Making art in times of crisis and chaos: In conversation with Annie Hamilton
Tilda Butterworth interviews Australian musician and multimedia artist Annie Hamilton about her new single and creative process. Featuring photographs by Macami.
The last time Annie Hamilton and I had a conversation for Cult was back in October 2024 – two whole years ago now. Her album stop and smell the lightning was about to come out, and her UK tour was to begin in November. Not a dissimilar situation to the one we were in when we spoke last week, ahead of her solo show in London next month.
I had listened to her new single, ‘chainmail’, before our conversation that morning, and was desperate to ask her questions about it, but wanted first to speak more generally about making art in times of crisis and chaos – something which is on all of our minds at the moment. Being both a radical optimist and a brilliant multimedia artist, Annie was the ideal person with whom to have an uplifting conversation about creativity.
TB: Because the readers of Cult are mostly artists and writers, and I think we all share a fascination with the creative practices of others, could you share a bit about yours?
AH: Yes! I try to create every day, as a routine. My day job is graphic design, which is creative but sometimes doesn’t feel like it. So I’ve been doing this thing lately which I call craft hour. It’s an hour where otherwise I might end up sitting on Instagram or something, and instead of doing that I’m setting a timer on my phone and doing a craft. Whether it’s playing guitar, or upcycling clothes, or bedazzling a random thing that I found in an op shop, or making something with oven-baked clay, craft hour is a non-negotiable part of every day. There’s no end goal. I don’t have to share it. It doesn't have to be good. As long as it’s all process-driven, and as long as I am immersed in that process with no care for what the outcome might be. It’s been the best thing in the world for my brain and my mental health. When I do something with my hands that’s really repetitive and I’m fully focussed on that, it means my brain has time and space to enter flow state and come up with bigger concepts and ideas.
TB: I think that’s really good advice. There’s such an obsession with ‘productivity culture’ at the moment; with creating something that people can ‘consume’ and that will be good enough for a potential audience. And that’s paralysing in so many ways.
AH: It’s so hard when at the back of your mind there’s the idea that you have to post something on Instagram, or it has to be part of your ‘personal brand’. I fucking hate that concept. And the idea that if you’re not really good at something it’s not worth doing. Lately I’ve been putting my energy into things where there’s no sense of an outcome. I’m trying to learn how to figure skate. And like, I’m Australian. We did not grow up ice skating, so it’s very obscure and random. But my goal is to learn how to do a twirl.
TB: Ice skating is one of those things that’s really meditative, because if you stop concentrating on your body for a second you’re probably going to hurt yourself, so you have to switch off everything else. I love that.
AH: It’s fully like meditation. It’s a mind/body connection thing, and you have to be so present. I think what it all comes down to for me is presence. When you are so present and focussed that you can’t be asking yourself, “Is this going to work? Will people like this? Will it sell?”
TB: Of course you’re not only a songwriter and a musician, but also a multimedia artist – you plan and edit your own music videos, you make clothes, you draw and do graphic design and write prose, amongst many other things. Was music your first love, or was there a creative medium you were drawn to before that?
AH: Music was my first love, but I never considered it as a viable career, until I was just kind of doing it in my twenties and I was like, “Oh, I’m doing it!” I mean, I still don’t think it’s a viable career, in the current state of the world and the music industry. But as long as I can remember I was so obsessed and moved and captured by music. I’ve played the guitar since I was 12, but as a teenager I never considered that it was something that I would do in front of people, or that I would try to be in a band. All of the bands I was into were men, and all of the people I knew who played music were men, and I didn’t feel very welcomed. It felt very gendered back then. It never occurred to me that I would ever play music that people would hear. But then I just kind of started doing it and at first it was terrifying and now it just feels awesome.
TB: So it was terrifying for you to begin with?
AH: I used to cry after every show. I had such bad stage fright and I was so self-conscious and anxious. I never even played guitar in front of my friends and family – it was such a private thing. I would do it sitting on my bed, and if I heard someone walk past the door I would stop playing because I was so scared of people hearing. Now I’m the total opposite and I could not care less. I love performing and being on stage and I feel very at home. But it took a long time to get to that point.
TB: I think that will be reassuring to a lot of people – the idea that it takes time as well as experience. I’ve definitely been finding that recently, even thinking about myself last year. There are some things which have definitely become easier for me and I think that is just ageing.
AH: Totally. That’s why ageing is so cool. That’s why it doesn’t make sense that there’s such a huge emphasis on the next best thing. The industry discards people, especially women, by the time they’re like 25, and actually that’s when shit starts getting good. But I do feel like that is changing and shifting. There are more people just doing their thing, and you can tell when years of energy has gone into honing a craft, and that shines through any industry bullshit that’s trying to get in the way of it.
TB: Last time we spoke, we talked about our mutual love of print media. You very actively support small publications and print zines, which I value so much, and I’m so glad that you have this ongoing collaboration with Cult! Can you talk a bit about the importance of print media in your life now, since the last time we spoke AI was much less prevalent in the creative sphere?
AH: I’ve always been a huge print media nerd because I’m a graphic designer and visual artist. I love paper so much. I love holding something in my hands and turning pages and being able to scribble or highlight or write in the margins. I’m trying to get off screens as much as possible. Especially now it feels so rebellious to be working with print media because it doesn’t make sense in this day and age, with the economics of people’s attention spans. But you do it anyway because it’s so important and so special.
