Murmurations, Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, Istanbul, May 2025 @Hadiye Cangökçe
CONTEMPORARY MYTH-MAKING
In dialogue with Anousha Payne
FVTVRIST Magazine // December, 2025
Fvtvrist first discovered British artist Anousha Payne’s work at Paris Internationale 2025. Immediately drawn to her large-scale paintings and the way they merge mythology with material precision - practically ritual objects - we reached out to Anousha. We spoke with her about the origins of these forms, the ethics of reworking tradition, and what it means to give an object a spirit.
You reference Tamil folklore. How do you approach that heritage without turning it into literal illustration? Do you have a set of rules for working with cultural references and interpreting them?
Initially I was looking at female characters within Tamil, Indian and Sri Lankan folklore that were depicted as weak or vulnerable, often saved by the male characters in the stories; I wanted to turn the women into the heroins in the narrative, saving themselves rather than relying on the men of the story - to have figures we could look up to. I now often work with stories I have written, but appropriate elements of folkloric characters so they become like ‘actors’ in the stories I have written; elements of their characteristics or animal attributes become participants in the characters.
I see storytelling as something that is always evolving and changing when passed from one person to the next; I am just making another version that will likely continue to evolve after me. We can learn so much about the history of a community from storytelling. There are often ideas I choose to respond to that are suggested within a story, rather than the plot or narrative of a story itself - it isn’t necessarily about following a linear narrative, but the symbolism embedded within the story. I also often respond to folktales that exist within many different cultures; for example the woman who turns into a tree - this is a story that is shared between many cultures and continues to be relevant for its ecological message.
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Murmurations, Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, Istanbul, May 2025 @Hadiye Cangökçe
Your practice is layered and complex. You work with clay, textiles, and paint, did you start with one medium, or has your practice always been multi-material?
I started working with clay first during my BA at Camberwell. I found myself learning more from the technicians in the workshops, specifically Taslim Martin, who was extremely patient, encouraging and kind. Also very technical, and I often was trying to do things with ceramic that were not so immediately possible. He took the time to show me the technical aspects and I found myself continuing to play with clay and pushing against what seems technically possible. The ceramic studio was usually quite empty, peaceful and quiet. The first ceramics I made were slip-casts of stuffed toys I had stitched, the opposite process to how I work now.
Slip casting is methodical and slow, precise, careful. I am now more drawn to the way we can work with clay in a way that is quite immediate, you can push and build a slab into a rough form very quickly, its very quick to animate, to give a sense of life and movement. I like the sensory experience of working with clay. Everything has found its place quite naturally - like storytelling or using my own writing in my work, it has been kind of a slow gathering. I have been writing for the last five years, without intending to make work based on my own writing, but in the end this was what tied everything together. It is the same with materials; I have been collecting objects and sounds (field recordings) for years, without the intention of using them as material, but in the end everything finds its place. Painting has been the same - I first started painting because I was stuck, and I had old watercolours and calico in the studio, left over from a set design job, and used it to sketch some ideas for a sculpture. I’ve
continued to use painting on calico as a pushing off point.
When you think about your audience (collectors, institutions, or the public) how do you want each group to perceive your work? Is there a certain level of interaction or engagement you aim to achieve?
I want to help someone enter into the story; whether it is to see themselves in the eyes of the character I am depicting, or to empathise with the non human. I want to make a relatable environment, where everything is somehow almost familiar and accessible, tangible. Sometimes I use my practise to explore something that is impossible to put into words - despite the fact the starting point is usually words, stories - its a step away from this - I think that’s why I’ve enjoyed working with sound so much. I had this desire to make a kind of song, a beat, but I wanted it to help give you a sense of a journey, and I think it would be impossible to relate to this feeling without the sound - I am thinking specifically of an exhibition I had at Sperling Munich, where I worked with my friend Jonas Pequeño, an artist and musician, and it was important that the characters in the show had a non verbal voice.
The show was about a young girl exploring the idea of re-incarnation, and she and her grandmother were depicted in varying forms. Their voices were made mostly from gathered field recordings of in and around London for the last 7 years, but became this soundscape that lead you from one character to the next, building a sense of layered time.
