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Sadie Clayton graduated from Kingston University in 2013 with a BA Honors Fashion Design. Fascinated by design and innovation, Sadie took these foundations to explore the creative boundaries between art, technology and fashion presenting her Spring /Summer 2017 collection at the Royal Academy of the Arts in holographic form in collaboration with MHD holograms, creating bespoke content with Adobe films for their Visionnaires story, and FisForFendi, and presenting her working process with copper through Augmented Reality for her Spring/Summer 2018 collection. Sadie has just finished her first collaboration working with Aida the first ever female artist robot, they were part of a programme curated by A Vibe called Tech, around black creativity and technology, located in the Tate exchange at the Tate Modern. Aida illustrated from Sadie’s mood-boards, then Sadie created a mini copper sculpture in response to Aida’s sketches. BBC1 Sunday morning live interviewed them both to discuss the interests and challenges around with within AI and a robot working with a human artist.
Hello Sadie, how are you? Hey, I’m good, staying fit and healthy …ish, but enjoying life with sunny days in London, I’m in my new flat with plenty of work still on and having a little more time with the boyfriend which is pretty unique for us as we are both rarely at home normally.
Can you share your story, from where you were born, to where you are now? I grew up in West Yorkshire, and my Yorkshire upbringing is evident more through my work ethic and the way I work. I am extremely hard working, teaching, working and building my brand 7 days a week and I’m tenacious, never shying away from asking – whether it is for help or for the answer to a difficult question. I think when you grow up in a small town in Yorkshire you learn to find any way possible to achieve your goals, drive and ambition is nurtured and you build a support group of friends and family who are like minded and together anything is possible. I will always be grateful to my roots. I moved down to London where I graduated with honours on my BA Fashion Design at Kingston University and have lived in London ever since.
When did your interest in fashion spark? From a very early age, as a child with a fusion of Jamaican British and Yorkshire heritage, I found my personality and character from carving out a look for myself and styling my own clothes and starting to play with design all stems from these early adolescent years.
You’ve transitioned from fashion, to multidisciplinary artist, what inspired this? After a couple of years on the fashion hamster wheel I realised that my foundations are amazing, but that fashion wasn’t all I wanted to achieve creatively. It was a natural transition as my sculptures are created often with traditional techniques like draping and I have always created sculptural clothing so it was more of an extension into new realms taking a part of my craft of creating sculpture for the body, and moving that towards making my artistic inspiration and my work with Copper more universal and applying it to all areas of life.
How did your work with copper begin? I always knew that I wanted to work with lots of different materials as a designer, not just fabrics, and metal was one of them. Silver and gold were more prevalent, yet as I grew up and was studying I was naturally drawn to the depth and richness of copper. I love the way that working with copper it can transform into a range of colours oxidising into blues and greens and as it ages it mellows. The essence of my copper work is the creation of a beautiful piece of armor to protect and shield, and how I work the copper comes to reflect the texture of life.
Copper has healing affects, is this something you were aware of when you first started working with the material? I was naturally drawn to copper as it is such a beautiful, a versatile material and also because at the time very few people were using copper, and I like to be unique and a front runner. That said I am have always been interested in spiritual intelligence and our holistic journey. Copper is the element which brings not only health and good luck, but is symbolic of speed and technology and change, all concepts which inspire me. Copper also generates positive energy so I couldn’t be luckier than to be working with it and educating people about it on a daily basis.
How did you start working with Sophia the Robot and Hansen Robotics? I am naturally curious and super interested in everything new and where tech will take us so robotics was on my list of areas to explore. I had already worked with holograms and AI as part of my fashion journey so this felt like a natural extension of exploring how technology can interact with art and artisans. Actually I just happened to be reading a magazine on the tube and saw an article about Sophia. I reached out to the Hansen Robotics team and they were fantastic. Completely aligned with me as a person and artist so it was a natural collaboration for us both. We did our first mini collaboration for COGX in London in June 2018 and then in October at Shanghai Fashion Weekend. The first interaction blew me away – I kept on forgetting she wasn’t human, and then by the time we met up again in October I was doing her makeup like real girlfriends.
I attended a post-humanist lecture last year which discussed ‘do robots have souls?’ What are your thoughts… If not now, will they in the future? The soul is questioned by science for humans as well as robots so I think I would have to answer no right now, but with AI developing at such a huge pace I am sure that we will give robots sensibilities and personalities even if we can’t quite give them a soul.
You’re an educator as well as an artist, how do your students influence your work? My students come from many different walks of life and so the exchange of creative ideas is always stimulating.
What emotions do you aim to evoke when people experience your work? Art is very subjective so what is important for me is that people to connect with my work. Each piece is different, is conceived or commissioned to fulfil different needs or conjure up different emotions. I am happy as long as people come away with a feeling, and opinion.
Do you have a practice? Yes, during lockdown I do – work out, meditate, breakfast and begin! On a normal week I can be whizzing doing talks, podcasts, teaching, in the studio, meetings meaning my structured routine goes out of the window! I also find time to go to the London Buddhist Centre though!
What rules do you live by? Never be afraid to dare. I have always embraced change and will continue to be curious.
How do you get into your creative flow? Hatch a plan – grab the Filofax, jot some notes / key words down and some little sketches and put my favourite tunes on!
How important is collaboration to you? I am a fusion of cultures and worlds and have always drawn heavily from my ability to take inspiration from lots of different sources. Collaborations for me are beautiful meeting of minds or creative attitude and have always helped me to push beyond what I can achieve alone.
What can we expect to see from you in the coming year? I had lots of projects planned that unfortunately have had to be postponed due to the security and health issues that surround works in galleries, exhibition venues and in the workplace. However I have a couple of digital initiatives up my sleeve and hopefully as we start to live with the new normal, together with the art world we will be able to find ways of bringing creativity into peoples’ homes.
When was your first major commission? Tell me about this and how it came about? My first major commission came in 2018 soon after I had made the transition to artist and creative. The IVY commissioned me to build a 10 ft copper Christmas tree for their Ivy Granary Brasserie in the newly developed area of Kings Cross in London drawing significant national and international acclaim.
What advice can you offer other artists regarding making their practice profitable? I have been very lucky as I immediately landed a great commission from the IVY, but I too am starting out and still using monies that come in from other areas of my work to make ends meet. That said it is important in every field of work to get out there and to build a network of connections so that your work gets the exposure you need for sales or commissions.
What’s your philosophy for life? Work hard, enjoy every moment of life and be generous and look after the people who truly and honestly love and appreciate you and the universe will send love and positivity back.
What advice would you give to your younger self? I wouldn’t change a thing about the path that has lead me to be who I am today doing what I am doing. So I suppose the only advice would be to have faith that you are doing the right thing.
Talk to me about failure… I don’t think I have failed. Perhaps the biggest thing that went wrong over the past few years was when I sent several of my signature pieces of clothing to someone in Japan who claimed he was a big editor and ended up being a fraudster who stole my pieces. But even then it gave me the opportunity to work with 2 amazing companies one from Korea, a 3D software technologists CLO and Dutch fashion animation specialists The Fabricant to bring it back to life. In September 2018 the digital journey of developing and creating the piece, harnessing Art, Design and Technology, was then published by Forbes.
What does success look like for you? Success looks like Sadie Clayton known as a polymath the 21st century mix between Ron Arad, Will iAm and Grace Jones.
What do you want to be known for? Creating beautiful work that touches people and enriches the lives whether as a piece of art in their home, a sculpture in a park or as a place to relax and reflect in an airport or hotel.
