Meet the Artist // Moksha Richards

Can you give us an introduction about yourself and your background?

I grew up in rural Australia, and when I finished school I moved straight to Melbourne. While I was there I did my bachelor’s degree in fine arts, majoring in drawing. I finished that at the end of 2022 and straight after that I went to India. I took this period of time to think if this was the path that I wanted to take, I meditated on this question and I decided to close all other potential doors. Shortly after I did a residency in Japan, and then another in Prague, which culminated in my first international shows. From Prague I moved to Berlin, where I have been based for the last year and a half.

Since I’ve been here, I started working as a studio assistant in the studios of established artists. I feel like I’ve learned more from doing this than I ever did in university, the skills I’ve developed and witnessing the resources available to create projects on that scale has been beautiful. Parallel to that I also did a residency in Berlin at Culterim for five months. At that time I started working more in sculpture. Previously drawing was somewhat necessary in a practical sense, as I was moving around so much, and traveling so much. Then all of a sudden this studio presented itself, and I had this huge space to work in. It seems that sculpture is becoming increasingly important to me now, however drawing will remain a nucleus around which I always orbit. I’m very proud of this medium.

Can you tell us a bit more about your recent work?

The last series of sculptures that I did towards the end of last year, was a group of suspended cocoon-like shapes that were made of wood and pig intestine. There were quite a lot of them, I think maybe 13 altogether. They’re pretty large, around 2.5 meters, larger than a human body. When they’re hanging it feels like you’re in a forest of these cocoon-like body shapes. I started making them because I read a book of film transcripts by Anton Vitikov called “Citizens of the Cosmos”. Which looks at Russian Cosmism through a five-part film series. I found the ideas really bizarre – the movement presents death as a biological flaw to be overcome, proposing that human intelligence, if unified, could achieve immortality. The sci-fi nature of these ideas, genuinely worked on by so many individuals, was intriguing. Parallel to this, I attended two artist talks by Ivana Basic, who discussed how butterflies retain their memories from being caterpillars, despite literally liquefying. These parallel ideas collided, making me think about our atomic structure. In a way, we already exist in a somewhat immortal state, as the atoms that make up our bodies are infinitely recycled in the cosmic commonwealth. I also considered how information is fundamental to the organization of this matter in the universe. Information storage in matter has been a core theme I have been interested in since I began at university.

Can you tell us about the project you’re doing right now?

I wanted to make something with the fundamental forces of the universe. That’s what I’m being pulled towards, things like electricity, radio waves, magnetism. I’m also really interested in the history of technology and computer history. Simultaneously I was looking at a lot of weaving, specifically ancient woven bee hives which I wanted to do a project on out of my love of swarm behaviour and the concept of hive minds. During this time I started to learn about magnetic core memory boards, which is an old bit of random access computer memory from the 50s hand-woven by women, and new ideas collided.

It uses the direction of the magnetic field of these little ferrite-cores which are woven together with wires, to store data in binary code. The one I’m building at the moment won’t be functional, initially I just want to understand how this technology works. It’s preparatory, because the more that I’ve thought about it, the more important it feels that there is information written on there. Encoding information in magnetic fields is fascinating and I really like the idea of being able to use text but in a private way.

What kind of information?

I don’t know yet, it could only be like one sentence or something of that size as there are only 1400 bits to encode. Something probably a little bit more humorous is what I’m imagining. We’ll see.
I’m currently very into narrative and world building so perhaps linking it to a greater expanded environment or protagonist. It’s just appealing as an opportunity to explore all of these different areas of influence, research and interests that appear disconnected and collide them through narrative. I was looking at paper architecture, which is the architecture equivalent of conceptual art. There was a young group of Soviet architects and they were essentially designing places that are never supposed to be built. It’s more the idea of the potential this space can facilitate, both in terms of redesigning society but also story. There was one guy that I came across, I think his name is Douglas Darden. Who created architectural drawings for a fictional building where a character from a 1930s novel goes to die.

What I imagine I would do with these stories is to distill them down to a title. So they remain private. I imagine it like an expansion (the story), retraction (the title), and then expansion again into drawings that are perceived as very technical drawings for something that’s never supposed to be built that doesn’t even exist in the first place. The drawings are just a necessary material object but maybe the whole work is actually just the title.

How do you like your experience at GlogauAIR so far? How is it living with other artists?

I feel really grateful to have this space to work. The last couple months of last year, I was traveling a lot and seldom in Berlin. These last months have really just been such a beautiful time to reorganize my thoughts and just kind of come back to my work and see which ideas still have a backbone.

Also these heaters are a luxury in themselves. Truthfully, not one winter of my adult life have I been properly warm. I’ve really just been so preciously delighted in having my world again. I’ve been really enjoying it.