A Faint glow, a stone and a sharks tooth, Sperling Gallery, Munich, 2024 @Sebastian Kissel
Do your materials ever dictate the work, or is the idea always in charge?
I choose to use materials that become part of the idea - whether an object is left as the natural original or cast in bronze, if it is paper mache or ceramic, the materials are chosen to emphasise the idea. Clay as a material definitely also guides the work, glazes are unpredictable and I don’t always test, so this can dictate the output.
When your work enters a gallery or museum, does it change its “spirit,” or is it the same object you made in the studio?
Sometimes I think the work changes as it enters a gallery space, only in that it becomes easier to read the interactions within the installation, between each of the characters - Its easier to see it all without distractions. Other times I don’t completely finish assembling a work until it is in the context of the gallery. But in essence; no, I think once something is made with an intention, that can carry through to how we experience it, whether in a gallery, or a home; an idea is embedded into an object and lives on.
How do you balance intuition and control in your paintings?
The form of the paintings is worked out before - usually I make 20-40 sketches just with a pen and paper before I re-draw the image on canvas. In this sense it is really a drawing practice. I think this is kind of intuitive as it is repeatedly following a line until you end up
somewhere that feels good. I am trying to push against this kind of controlled line at the moment though, and that’s where I found myself using two different kind of paintings on one canvas, stitched together - like the ones at Paris International. One side is very free - I began by drawing using a wax candle to depict the landscape, so it is almost made blind as you can’t see the wax line against the canvas, and then I paint over this, so the image emerges as you paint. It feels like watching a photo being developed. I wanted to balance the figures that were stitched to the same canvas, with a sense of space and landscape, the sun rising and falling through the canvases. These ‘landscapes’ were made by looking at an image of where my grandparents went on honeymoon, and then cut into strips and stitched back together. I wast thinking about what it feels like to see a landscape flashing past in strips out of a car window.
Anousha Payne, new series of painting collages and sculpture, Paris Internationale 2025, @Nicola Morittu
Congratulations on your recent show at Paris Internationale 2025 with Sperling Gallery. Are there upcoming projects, exhibitions, or collaborations you can share with us, and what directions are you most excited to explore next?
I am currently working on a project that was developed during my residency at Cité International des Arts; thinking about archives, laments and sounding vessels. I am still figuring out what form it will take. I am also working on setting up my studio more permanently in Paris now. Alongside the Cite des arts project I have been recently participating in some workshops organised by Cassie Layton and facilitated by Michelle Williams, which has been incredible - Cassie invited a group of British Sri-Lankan artists to respond to the National Archives in the UK, to make some collaborative works. The results of the first workshop will be read and performed as a graphic score at Cafe Oto in London by the composer Suren Suneviratne, (who I also collaborated with for my show at Zeyrek Çinili Hamam in April). I am looking forward to continuing this collaborative work into the next months.. In May 2026 I have a solo with Sperling Munich in their new space during Various Others.
The small things from the lowest land, Newchild, Antwerp, Decemember 2024 @ Newchild
About Anousha Payne
Anousha Payne (b.1991) is a London based artist working between sculpture, painting, text and sound.Transformation; both metaphorical and physical lies at the core of Payne’s practice. Often following a set of personal codes, alongside familiar or universal images, she composes characters that traverse the liminal space that stretches between personal experiences, fiction and folklore. Following material lead processes to build narratives, new speculative hybrid creatures are suggested through poetic material play and figurative gestures.
Using found objects as memory-archives and as metaphorical narrative aids, sculptures are often adorned with jewellery and textiles, acting as cultural signifiers whilst questioning material hierarchies and theories/practises of exchange value. This process establishes an exploratory
dialogue between the aesthetic, the cultural and the personal. Anousha Payne graduated from Camberwell College of arts with a BA in 2014. Recent exhibitions and fairs include The small things from the lowest land, at Newchild Gallery, Antwerp, a solo presentation at Liste with Sperling gallery, and a sculpture commission for York Art Gallery’s permanent collection, Murmurations, a solo exhibition curated by Anlam de Coster at Zeyrek Çinili Hamam and participation in Paris Internationale with Sperling. She is based in Paris for 9 months
for the Cité International des Artes residency.
