Part C - Arts Heroes and Heroines

My interview with Susanna Gent: http://www.radiowaves.co.uk/story/151009/title/BethanyBoaminterviewingSusannaGent

For this part, I have interviewed artist Susanna Gent after visiting her Bank Street Arts exhibition which I really enjoyed. She doesn't work with just one media, but with lots of different ones, like sculpture, taxidermy and film making, which I thought was particularly interesting and was why I chose to interview her. I particularly liked her 12 stag heads that she had made, because they incorporated humour and a really creative use of material and were just really interesting to look at as they were made of all kinds of odd things she had collected, (like one, for instance, had skin made of pink rubber gloves, taps for antlers and plugs holes for eyes).

I really enjoyed my interview with Susanna despite being nervous and I think she enjoyed being asked questions. She was very helpful and answered all questions with lots of detail which I really appreciated. I hope to see more of her work in the future.

The questions I asked her were:

- How would you describe yourself as an artist and what you do creatively?

- How did you get into art and did you set out to be an artist from a young age?

- You use taxidermy (that is stuffed animals) and fake animals in your work, why?

- I believe you have taught yourself taxidermy which you've used in this exhibition, how did that come about and how do you source your animal bodies?!

- I've heard you are also interested in ideas around the uncanny, can you tell me a bit more about that?

- The fake deer heads mounted like trophies on the wall come across as bizarre and comical. What place does humour have in your work?

- How does your past creative work differ from this particular body of work and is it all related somehow?

- Which other artists do you admire and why?

- what kind of things or people influence your work?

- Does your art pay a wage or do you have other ways of making money?

- So you teach on the Media course at Sheffield Hallam University. I imagine art a difficult subject to 'teach' because it's such a personal thing to different people…how do you deal with that?

- What advice would you have for any aspiring young artists?

- What are your plans for future creativity?