In conversation: Jace Ambwani & Seonaid Best

 In conversation with Jace Ambwani and Seonaid Best

Hosted by Penelope Gordon at Beer Rebellion for Deer in Traffic.

 

So. Miss Seonaid. 6th of April 2026. It's a lovely day.

Beautiful.

What defines your practice? Such a hard question... ‘define’ is so strong.

I know... well, visually, I think it’s textures and exteriors in the urban landscape – but also, I’m trying to bring that inside as well with interiors. And also, trying to... involve more objects as well, like metal and wood and paper-making, because I think I paint a lot of that and maybe it can be a bit more interesting, or, evoke something else when you actually have that object as well as the painting (because I really enjoy painting).

Conceptually, I think my work is, at the foundation, observational, whether that’s in personal experiences or political perspectives. I want to try bring those two together because I do think the personal is political. Hence, why I want to try and bring in interiors because a lot of those objects and images can be representative of policy or social systems and how they affect your life.

So we’re talking about materiality, and obviously I get to see some of your work in the studio, now it's taking a new sort of turn into interiors which I really enjoy. What attracted you to the- almost brutalist-like landscape, architecture?

Why did I start there.

Yeah!

Well, I think initially my... the flat I lived in in the first-year of Uni was like- had an ant infestation, it had loads of mould, I had my whole bedroom wall, one of my bedroom walls, was covered in black mould – and I think that opened up my interest in housing and housing policy in London, which is obviously... pretty terrible at the moment. Yeah, so I just learned a lot about that, and with my own background in politics, it was something that was quite easy to research.

So I did a lot of that in first year, and then I wanted, I felt an urge to shift that in second-year to something that had a bit more longevity personally, which is where drawing personal experiences and connecting how policy and political actors et cetera can influence your personal life - Which has been a hard journey to figure out visually but I think, you know, that’s why I’m drawing in exterior textures and then bringing in the interior.

I guess you’ve always been drawing from your own life, just from the surroundings.

Yeah. I definitely – even before uni, I was painting a lot of what I was surrounded by. I was doing a lot more surrealist things... but hundred percent.

What is your background in politics, may I ask?

I did two years at Edinburgh uni studying politics.

How does that compare to London as an experience?

As an experience, Edinburgh is really good as a student city but it’s obviously smaller, so there's a smaller range of people, I guess. And then the uni itself, has a certain reputation and that is... encouraged by the people that go there as well, so I definitely enjoyed my experience in London more than Edinburgh, but Edinburgh’s easier in terms of being a student.

So, Jace, what defines your practice?

I think right now, just... hmm. I think right now my practice is defined by exploration and experimentation – I think the work that I was making that I applied to the masters program with versus the work that I was making immediately after, versus the work that I was making at the beginning of the program, versus the work that I’m making now are all very different but still interconnected. I think at the beginning, when I applied to masters programs, my work was also very architectural. I studied architecture as my bachelors and then I worked as an architect, an urban planner, and a lot of my work was a lot about external spatial conditions, so like built landscape, urban conditions, and then I got much more abstract with it and I started getting more sculptural and diving more into self perception and a distorted identity – it was very psychological. Now, I feel like I’ve come kind of full circle because the work that I’m making right now – which isn’t necessarily the work that I plan on showing – I'm kind of coming back to architecture and space, spatial conditions, in the context of the domestic, and the house, and the home, family dynamics and hierarchies that exist within the home. Exploring generational trauma and upbringing and heritage through the context of the family dinner and the girl’s bedroom, and the backyard, and things like that. So it’s very experimental, in terms of material and expression but overall, I would define it as generational trauma, psychological landscape and hierarchy within the home.

Theres a lot of, probably, visual similarities between our work, but it’s quite nice that there’s-

At this point we were interrupted briefly by a nice lady asking for some change.

Ok, so! One thing I was going to say, looking at some of your older paintings where it was exteriors, architecture, there's something kind of suburban about it... we were talking about psychology... I was reading in this book about walking (Flaneuse by Lauren Elkin), women walking and the psychology of the suburban landscape... do you have any thoughts?

