Moksha Richards is an artist working in illustration, painting, sculpture and mixed media. Hailing from the Northern Rivers, NSW, Richards lived in Melbourne for several years before relocating to Berlin in July 2023. Soon after we became friends, I was immediately impressed by the accuracy and depth of her interrogative work. Several weeks ago, Richards and I spoke extensively over the phone, and this interview is a concision (of sorts) of our dialogue. I hope what remains intact is the passion and certitude that fill every ounce of Richard's sentiments. We speak about her transition from illustration and painting through to sculpture, her 2023 residency in Japan, working in production for other artists, her choice of materials and technology, the invocation of the cosmic and the spiritual, and the difficulties in qualifying artistry, among other topics.

Adam Hollander What I immediately found interesting in your work is the layers. On the one hand, there is this apocryphal, code-based thing that’s implicated in calligraphy and hieroglyphics. But the work is also involved with the ancient, the spiritual and the ritual—the modern and the contemporary too.

Moksha Richards That’s exactly how I hope people read my work. That sort of timelessness of three thousand years past or three thousand years into the future. Playing with the technological experience, but also creating something connected to ancient practices and beyond human practices as well. Just playing with the fundamental geometries of life. 

AH I think the idea of the object in your work is intriguing. There’s a big discourse around the problematic nature of creating art objects with the intent of selling them to collectors and institutions. Many artists are trying to escape this framework through performance or installation, but you choose to blur this notion of the object. Where’s the distinction between object and artefact?

MR That’s interesting because, at the moment, I’m working as a production assistant, and I am really seeing into the world of commercially successful artists. I’m getting an insight into what exactly a monetarily successful art practice looks like. It comes with an insane amount of pressure and a rapid rate of production. I feel, of course, that there’s something exciting about having a bounty of resources available to produce whatever crazy idea you can come up with. That’s a freedom that I would eventually like to obtain, but I never want to lose contact with the materials. That feels really important. I can see that once someone reaches a certain level of acclaim, they often get pushed into the role of CEO, manager, or businessperson. Not in every case, but sometimes the artist fails to be present with the actual creative work beyond the concept. That’s something I’ve actually been struggling with lately: how to execute the concept, in a way that is within my current means. There’s sort of a delay between my ideas and what I’m capable of achieving, in terms of money, resources, and skills. But I’m also just investing in a continuous practice of making; noticing whatever comes out of me in as authentic a way as possible. 

AH Being the production CEO is often seen as the blueprint for a superstar artist. Someone like Jeff Koons has a whole industry of people working beneath him… 

MR Since I’ve become one of those people in the production line, I really have no interest in having a studio of ninety employees. I have no interest in that level of stress. I have no interest in that level of disconnect. An ideal situation would be having someone who organises the emails and handles the invoices. Beyond that, I want to always remain close to my art, which feels absolutely critical. Otherwise, I would just lose touch with everything that got me here. 

AH What exactly does this touch entail? We’re not very reverent of the hand of the artist in the contemporary age. I think for most artists, it is a game of production and ideas. 

MR I love and respect that. I had a lot of naïveté about what being an artist is. Even when I first started studying, there was no one way, no singular creative practice. I do see the value and appeal of being a conceptual artist. I actually don’t think it’s necessary that an artist make everything that has their name attached to it. I don’t think it’s possible to realise certain creative ideas without the assistance of others. It’s necessary to have architects and computer engineers. But for where I am right now, literally making the work feels important, even though it’s something I’ve been slowly trying to loosen my grip on. I would like to get more comfortable with outsourcing and inviting other people’s skill sets into my practice. I don’t want to stray too far, though, because a lot of the transitions in what I’ve been doing have come through attempts and mistakes, as well as meeting the limits of my skill set. New possibilities are always produced from this. I think the actual materials that make up my work will always be foundational, because they’re the centre of the concept that I’ve been working with the whole time. 

AH What are the materials you work with, exactly?

MR Most of the materials I’m drawn to, on an intuitive level, are very raw. Materials like stone, paper. They come directly from nature. Skin and graphite too. But also, materials like rubber and metals. Things that make up our technology. It’s not a rule in any sense, but I love to be able to source materials organically. Maybe it’s a real Steiner kid thing [laughs]. Since high school, intellect, emotion, and imagination have interested me. All these elements exist within organic material and have, for a short time no less, been arranged into what make up you and me. The same material makes up art as well. On an atomic level, we’re all made up of the same thing. Initially, I was really interested in anatomy. I was trying to figure it out and ask, where is consciousness coming from? Inside biological material? I like to think about how we are just an arrangement of matter that will shortly be rearranged into the commonwealth of the universe. Maybe that’s why the rawness of materials appeals to me. 

