Richard Penn
Richard Penn
March 25'
1. The roots of your ongoing project ‘White Noise’ stem back to the 1990s and have informed your practice since then. Can you explain how you came to this and how it has developed over time?
During art school, much of my work involved pastel drawings, where I built up horizontal bands of tiny marks that disrupted the image—like static interference cutting through a signal. While researching for my MA, I discovered that a small percentage of the static, or 'white noise,' on an analogue television comes from residual radiation from the Big Bang. This revelation transformed how I understood white noise—not as mere interference, but as a state of maximum entropy, a field where all possible signals coexist. It became, for me, a portal to the moment when structure first emerged from chaos, a metastable state brimming with potential.
Over time, white noise evolved into a central motif in my practice, appearing in ink drawings, pastel works, animated films, oil paintings, and more recently, on found objects. I gravitate toward discarded objects that bear traces of their former function—embedded nails, familiar shapes, inscrutable accretions. These objects exist in a liminal state, caught between purpose and abandonment. By collecting them from beaches or pavements and painting them, I momentarily halt their dissolution, suspending them in a new phase of transformation.
2. In each style of work for this show—ceramics, drawings, painted objects—you describe setting a rule that is then layered or built upon to inform the final work. Do you have to let go of the final outcome to fully explore this?
I often work within self-imposed limitations, some more restrictive than others. For these drawings and ceramics, I limited myself to three fundamental shapes: the stadium, the arching stadium, and the circle. Each piece is constructed shape by shape, without preempting where the next form will go. I try to remain fully present in the process, letting intuition take over rather than predicting the final outcome. The well-worn adage of ‘letting your hands do the thinking’ is central to my practice, though I enjoy operating within certain margins. No matter how restrictive the rules, repetition and iteration always open up new creative possibilities.
3. How is your ceramics practice informed by your fine art training?
This is an interesting question because, to me, clay is simply another material for exploring ideas and metaphors—just like oil paint or pastel. I never approached clay from a pottery background, so I never had to navigate a transition from pottery to sculpture or question what that shift might mean. My relationship with ceramics has always been shaped by a fine art perspective, where material and concept develop alongside one another.
4. Talk to us about why labour is so important to the concepts you are exploring.
Much of my work exists in an imaginary space—one that gestures toward realms beyond direct human experience: the extremely large, the extremely small, the extremely distant. These are realities we struggle to articulate, ones that require metaphor, mathematics, abstract art, or music to even begin to comprehend. Because the ideas themselves are elusive, I feel the method of production must carry that same metaphor. For example, you could create a surface of thousands of dots by spraying paint, but in my work, the act of making—each mark placed deliberately—must reflect the complexity and effort of grasping the intangible.
5. How do you think your South African heritage informs your visual language?
The most direct connection to South Africa in my work is found in the White Noise series, particularly in my use of whites, ochre, red, and brown—colours drawn from the landscapes of my past. Living in New Zealand, I find myself thinking and dreaming about the bushveld I left behind, and in a way, its absence has compelled me to bring it into the studio more deliberately.
There is also a fascinating confluence between the latent potential of white noise and the African bush. I remember driving for hours in the Kruger Park, seeing nothing but endless stretches of whites, browns, and ochres—yet knowing, with absolute certainty, that the landscape teemed with hidden life. That tension between emptiness and potential resonates deeply with my exploration of white noise as a field of possibility.
6. Is there anything you do to keep your art practice invigorating?
Teaching has been a major catalyst for keeping my practice energised—first at Elam, and now with the Otago Polytechnic ceramics diploma. My focus in teaching has always been on developing skills in creative practice, and in guiding others through that process, I’ve deepened my own understanding. Moving between mediums also keeps my studio work fresh; shifting from painting to ceramics to drawing creates new momentum, ensuring that no one material or method becomes stagnant.