Yeah, I have SO many thoughts about suburbia. I grew up in the US and – those paintings were inspired by this book by James Howard Kunstler called ‘Geography of Nowhere: the rise and decline of America’s man-made landscape’, and it basically just talks about post-war United States and the economic boom, just kind of the acceleration of the idea of the ‘American Dream’, and individualism and capitalism and ownership and mobility and how every family now, we want– it’s all about ownership: you get a house, you get a car, white-picket fence. In general, the Ford Motor company lobbied heavily in the government for like – I'm not explaining this at all eloquently – for these big infrastructure projects to basically build a bunch of highways. Prior to WW2, the United States had a pretty sophisticated rail network and that was sort of put on a backburner after the war and instead, this massive intricate inner-state highway system was built – which has its pros, but also, really has a lot of cons. With that came the sprawling American suburbia that we all know. So, I spent – I didn't grow up in this specific kind of suburbia but I did grow up in suburbia, kind of disconnected from the city. I studied in New Orleans and I did a road trip from New Orleans to Arkansas and I spent some time in Texas too, and those identical cookie-cutter houses lined up, row to row, and acres and acres of sprawling suburbia, no trees, car-centric, the nearest grocery store is like – what would be a 20 minute drive and is also a 2 hour walk. So, I was really inspired by the isolation that you experience in these communities.

It’s very American, that style.

And it’s like, this guise of- it blurs the line between individualism and isolationism because you think that you have- home ownership, I’m not against home ownership, but to say ‘Oh, I’m an individual but, you know, I drive the same car, I live in the exact same type of house and do the same commute as all of my neighbours’. So, I was really inspired by these conflicting ideas and this very unique condition, this really strange, off-putting feeling that you get when you were driving through these suburbs in like, Arkansas or Texas, and they’re all over. So that’s kind of what inspired me, this- you feel very overwhelmed by just the scale of how big these suburbs are. You just feel like this tiny little thing in this really overwhelming, but also, very flat environment.

Kind of like the horror of suburbia, the horror of the thing that’s depicted as so idyllic, especially in contrast with how the city is then depicted – I guess, not even how its depicted, but how its seen when you’re in the suburbia.

There’s city-life and there’s suburban life. I think when you’re a kid suburbia is great because you can just ride your bikes on the street with your friends but, I don't know, what you just said made me think about, maybe the way that I view those paintings, or painted those paintings is almost from the 1950’s housewife perspective, where she’s like, chained to this home basically, and everything just starts to blend together. I just imagine her walking through this endless suburb and also, if you’ve seen Edward Scissorhands, this exact kind of- very liminal, backrooms feeling that exists within the US.

There’s [a painting] that I really like of yours, it’s like specifically showing the backs of the houses, it’s really nice, it’s all just the shadow, that’s what it’s focused on. It’s so looming, I just love it.

It’d be interesting to explore the alternatives to suburbia, or city life, you know. The way people reject that in their everyday life. How they manage to do that in a society that pushes that way of living so much.

I think it’s a hard- it's so possible to change the way, like, you can scale up these homes so that you have low-density housing, as opposed to single family homes but it’s, I mean, it’s expensive but so is war, and the US will give so much money to war, you know. You kind of have to de-condition a population that was so against the idea- unless you were in like New York or a big city- but against the idea of shared communities and apartments. You kind of have to put in a lot of work psychologically for the population in order to undo these things even though it would be, in my opinion, a net positive.

Next question for Miss Seonaid, what was your favourite piece that you’ve worked on?

Oooo! Hmm...I need to think about that. I think it’s a piece I did last year, or maybe the year before? It kind of looks like different coloured blue tiles with a background of different styles of housing in London, and then there's this, like, bike tool on the front but it’s outlined. I really liked working on that one because it came really quickly, but also, the beginning of my process is really informed by the pictures I take around London, and that was just very simply, I put together three images and then I bought this tool at a car boot sale and put it on top- didn't necessarily mean anything, but I think as I made it it was really... I really enjoyed that it was informed so much by textures and pictures around London. It felt very- it really encompassed my practice at the time.

That’s so lovely. Miss Jace? What was your favourite piece that you worked on?

