We meet Honey Long and Prue Stent just after the official opening of HYGRO – their current exhibition at R Gallery. The public’s reactions are still fresh. Many are confessed: “This is art which beckons you to touch it, slap it or lick it or something.”

Honey and Prue’s art raises questions in the viewer about one’s relationship with playfulness. Where do you stand on play and whimsy? And how long has it been since you frolicked with ideas and the world around you?

Off the sweltering street, entering the gallery comes as a welcome shock to the senses. The walls glisten, punctuated with red. Amorphous glass-blown shapes perch naughtily on precipices around the room.

Australian artist duo Honey Long and Prue Stent. Photo: Madeline Bishop

This first room, the largest of the lot, sets the tone and it is here that we strike up our conversation with the Australian artist duo who have been collaborating as artist-friends since 2010 and who have exhibited widely within Australia and internationally.

This solo show is the result of two art residencies they completed in 2023 across Greece and Malta. In Greece, in Malta, as well as at home in Australia, Honey and Prue explored in the same vein, gravitated towards the same elements, were attracted by the same symbolism and textures. Their vision is overarching – their method and their relentless curiosity, the driving forces. Honey and Prue will be Honey and Prue wherever they go.

One of the works showing as part of the exhibition HYGRO. Photo: Julian Vassallo

Skilled across the board in photography, moving image, performance, installation and sculpture, they have continuously and playfully explored their complex relationship to femininity and the natural world.

Their bodies, along with others’, are contorted into abstracted uncanny forms, melding body to object to environment and creating monstrosities and mutations that tickle the senses.

Honey and Prue explain how the term HYGRO encapsulates the spirit and vision behind this collection of works. HYGRO is used in the formation of compound words to denote moisture and wetness as linking/leaking forces.

The works are intriguing and glossy and inviting, but also imbued with tension. Photo: Kim Sammut

In ancient Greece the female body was defined by excessive moisture and deemed less articulated than its idealised male counterpart. But liquidity is inescapable and uncontainable, it eventually seeps and penetrates even the most rigid and polished of structures.

Essentially, in HYGRO, liquidity is celebrated as a superpower; and this begs the question: “Is HYGRO playfulness in the face of political statement or playfulness as political statement?”

But the duo’s intent is not outrightly political and both artists insist that their works are essentially an invitation for viewers to land comfortably in this world of multiple interpretations and not necessarily be confronted by statement. Their work deals with the intrinsically loaded ‘feminine’, but it’s not loaded with intent.

Viewers may initially feel confronted and conflicted. Photo: Kim Sammut

Over these years, Honey and Prue have cemented a dynamic and a proverbial bubble which continues to afford them a free, safe and playful space in which to create.

Honey’s background is primarily in sculptural work and Prue’s main area of expertise is photography, but they are both blessed with the same curiosity, and often find themselves looking at the same things and being drawn to the same elements.

The work is sensual and seductive. Photo: Julian Vassallo

That said, along the years, they have retained some very distinct practices, tasks and skills and just like in every great relationship, the intimate hues and contrasts that make up this artistic dynamic are not shared. They continue to co-exist and co-create comfortably, playfully and humorously.

That is not to say that their work is necessarily easy on the eye. It sure is intriguing and glossy and inviting, but it is also imbued with tension. Exploring the liminal with use of veils and disconcerting zoom-ins, the photographic gloss is yet another veil over the attractive tactility drawing the viewer close and keeping them at bay in one fell swoop.

The work is sensual and seductive, it flirts playfully with the erotic; however, the artists seem more gratified with when viewers relate to the humorous spirit which imbues their work.

An exhibition view from the opening night. Photo: Kim Sammut

They are aware that given the subject matter, viewers may initially feel confronted and conflicted, and get the urge to reduce their vision of the work to the purely sexual in order to compartmentalise and not necessarily have to face the source of their rising discomfort. These works make you question where you’re coming from in terms of the physical and the tactile.

Found materials inspire Honey and Prue’s process. Their fascination with underwater creatures, their relationship to materiality and a drive to explore as well as create ambiguous spaces. Sickly sweet and sticky textures celebrate the deliciousness of the ugly.

Every room is distinct in character. Photo: Julian Vassallo

Transfixed by the details of the world they inhabit, both artists zoom in on things. The macro lens brings one up close and personal with childlike curiosity and enthusiasm. The viewer is pushed to explore the infinite potentialities of objects that lie in plain sight and the magic of transience.

The artists agree that R Gallery afforded their work that something extra. Along with the gallerists, they were able to re-configure their work to create moods. Every room is distinct in character – a puzzle piece in the journey. The gallery’s freshness is not sterile and subservient. Its character has been brought in to play a part in this playful narrative. Art and space are in conversation.

R Gallery has always sought to extend a sense of Mediterranean hospitality to the art scene by actively creating and inciting this sort of flow and exchange of artists and art; bringing foreign and local concepts as well as practitioners in collaborative conversation.

Some of the works showing at R Gallery as part of the exhibition HYGRO.

Before we part ways, one question begs to be asked: “Is there anything in your work that viewers keep missing?” Apparently not. Both artists feel and are proud of the fact that their work is accessible.

One does not have to have a trained eye to relate, to enjoy and to let go in front of this work. They too do not restrict themselves by limiting definitions of what kind of artists, sculptors, photographers they are. They just are and the viewer is invited to follow suit.

HYGRO is showing at R Gallery in Sliema until August 31.