TB: That’s going to be the sound bite from this interview: “I love paper.”
AH: I go to paper stores and just, like, feel all the different papers…
TB: I’m so obsessed with marbled paper. Anytime I see marbled paper in a shop, I’m looking through all of it and obsessing over how it was made.
[We fall over ourselves talking about how much we love paper.]
TB: I remember that the last time we spoke for Cult and we talked about the same thing, I felt like the biggest obstacle to print media, for us, was the cost of printing and distribution. That’s still a big problem, but I feel like attention spans have actually become a worse issue. Finding people who still read long-form in print.
AH: I do feel like that’s shifting. There’s an undercurrent of social media fatigue, and distrust in anything that’s online. Everyone has time limits on Instagram or a brick phone. Everyone knows that the internet is rotting our brains. If I look at it optimistically, I think we can use the internet to find the other people who are seeking real life experiences, and then we can get off it.
TB: I knew this was going to be an optimistic conversation. Even though I introduced it with crisis and chaos. I remembered that you are a very optimistic person and I knew it would be fine.
AH: I am optimistic to a fault. I feel the same about the music industry. If everything’s fucked, if nothing’s working, that’s actually very freeing because we are liberated from the traditional ways of doing things. Then there are endless possibilities. I can follow the gut feeling of what is natural and exciting to me, and not get sucked into the doom and nihilism. Of course, it’s very easy to be [sucked into it], because, as per the theme of this interview, it’s a chaotic… What was your thing? Crisis?
TB: Crisis and chaos.
AH: We are in times of crisis and chaos and it’s depressing and terrifying. But the only way we can get through is to keep creating and doing things differently and actually use our imaginations.
TB: You are based in Eora/Sydney, but you travel quite a bit. Your new album, for example, was written on a solo writing trip to Paris. I would love to know more about the role of place in your creative process and life outlook.
AH: Place plays a huge role in my creative process. I love travelling, and I get really restless. If I’m at home for too long, I feel like the world is getting smaller. So I set up my life in a way that meant I would be able to travel as much as possible. I’m a freelancer, so I can work from anywhere: from an airport, or on a plane, or in a hotel room. I really intentionally decided to pursue graphic design and creative direction and illustration, because it means that I can move to the other side of the world for months and still support myself.
The place that I’m in influences my work so much. A few years ago I did a residency in a tiny fishing village in the northwest of Iceland. It was as remote as you can get, very introspective. I spent so much time on my own in nature, walking and exploring, no phone, very much on my own in this vast landscape, and that had such a huge influence on the work that I made. This latest album was the complete opposite of that. I wanted to be in a really busy, wild, chaotic city, but also somewhere where I didn’t know many people so I could have that isolation and build my own little world. So I moved to Paris for a few months and built myself a cocoon where I was writing every day, but then I’d go for big walks and go to galleries and bars and cafes. It was such a dream.
TB: So many people I’ve been talking to recently have been advocating for taking yourself on a retreat. If there’s something you want to work on and for some reason you can’t, you just take yourself somewhere else, out of your normal life.
AH: Totally. That’s always been so inspiring for me.
TB: So let’s talk about ‘chainmail’. Pressing play on the track for the first time felt a bit like being plunged into an alternative universe. The sound is gothic and fantastical and then lyrics are very real and relatable and it all comes together so beautifully. I know that you wrote it in Paris and then produced it with Alice Ivy in Naarm/Melbourne, and you wanted it to feel like “a slow descent down a sandstone spiral staircase into an underground goblin rave”. From my perspective, you achieved that! You said that every time you worked on it you were dancing around the studio like goblins and speaking in goblin language. Was the rest of the album produced in a similar way, or was this song an anomaly?
AH: It was the first time I’ve ever made an album in such a closed-off period of time. I wrote the whole thing in my little cocoon in Paris, and then I came home and took it to Alice Ivy, who’s an incredible Australian producer, artist and songwriter. We co-produced it and she mixed it, and I didn’t show it to anyone else through the whole process. I’m self-managed and independent, so I didn’t have a label breathing down my neck. I didn’t want any external influence, I didn’t want to start second guessing it. It was just Alice Ivy and me in the studio, in our own little world, and it was so special.
TB: Did you know that ‘chainmail’ was going to be the single from the beginning, or did it emerge?
AH: It emerged. I think the whole album has a cohesive world and concept, and ‘chainmail’ feels like opening the door, and yeah, going down the spiral staircase into the goblin room. It’s like, “Come inside and see what we’ve been cooking!”
TB: Your show in London next month is going to be a stripped-back solo show. How does the music change for you when you play it in this way, without your signature layered sounds?
AH: I love playing with a full band and letting the songs be what they are on the records, with so many different textures and so much going on. But I really love playing solo shows because it strips the songs back to their bones. To me lyrics are so important, so it’s a chance for them to shine. It also allows me to experiment with structures and arrangements. It’s very free-flowing and intuitive.
TB: There was a big audience for your last London show (in St Pancras Old Church)! What are you expecting this time?
AH: It’s been two years since I was there and since I released anything. So I kind of feel a little bit like, “Do I still have a London fanbase?”
TB: You're going to find out!
AH: I think that’s why I’m so excited to release this song and I’m so excited that the gig’s a few weeks after the song, because it would be so cool if this song finds a few new people who have never heard of me before, and they came to the show. I love London and it’s been so long since I was there, and I’m just excited to see who turns up!
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