Hmm. There’s a couple. I mean the suburbs painting, which is currently in Germany, sitting in a storage unit with all my other paintings from Germany! I mean that one I have I’m very emotionally attached to for a multitude of reasons, like, it was my first kind of completed, genuine project that I did after moving to Germany and I started it in my apartment on my tiny balcony and then by the time I was finishing it I was subletting a studio, so it kind of came with me through this development. It’s also just a really nice painting and I’m really really happy with it. I think in terms of what I’ve made here, because I feel much more connected to the work I’m making now, I’m really happy with this move into sculpture and metal-work that I’m doing. The shrines. Specifically the little tower shrine, not necessarily the house, the family dinner that opens and closes – that is a very technically cool project that I enjoyed working on but, this little house that was meant to be a prototype for a part of a bigger dollhouse just ended up looking really nice on its own. I think that one right now is definitely my favourite. I still keep coming back to it.

Why?

I don’t know. There’s just so much that I can do with it. I’ve made these tiny little chairs and I like to be able to- the chairs are meant for the family dinner shrine but I- I'll sometimes put the chairs in the house and have different kind of candles and it’s been really fun to use the shrine and see what- ‘cause when you put a candle on the bottom floor, it’ll heat up the floor on top of it and that candle will melt faster, and then that will heat up the floor above that one and so, you kind of just- it's a-

Discussion of hierarchy.

Yeah, it’s hierarchy, it’s also- it’s really nice to watch. I find when I put candles in there and I light them, I just will sit there and watch them until they burn. And so, I’ve been having a lot of fun using that piece to test...it’s been a fun piece that I can experiment with as I’m working on other pieces, seeing how a different, you know, if I wanna use copper or brass for tiny furniture, how would that look in the steel? And then, which candles melt faster? So, I think for that one, I think that’s my favourite one just because of what it allows me to do and what it symbolically means as this step into sculpture and metalwork.

I love when you can bring something that you’ve used on one piece of work to other pieces of work, because it can both be like, all your work is cohesive and there’s continuity but also, if it’s genuine, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I keep coming back to this for some reason’, it’s really nice as not the artist, as a viewer, to see that appearing throughout all of your work

Yeah and I think that is in the nature of a shrine: a shrine, or an altar, is in itself an installation. It’s like a personal installation, it’s very personal to the person that owns the shrine. I want that in my work to where it doesn't just stay fixed as it is but it evolves like, the wax will build up, and so the way the way that the shrine looked when I burnt the initial candles versus how it looks now is- you've got this build up of wax and sometimes the wax will crack and break off or like, I have burns now on the steel from the candles, so it’s just continually evolved, just like a shrine when you can remove things or add things, and I’d really like that to be something that people can interact with my work somehow.

Also symbolically just showing like, I mean, you know when you have the shiny new house and then there’s just burning inside of it, radiating from the centre and heat rising and it all just permeating through the layers it’s- the traces of it are still there, and I think that’s so true for family relationships.

Exactly, exactly.

I think also, we’re all- we all have immigrant parents and I think that as well can carry so much in terms of things never actually getting resolved, I don’t know if it’s- it feels almost like a cultural thing and then the next time, it’s not the fresh slate, it’s like there’s something already there, it’s already a bit tarnished.

And if it’s not talked about, the trauma in my family that I’ve inherited is... it’s just not talked about, like I really don’t know the extent of it but I see it, you know? I can see that there’s something going on here, there’s something that’s being projected onto me and my siblings and I know that there’s something there but it’s just not spoken about so the heat and the burns within the home are there but the physical candle has melted away.

And it’s not even, it’s not extinguished, it’s not dealt with, it’s just left to burn out till it’s just like, ‘Well... it’s done now! It’s over’, like water under the bridge...

But it’s never over.

It’s never over!

It always continues. Have to break the chain.

I love that. Okay, Seonaid! Could we talk a little bit about your creative process as well? You used to make – I don’t know if you still make – these little stamps... I loved them.

