Focus: Mia Rushton & Eric Moschopedis

Who are you and where are you from?
We are Mia + Eric (Mia Rushton and Eric Moschopedis). We are an artist team from Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

What is it you do?
We are interdisciplinary visual artists who (mostly) work with non-art communities.

How long have you been doing it?
We have been working as an artist team since 2008.

What inspires you?
Inter-species relationships and ecology. We think a lot about how we relate to other species, how we can be better neighbours to the fungus, magpie, trees, and spiders. So communities of all kinds.

Tell us about your work
Creating community and networks is really important to us. We rarely make anything for the sake of making it. Instead we take direction from the people and residents we work with. What do they need? This means no two projects are alike. Sometimes we make posters, exhibitions, books, workshops, videos, gatherings, public art installations, billboards, or nothing art related at all. It is important to us that communities be left with new relationships (especially to the other creatures we live with).

What have you got coming up in the future?
For the past 2.5 years we have been doing work about Chopwell Wood with GIFT (Gateshead International Festival of Theatre). The project is called 3 WOODS and brings together Chopwell Wood, a forest in Germany and another in Norway. On Friday we have a workshop called Hello Neighbours that will take place in Chopwell. On May 21 we are running another workshop called “A Chorus of Ideas” where we will collectively read in the woods.

Completely separate, we have another project called Future Perfect with the performance duo Action Hero also at GIFT. This work will be in Toronto throughout the summer.

There is more, but we can’t even keep track these days.

Where can people find out more about you?
miaanderic.ca