, facts written down in history. It's not a recording of the event. So it was really interesting to see both of my parents perspectives on my memories and the different things that they picked up on and got upset about me saying, and so yeah, there is that discomfort of possibly ruining relationships, but it's just so interesting.
I find that denial and rejection of lived experience is really interesting, because I do find that with both of my parents, neither are willing to accept yet their mistakes or their involvement in what happened. It's always you know, it's the other person, the other parent’s fault, or it's my fault or something like that.
And it's so interesting to look at that perspective and have those conversations, but, yeah! So much to delve into so much... interesting discomfort. I love the idea of that discomfort in self-exposure. Particularly in recreating that for my audience, I do a lot of works where I try and make my audience uncomfortable and make them challenge their perspectives or their views. I did a work where I forced my audience to destroy it in the process of viewing it a lot like I drew inspiration from Ken and Julia Yonetani . Sorry, it's just Ken's work, Ken Yonetani’s fumie butterfly titles that he did, I think it was 2008. I'm not sure on the date. fantastic work. I use similar concepts for mine to get my audience to destroy my work just to create that discomfort. It's really awesome to look at the different ways you can recreate that sort of reaction in art.
Ken Yonetani “Fumie Tiles” (2003), ceramic tiles, 25 x 25 cm tiles x 2200 pieces
AJ: You did something similar at NOX with those coral bones
AV: Yes, that's the work. Yeah. So I used clay similarly to Ken and created these human bones.
Well, obviously, they weren't anatomical or anything like that. But I created that sort of recognisable bone shape to talk about the experience where I went on holiday to New Caledonia and found that the entire coral reef there was dead, and the tourists are coming in and walking through this water over these dead coral forms and stepping on them and as they just crumble into dust, and it was very skeletal like so I wanted to recreate that for my audience at the NOX exhibition in 2019, which was at the Randwick environmental park so had that element of environmentalism and preserving nature so I created this work, cornered my audience, forced them to walk through it and I didn't fire the ceramics; they were super fragile and just turn to dust within seconds. Also during the I think it was a three hour exhibition, is that how long it was at night?
AJ: Yeah, probably about that three or four.
AV: But it meant that in the first 30 minutes people got to enjoy the work, step on it, see the result of people who'd walk before them and then for the last two hours, people were just walking over dust and wondering where the work was. You know, I was sitting there for a participatory element and inviting because we had a lot of families. I was inviting this the children to sit down with me and create more bones and talk about their understanding of environmental issues, particularly to do with coral bleaching and coral lifespan.
AJ: Wow, I've heard a lot more about the Great Barrier Reef since that work that you did.
AV: Yeah?
AJ: … and yeah, it doesn't sound like the doesn't sound like the government's really taking seriously as an endangered site.
AV: That’s a difficult conversation. There's a lot of government policies that are coming in that have, you know, been there more for publicity than actually fixing or creating initiatives that will improve our environment and local areas.
Ken and Julia Yonetani do a lot of works specifically based in Australia and to do with our environmental issues. They did a work, a couple works actually on the Murray Darling, and the issues we had with increased salination, and the droughts we've had and a few other issues with the waterways there, which is just so important to our New South Wales area and bit of Victoria as well. It's just such a shame, and so devastating that we haven't implemented anything that has successfully worked, or we're still denying the reasons behind why this natural disaster is happening.
Just the lack of listening to Indigenous leaders in the community and in the area who are here trying to teach us and tell us about what's going on and what we're doing wrong.
AJ: Yeah, definitely.
AV: I would on that note, like to acknowledge my traditional landowners of where I'm at; Gadigal and Eora Nation, should have done that at the start but we've forgotten. Apologies! Yeah, just it's an important part of my teaching now, when we're discussing in our degree about trying to integrate indigenous knowledge and perspectives into our teaching pedagogy, you know, on land that we're teaching that was never ceded.
AJ: Yeah, definitely. I apologise for not mentioning that myself.
AV: You’ll have to run it in the script for next time! Important point to acknowledge at the start.
AJ: Yeah, I'm pretty impressed that they're starting to teach Aboriginal languages in schools now, that's pretty exciting.
AV: Yes, but there’s not enough of it.
What we're looking at at the moment in my degree is just the sort of lack of acknowledgement or support for Indigenous students, particularly I read an article that was dated back in 2008, so I'm not sure how this has changed now, but indigenous languages are not considered on the applications for the EALD students, or used to be called ESL students, for people who English as a second language for they just weren't acknowledging that Indigenous languages should be included in this application system. And it's due to stigmas of Indigenous languages being considered dead languages, which is just disgusting. I'm appalled at our teaching system, but also inspired by the discussions we've had in class for the potential for teachers to individually work with community leaders and community groups and try and mend some of these devastating policies or actions that we've taken in education and, you know, government. It’s just a shame that it’s not on a broader scope that it's not really truly looked at in our Australian curriculum, and Indigenous knowledge is not truly utilised in our classroom. It's, it's a shame, but I guess I am still inspired by the power I have as an individual teacher to create these inclusive classrooms.
It's such a huge issue, particularly in at least my experience of art in high school was this tokenistic ridiculous look at Indigenous art only through dot paintings and looking at generalised symbols of Indigenous art and you know, depictions of flora and fauna and then getting the students to claim them and make them their own through their art and oh...! It's just horrifying. And you know, that was our education, at least for people in my age range.
And it’s so so important that our teachers are utilising the knowledge and the resources and the skills of our Indigenous communities and integrating that into our classrooms. Not claiming it is our own, and actually physically getting these leaders, if of course they’re willing, of course you need to ask permission and build that relationship and that trust, which is a whole other topic, and uh, you know, a difficult negotiation as teachers that we have to be aware of because of our position as myself as a Western teacher, yeah. It’s so important to physically have these conversations in class, but from their perspective and through their voice, not me providing this information through my voice, it’s not something I should be doing, I should be as much as I can outsourcing and using this information. Which is why I’m actually obsessed at the moment with a lot of the videos I can find on Youtube of the artists talking about their work themselves. It takes away that secondary source issue of misinterpretation or misunderstanding an artists’ intentions in their work.
So it’s great to have these resources online that we can access for the students. I’ve been doing a lot of research into that and understanding different ways of teaching in the classroom and it’s great to see that a lot of teachers are now using Google Suite and Google platforms in terms of there’s Google sites that you can upload documents to, Youtube videos to, and resources for the students to access at any point, and it’s all absolutely fantastic to have all these resources too if you know what you’re doing and if you do the right thing.
AJ: Well thankyou Anastasia for coming onto Arc’s podcast AD School Matters, and it’s been a pleasure interviewing you. Stay safe and take care.
AV: Thank you for having me.