Oh yeah...yeah! I think it starts off with me taking lots of pictures and doing a lot of research, recently I think I’ve been doing more research than I have been making work. Meow. Yeah, it’s really important to me to... I’m hugely inspired by other artists and how they incorporate object and painting, so I bring my own experiences, my own political and social perspective, other artist’s work and then pictures that I’ve taken. And then when it comes to actually making the work, yeah, I really like to use tools which, I think can be symbolic of what I end up painting. But yeah, I make little stamps of bricks out of foam sheets! I have a little collection of those now... I’ve started using lace and polishing cloth to spray paint on top for a different texture. I really find it very interesting to figure out how to make different textures on a smooth surface. I know you can build up layers with various acrylic grounds and sands and stuff but I really like a thin, layered, smooth surface so it’s fun to see what kind of everyday things I can use to make repetitive patterns or sand away layers and build up. I wanna try and do more collage-style painting, ‘cause I have a lot of things I want to put on one painting and it’s hard to show that through one painting or one piece. It’s hard to show that through one image.

What you were describing earlier did actually make me think of collage, when you were talking about taking the pieces from the junk shop and the pictures...

Yeah, I think that’s why that felt so successful to me, I didn’t realise it at the time and then I tried to recreate it and it was a bit of a flop. I think I’m now coming round to realise that I have all these different things that inspire me and I can put it together like a collage and it can work in that way.

It’s also very- I feel like your process from what you’re saying is also like, almost print-making based as well. Like you’re using these different materials and fabrics and making your own little stamps so it’s also quite inter-disciplinary.

Yeah, yeah, I really like that. I really love painting and that’s something that I don’t think I’d ever take away from my practice, but I really want to involve other ways of working alongside that and I think what I show at the degree show will really... really show that!

Ayyyy!

Ooh, I'm excited.

Any hints?

Any hints? It’s mixed media! It’s a little bit of this, little bit of that...

On the edge of my fucking seat.

You just have to wait. June 12th.

Is that when it is?

I think so!

Ok pur.

Put that in your calendar, girl!

No, for real I need to.

Our’s is June 29th to July 4th.

Cut that.

Ok, so. Miss Jace. How has your creative process... sort of... developed because, I’ve seen your stories, girl...I’ve seen you in the metal shop.

I’ve been in the metal shop! Yeah, I don’t- I feel like I’m still learning what my creative process is. It's definitely- it's a really emotional process – I be crashing out y’all.

You can not tell from what you post, I’m like, ‘She’s on it!’

No I’m not! I deadass...making these fucking chairs, they were so- they were my boulder, like, I was Sisyphus in there. Every single time – ‘cause they only have one kind of solder, and every single time I would connect a piece and go to heat up another piece, it would break! At one point I had finished, I think, my fourth out of five chairs and I was like, ‘amazing,’ and I was holding it and I dropped it and it broke and then I accidentally burned my stomach with the soldering tool and I had to just like- I fully was about to just burst into tears. I really had to like... do some deep breaths. It’s very- I think my process is, it’s very endurance based as well and it’s very much hands-on. I’ve been trying to- ‘cause the purpose of this masters program, it’s an MA, so it’s a research degree and I’ve been trying to figure out what research means to me and how that plays a role in my creative process because before I would just make something and figure it out or I would have an idea and make that and then I would be like, ‘Well, I don't have that- I don't have any ideas anymore.’ But then, when I started- when I made the chastity belt with the mask, that was just because me and my friend were like, ‘Oh my god let’s go to studio, make some masks and just have fun,’ and that kind of triggered a whole thing for me. So I think, I’m trying to incorporate, research-wise, I’m trying to incorporate more – yes, researching artists of course – going to events and shows and just trying to see more things and get inspired. I’ve been, when I was in Spain – when I was in España – I went to some chapels and churches to see how they do their shrines.

That’s good research.

It was a research trip!

You can claim that back.