AH It’s intriguing that you mention the universe. Your work feels cosmic at times. Really, your practice is centred around creating these objects, which don’t feel localised. They contain these apocryphal pieces of language and symbols that suggest religion, spirituality and the cosmos.

MR I think when it comes to geometry, take the circle for example; it’s a symbol of perfect harmony and ratio, and it has such a strong presence. It has such cultural richness and is sacred in so many contexts. Geometry is effectively what creates the universe. From a micro to a macro scale. And it is the information needed to turn all matter into some sort of structure that we interact with, including ourselves. It’s so esoteric, but it is the truth. I don’t think we’ll ever understand what this universe is, but we’ve kind of agreed that information is what organises matter. I feel frustrated by this concept, because it’s based on ideas and invisible forces, but not necessarily on our direct experience of reality, even though it is what creates our reality. I often think that I’d prefer to make work that is directly materialised through my life experience or is responding to things that I’m witnessing, but it seems that you don’t really get to choose your concept. That’s what I’m learning more and more. If you’re just following your intuition and interest from very divergent places and doing what feels most important to you, then something kind of strikes. This is what has come up for me. I can’t seem to escape it. It can feel detached and deranged in a way. It’s what I’m always returning to. 

AH Perhaps even more so with all the changes in your life. You moved to Berlin last year and undertook a residency in Japan last May. How have these experiences guided the trajectory of your work?

MR Going to Japan was crucial for me as an artist. I felt like I truly was an artist. I wasn’t a student anymore, and there were no other labels that I could attach to myself, apart from ‘artist’. It was the first time that I would wake, work, and sleep without interruption or social obligation, without anything else required of me. I did a lot of writing in that time as well and really considered what I was making and why I was making it. That gave me a lot of assurance about what I was doing. At the time, I had just graduated from university and had gone to India just prior, and I was wondering if there was any other alternative for me, other than being an artist. I meditated on that question a lot. After Japan, I moved to Berlin, and that was such an uncomfortable shakeup. Mostly because of the quality of output here, compared to Australia. I felt that I had so much to learn. It was the same sensation as moving from the country to the city. I felt like a totally naïve sponge. Moving to Berlin was also when I started working for other artists and gained a whole new perspective on what the art world was. In terms of my personal career, there’s been two parallel things: working on my own practice and working for other artists. The goal has been to fund my own work, but I haven’t felt so much of the desire to make money from my art right now. Not like I did in Melbourne. Before, the hallmark of my success was making money from my work. Now, I really just want to be a good artist. And I don’t actually expect to be a good artist soon. I think it takes a lot of time and maturity. What feels most important to me now is creating well-resolved work. I love my drawing practice. It feels very meditative and healing, but I really want to be moving more into sculpture. So, I think there’s this awkward, teenage phase where my ideas and what I’m capable of aren’t matching up. I think the focus of this residency that I’m doing currently is to develop my skills and my thinking. Through writing as well as practice. I want to be exhibiting as much as possible, but I also want to be exhibiting good work. And I feel like I have a decade between now and then.

AH What do you deem as ‘good’ work? 

MR Funnily enough, I think it’s a lot easier to classify ‘bad’ work. For me, good work comes from a very simple idea. I enjoy it when I see a consistent and devoted practice or when there’s a standard of high technical skill in the work. I also love working with a lot of emotional immediacy and humility. I think that’s also why I appreciate time. Because I don’t think I can make good work now. I just don’t think that I have enough experience. I think I need to be a little bit softer on myself. I’m 24, you know? It’s okay to still be experimenting and pushing the limits of being a human being. This softness I have towards myself can only really come from acknowledging that this is the first time I’ve been alive. I’m really just trying to experience being a human being. If I can do that in a creative way, I think that will result in good work. I just don’t know what that work is yet.

AH Often, people in creative practice—at least most of the artists I am thinking of—really hit their stride in middle age. I find it amusing because it does take a lot of time to solidify your practice and learn the rules of the game.

MR 100% on every level. If you’re becoming a master of anything, it takes time. We know that. It’s street knowledge. 

AH The ten thousand hours rule, or whatever.

MR Yeah. And I mean, from every standpoint, you’re learning a whole industry. You’re not just learning the skill of your trade; you’re making connections, having conversations, and living life in order to bring that into your practice. You have to learn the history of your industry. There’s so much else that happens beyond the actual art or whatever the product of your discipline is. Most people want to succeed and reap the rewards from the get-go. Letting go of the money side has been really freeing for me.

