What does it really take to create extraordinary work with another person?
Not just the exciting bits of making, but everything that happens behind the scenes. Building trust. Navigating creative differences. Talking honestly about money. Knowing when to compromise and when to hold your ground. And finding a way to keep making work together over many years without losing your own artistic voice.
That’s what today’s conversation is really about.
My guests are composer and sound artist Ain Bailey and vocalist, composer and movement artist Elaine Mitchener MBE, two artists whose work has quietly shaped the landscape of contemporary art and experimental music in Britain and internationally.
Ain’s work has been commissioned and exhibited by organisations including Camden Art Centre, the Serpentine, FACT Liverpool and CCS Bard in New York, and she’s a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Awards for Artists.
Elaine is a Wigmore Hall Associate Artist, an MBE for Services to Music, a former DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Fellow, and an exhibiting artist in British Art Show 9, with a practice spanning contemporary music, performance and visual art.
Together they’ve created Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner for Art on the Underground. But what they share today reaches far beyond a single commission.