Also, like, in architecture there’s- you can walk around and maybe there's a little spot where there’s a – I don’t know how to explain it – there’s a shelf in the facade where you can put a shrine in there. So just- I think it’s less traditional research which is very much literature-based, watching a lot of interviews and more going outside of the studio, outside of the library, just walking around and thinking until something comes to my mind or I make a connection. With metal, that is a process that is particularly, really, I'm just very drawn to. I mean, I applied to this program because I wanted to learn to work with metal and use these workshops and I really like that A, it’s an industrial material and it’s quite architectural as well – the extraction process from mining metals to when it becomes ready to be used in a production setting is really intense, it’s a very intense process to get to a sheet of steel, versus if you look at a- of course extracting wood and other materials is also quite intense but there’s something- you know, you have to use plasma to cut steel and lots of heat and these saws that will kill you if you use them the wrong way. There’s this sort of– this is actually kind of a funny story – there’s this whole barrier between me and the metal, you know, if I’m welding or I’m soldering, I need to have gloves, if not two layers of gloves, a protective coat, goggles, the welding helmet and I can’t see shit out of that thing and I just have to trust that I know what I’m doing and there’s this barrier between me and the thing that I’m working on! I was talking about this at a private view and the woman who I was talking to, when I said that, she was like, ‘Do you think that maybe is a reflection of how you approach relationships?’

Oh!

Woah...

I was like, ‘First of all! Yes. Definitely. Second of all, why would you say that?’ But there is an avoidant nature to working with such an intense material where it’s not as delicate as painting...

At the same time, sometimes people use materials and it feels like they’re just distancing themselves further and further from tapping into anything emotional whereas yours seems fraught with emotion. The whole process is emotional and laborious.

It’s laborious, it’s painful...I burned myself! You know, that shit hurts! You just keep going, the amount of times I’ve scratched myself on the metal or like- when I was making the family dinner altar with the hinges that open, I had to go onto weldonhinges.com and I bought a bunch of hinges and I welded one of them on backwards!

How do you remove it?

You don’t! That’s the thing is like... I went up to one of the technicians and I was like, ‘What can I do?’, and she was like, ‘Yeah...(shrugs).’

Do you just start again?

No, you just accept it. I am someone who, especially in her process, I feel like in painting – I hit a plateau with painting and I love painting – but I’m such a control freak to where I would find myself working in loops with a painting where I would just slightly change this bit and then I would change this bit and I just found there was no way that I could stop myself. I just could not accept a painting as it was and I think, with metal, with something that is very permanent to work with, you just have to accept it – if you weld on your hinge backwards, its backwards! It doesn’t shut all the way properly and that’s just how it is. With the family dinner shrine, what I did to get the photos onto the metal is a process called screen etch resist where you make a screen for screen printing from photos and then you screen print varnish onto the metal and then you put it in an acid bath so that it etches away the image. Oh my god, talk about letting go. You can look in the acid bath, you can use a little feather to see how much it’s etched, but the only way you know how much it has or hasn’t etched is when you take it out and you wash off the varnish and once you do that, you can’t put it back in the bath. You have to trust your instincts, and I got lucky to where I- not lucky, ‘cause I just learned to accept it. If it doesn’t look the way you were hoping it looked – that’s it. On top of that, the steel will rust.

I love that, though...that’s a bit of me.

I was getting so frustrated because it would rust within hours. You put so much labour and emotion into a piece and when you make a mistake it stings that much more, but it’s also very liberating at some point when you’re like, ‘this is how it is!’ And that’s life, you’re gonna make mistakes that really matter to you and you just have to keep going.

I think it’s important, as creatives, I was talking to my friend about this, that we have an outlet that is not necessarily something we want to be our career or something we want to monetise. This is sort of in relation to you talking about metal, when I’m doing ceramics, that is purely for enjoyment and to be creative. This is all to say that, I think it’s really good to add something to your practice, whether that’s even just a different way of painting, or doing really small paintings, or metal or wood or ceramics, that is like, ‘I only have so much control over this and however it turns out, it turns out,’ because it will be a way where you’re not so- you can get so within yourself and everything can go, like you said, a loop and you can go round and round, and it’s good to get to have something where it’s like, ‘this isn’t what I had in mind but I like it for these reasons.’ You start to fall in love with the process rather than the outcome. I think it’s very important to have something in your process that is like that and limits you – limitations allow creative people to get really really creative, because when you can do anything, you end up doing nothing because there’s so much option.

I think that’s also such a good metaphor for life in general, there’s that saying, ‘does life imitate art or does art imitate life?’ Exactly what you said, you can try to control everything that happens in your life but – a pandemic might happen. A war might happen.

Or both.

