Image: Anu Kumar, Friends of Friends — Honey & Prue
PHOTO Spaces—Honey Long and Prue Stent's studio
15.11.21
Melbourne based collaborators Honey Long and Prue Stent have been working together since 2010 combining photographic and sculptural practices. Spontaneous and playful, their art centres on a fascination with gender and the body, and seeks to undermine notions of the passive female. In this PHOTO Spaces they take us on an exclusive tour of their studio in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg.
Hello, this is Prue and Honey. We have a collaborative practice which blends sculpture and photography. Whilst we mostly shoot on location we spend a lot of time looking through places like tips and recycle stores collecting things to work with. We also love experimenting with textures and creating different material combinations. In our studio we end up surrounded by all of this and are pleased to give you a tour through to give you more of an idea of our practice. We are based out of Schoolhouse Studios in Coburg, here is Prue at her editing desk, probably the cleanest and most organised area of our space.
Here is our collection of different ball gowns that we’ve collected over the years. There’s something about their kitsch aesthetic and bright colour that’s really appealing to us. They are almost creaturely in a way, like tropical birds and mating rituals. I think in general there can be this sense of decorative things feeling hyper natural. When we go into op shops and the like we often don't know what we are looking for but often overtime a pattern will reveal itself.
We also like collecting field samples from different locations we shoot in. Being able to reference and use these different sediments, pigments and rocks I think gives us sense of the materiality of these different landscapes. That mud jar has been closed and fermenting for a while, we are scared to open it. There is also a melted glass piece sitting in the background that comes from Honey’s glass practice and a silicone mould of a friend's face who we shot a music video for.
This is Prue’s candle collection. They have all been found on various trips to Savers on Sydney Road. We’re not sure where exactly they are leading at the moment but no doubt they will come in handy at some point.
Here are most of the fabrics we’ve ever used in previous shoots. It is a struggle to throw any of them out because we find they can always be repurposed in some way. Netting, latex, lycra, satin, sequinned fabrics; we are drawn to anything that has a pleasing movement to it or texture.
This blown glass piece is a prototype/experiment for our upcoming show with ARC ONE and PHOTO 2022. We’ve been making plaster moulds from different objects we’ve collected and then blowing into them. Within the process, the original imprint becomes warped and distorted by the heat and fluidity of the glass. This one was made with a shell but has become kind of slug like in the process.