AH I want to come back to what you were saying about the circle. One post in particular on your Instagram page caught my attention—the Stone Age CD, which connects to your foray into sculpture. The object itself appears alien and uncanny, but you also accompanied the image with a meme about the Rosetta Stone (text reading “you’re always on that damn stone”). It arrived during a perfect moment of obsession with the Rosetta Stone between my housemate and me. We were religiously watching YouTube videos on the topic. Your work discusses the intersection between the ancient and the technological; amusingly, it also jests about being transfixed by an archaic object. But instead of a laptop screen, it’s hieroglyphs.

MR The writing on the object is illegible and doesn’t belong to any particular alphabet. I make these alphabets up, kind of as a practice. We can read texts written several thousand years ago and that information can come into my experience and affect our way of thinking. On the other hand, language links to the ecological materials that are required to make up technology.

I was reading an essay and it mentioned a story about a salt lake in Bolivia, which I think supplies around 70% of the world’s lithium. The story follows volcanoes that roam freely across the land; the only female volcano gave birth to a baby volcano and all the male volcanoes were so overcome with envy, they took the baby volcano and hid it. The mother volcano was so distraught, she cried and cried and her tears merged with her breast milk, forming the lithium salt lake.

We carry about seven to eight grammes of lithium in our phones. The idea that these minerals create technology is amazing.

AR But then again, the phone object and the effect that it has emotionally on the spectator suggest that it’s not just a dumb object. You know?

MR Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing. It’s kind of poised as a highly valuable archaeological or cultural artefact, but it’s ultimately not at all. I think I really like that work also because it was the first time that I could just make something that effectively breached the seriousness of what I was doing prior. It played a little bit more with my interest in memes and internet culture as well.

AH I really like this complicated engagement with modern technologies. But there’s another contradiction, in that the technology represented is an archaic one. A CD is already defunct and totally transient in its usability. You and I can remember a time where we were using CDs, but the iPad babies won’t necessarily have a memory of this. The CD is really an artefact of a time gone by. I think the work interrogates this idea. What is old? What is familiar to us? What is readable and what is unreadable? How do we reliably store information? I remember seeing floppy discs around the house as a child. The information in that object is completely irretrievable. But when it’s unreadable, the aesthetics of the object become its content. 

MR Technology is incredibly fast-paced, and things quickly become redundant. Things from our childhood are already entering the technology museum. I like what you said about the storage of information. With the CD, the information is stored in the actual material of the object. On the surface of the physical matter.

AR When we spoke last year, I remember discussing your work primarily in terms of painting and drawing. Now it seems like you’ve moved beyond only working with a surface.

MR Yeah, completely. I also feel like my drawing practice is present in the Stone Age CD, in that I used engraving to mark the stone. I have also been tattooing goat hide. These works are ultimately extensions of my drawing practice. Moving into different materials has felt more and more appealing to me. Even in the sculptural works that I’m currently planning, there’s this element of drawing in them, but disguised in different ways, becoming more three-dimensional.

AR How important is that three-dimensionality? 

MR I don’t think that there’s any specific way to get a job. I think that people at the moment are very obsessed with sculpture and installation. It feels like the only way to make meaningful, interesting art is to work in these forms and on a really large scale. I don’t necessarily agree with this. I think the idea can be effective, no matter the medium or scale. I still have a stubborn foot down towards that. But my interest in particular materials—stone, fabric or wax—becomes obvious as I start to work in space, and I think it’s stretching my way of thinking. It’s challenging to imagine the backside of the object. A 3D object allows you to create more of a world in space, which is really nice. I think that’s why studios are such an exciting place to be, because you really enter into someone else’s world. And when I think of exhibitions I envision for the future, it’s really about allowing people access into whatever my experience of this life is. And then 3D objects just become more necessary and interesting.

AH What is your studio like at the moment?

MR My studio is just so exquisite. It’s in the attic of this barn space. One room is a lot cleaner, where I’m sitting right now, with big windows and floorboards. It’s nice to be able to expand and not pack up. You know? I have a whole bank of materials around me, and when I’m making something, I can find the relationships between the different materials. I find that when I’m working from a concept and then creating the work from that idea, there’s always something I need to work on. There’s always material that I don’t have, information that I need to research, or a skill that I need to learn. There’s always this blockade that prevents art from happening immediately and intuitively. I think having a combination of these two approaches is really helpful.

AH I’d love to talk about your name. I remember the last time we met in person, you told me that your name was Sanskrit for freedom from life and death. I find this funny because your work tends to have a spiritual content of sorts. 

MR I have had a spiritual upbringing, though I’m not spiritual in any particular way. But I appreciate experiencing the world with a little bit of magic. Having this name feels like a lucky omen. A lucky charm.