Or both! You have to learn to just let go. If you have too much control and too much freedom then you just will be completely stagnant with it.

So if, Jace, if your practice has a natural end point where you have to accept it, which I am also personally going through right now, then Seonaid, how do you know when to stop, when it’s done?

I think if you asked me this a year ago I’d be like, ‘I have no idea! I just keep going until it’s done,’ but I’m thinking of some of the paintings I’ve been working on recently and I think I’ve simplified what I’m painting, rather than painting the whole scene, I'm painting part of an object or part of something. That makes it a lot easier to be like, ‘Okay, well, this part is done.’ Going back to process, I think adding lots of layers – if you’re painting with oil for example – you add a layer, you gotta wait for it to dry and then you add another layer. I think either at some point you’re gonna be like, ‘I’m fed up with painting this so I think it’s done now!’ or you will add so many layers – and that’s the great thing about working really thin, is that you can add so many layers and when you get to a point when you’re like, ‘Ooh! That’s- I really love that!’, you can stop. Yeah, so I think just the way I’ve actually started painting, the process of painting has allowed me to, it forces me to be like, ‘Okay, what do you think of this? Can you add another layer? Do you want to?’ If not, then, just leave it.

So I’ve been showing with you, in the uni shows and stuff, for a while and – even in ‘Rooms’, as well – you never put any description for your work, you never do, right?

Not really, no.

Why?

I think because, there was- I can’t remember where I saw this, maybe in a video or maybe I read it somewhere, I think it was an artist talking about titling your work and they were like, “Don’t just title your work” - say you did a painting of a house, don’t just title it like, ‘Red door’ if you painted the door red, have the title allude to why you’re painting it or the “meaning”, or what was important in the process. I really took that on, and I really think about how I title my works and that is a huge clue to the piece and what it’s supposed to mean or, what kind of feeling I’m trying to evoke so, the title is the description. Sometimes I’ll do a description, but it’ll be very short, if I do. I do think it’s interesting because I do so much research before I paint so I do have a lot to say but there’s something quite nice about keeping it short and sweet.

For you I feel that the explanation will come one day but right now it’s just the work on its own.

Yeah, I think so, yeah. Maybe, eventually, I think it would be really nice to get into the nitty gritty of all these things I’m researching, but all my work is connected to each other so that would have to be like a whole chunk of writing in itself.

So last question, I’ll start with Jace.

Hi.

Hi. Have you got anything coming up or projects or anything you’re just excited about?

Yeah, well, I’m excited to be showing my work with Seonaid at Beer Rebellion. Really excited, it’s gonna be fun! I haven’t done a show that was also in like a... I’ve only been in shows where it’s been in more of a gallery setting so I'm excited to be in a show that’s much more social, where the socialising exists and the artwork is just kind of, there. But, yeah, actually I’m gonna be in another group show sometime in very late April or May, that’s coming up and then, honestly, I’m just excited for the course to start again, I wanna start making... we have proposals coming up for our degree show and I have no fucking idea what I wanna do. Yep, excited for London summer, outside, sunshine and yeah, I don’t know, just excited. Things are looking up, you know?

Miss Seonaid?

For me, also very excited to be showing with Jace... I think it’s gonna be very fun. I think our work is going to compliment each other. And then our degree show in June, I’m excited for... I’m doing a lot of painting at home, I’m really excited to work with some metal as well. And then do some more paper-making! That was a huge part of my practice last year. So yeah, I’m just really excited for what I’m gonna show at the degree show, I think it really encompasses everything that I’ve talked about today, unlike the rest of my work which is little bits, bits and bobs, whereas this is kind of like everything that I want. Everything that I want my practice to be!

Okay last question actually, quick-fire: if a fairy portal opened in front of you, would you go in it?

Absolutely I would.

If literally any portal opened in front of me, I would go in there.

Thankyou so much.

Would you go in there?

Yes! Of course! I’m not even thinking twice. I'm in.

Jace and Seonaid’s show will be on display at Beer Rebellion from the 22nd of April till the 22nd of May 2026.

Private view 7pm 22.4.26

Beer Rebellion, 129 Queen’s Rd, London, SE15 2ND

 

 

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