Penny Bovell & Gabby Howlett: Underneath/Overlooked

[00:00:00][Music] I first had the tiles on a studio floor myself and my colleagues used to be amazed by [Music] them 2011 a house came up for sale with the floors in and I bought it very impulsively there were pattern in every room and that made me really curious to find out more my name is Penny bille I'm a visual artist I love doing projects that have got deep social histories I did come across the Tyler's name JPI and Anna scolaro was a couple because they had a business together the house that I am in is the scola's first little home when I got that phone call from Penny I was absolutely overjoy it As I Grew Older I started to appreciate the Legacy that my parents had left us the contribution they made to the to freem manle and I thought that that should be in some way recognized a lot of the people that came from Capo delando came as fishermen and worked in the fishing industry uh jeppi was different he became a Craftsman jepi the Italian migrant who came to freem manle and brought color and joy to people's floors and homes when you look at all of the floors next to each other you can see that they are really works of art they are bespoke you can feel the labor in them in 2021 we had an exhibition set at the beautiful malls building in freemantle underneath overlooked bonded and resilient we had hundreds of people coming through the door a day and most of them hadn't even experienced the tiles or even knew that they existed it had five elements silk house a suspended house from the rafters of of the building silk was as close as we could get to the original tiles in terms of the way that it looks and feels with that smoothness and its shine we set up an interactive game printing the tile patterns onto acoustic paneling and had them all cut up so that the public could actually play with the tiles and it was fabulous to see how involved people got we had some panoramas in the community project of all of the photos they sent in bits of memorabilia tiles that we had found people could see how the tiles were produced from another perspective the exhibition is very much a story about immigration and what a positive influence different cultures have on our communities were there many people here that came from Capo delando oh I think half of Freeman is from cando Dad absolutely loved what he was doing I mean he was a real Artisan uh he'd do everything himself we grew up with the tiles I was 10 11 when my father started the work and it was much later in life that I that I began to understand the contribution to the freem manle Heritage we found them covered up by floorboards covered up by tiles glued down being able to have the conversations with people and find addresses adding to the research and it was about Anna and jeppi about how far they worked and how much they would have worked in such a short period of [Music] time oh we used to have a shop down in South freem mantle this lady came in and she was so full of emotion she just stood at the front of the shop and she walked through the door and she just got really overwhelmed and she said my mom used to make these tiles when she was a young girl when she first came out from Italy when we first started the project we thought that there was 30 houses and then after that it went up to 110 we have found 19 or 20 different molds just the most amazing combination of colors that you wouldn't think of very very brave and and and exciting you know I also like questioning where trade skills and labor stop as a Tradesman and where they you know and where the creativity might start there's only 20 different molds but there's endless possibilities and endless flaws that he's created just in the way that he would use the different colors together it's a bit like cooking you know you mix up little bits and you pour them in and you add the stone so the variations that can occur within very simple steps is what is intriguing I had been working on a large public art project noise walls and roundabout out of freemantle I felt that it was really important to pay some sort of tribute to the scolaro factory that was just around the corner and hopefully it makes connection it's a valuable link to who we are and and free mantle identity we were accepted to become part of the art on the Move touring exhibition in Regional wa and we thought that was a fabulous you know opportunity because we may come across more floors out there everyone's just so thankful that they now know who made made the tiles I just want the people that come to think a little bit more deeply about what's around them what ornamentation means to us in our daily life so delighted to have been a part of this I really am I can't begin to express my gratitude to Penny and Gabby for what they've achieved uh when I first heard of the for the plans for what they produced here I thought they were great until I saw them in the flesh and I just I'm sorry [Music] [Laughter] [Music]