Levi Goff
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Sep 26
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 1
Levi Goff works across sculpture, installation and mixed media with a research-driven approach that draws on history, sociology and geography. Her projects reflect on space, identity and collective experience, often shaped by regular archival research and close observation of architectural and natural structures. Goff brings together visual experimentation with philosophical questions around power and cooperation, engaging with social discourse in a direct and methodical way. Teaching also plays a key role in her process, creating a two-way exchange that informs both her practice and pedagogy.
Q: You work as an artist, researcher and teacher. How do these different roles connect in your daily practice?
A: Art and learning mean a lot to me. It makes my life dynamic. Being an artist involves research of material and concept naturally. So the two come hand in hand. Teaching is similar, particularly for the creative arts. Working as a teacher allows me to share my skills, equipping others with skills to respond inquisitively about experience and expression and shape it into a form that has artistic value.
Understandably, when I relay my ideas and methods to my students it opens up new perspectives and different ways of working and I love that because it can steer my work in different directions. This is where my job and practice connect and interchange. The reciprocating cycle gives me fresh ideas and I really do value what the students have to say, and also it means I can make art all day too, which is awesome, you know.
Q: Your projects often explore space and belonging. What keeps you drawn to those themes?
A: Myths and memory play an important role. As a broad subject matter, it encapsulates imagination and experience and that’s a major force that I feel can propel everyone.
Just those themes alone can stimulate a whole body of ongoing work. It has certainly for me, allowing me to bring a sense of play and humour to my work too. Utilising a multidisciplinary approach to creating outcomes keeps me rooted in those themes too. I pretty much work with design, sound and creative writing prior to producing most of my 3D work. I guess to generate appropriate concepts and establish the closeness of an idea.
Q: You use history, sociology and geography as sources. How do you turn that kind of research into something visual?
A: I enjoy accessing archives and collections in museums and site visits. I pretty much go to a museum or historic location every week or so. My methods really vary for primary and contextual research. Often I begin with an interest in a subject and I ground myself with a few questions and then the research propels me to make comparisons, establish commonalities to evaluate my findings, and suddenly you've got work that's interlaced with subjects and concepts. There's always a juxtaposition to the work itself and my process. I'll begin with making initial sketches, developing ideas into maquettes attesting the thread of research I've collated, and it continues like that. The research informs the outcomes and it's very much a back-and-forth process between materials and meaning.
Q: Questions of power and identity run through your work. Which aspects feel most urgent to you right now?
A: I guess you could say power and identity are extensions of the same thing... well, the current global concern with nationalism is feeling rather urgent. I guess my work is not rooted in power as such but more subordination and submissive nature to some score of authority. So I'd go as far as saying internal powers and struggles for self-actualisation and self-care.
Both of which I feel we all really need now, and this is where cooperation comes in again because we could do with the presence of some radical empathy in the world.
Q: Nature and architecture often appear together in your projects. What interests you in placing them side by side?
A: The use of vertices, planes and consideration for proportion and volume used in architecture supports my 3D exploration. It also attests to forms found in the natural world which also intrigue me. We can observe systems in nature which expand in a sequenced framework.
I like looking at plants as having a modular quality similar to architecture or mechanical structures. When you appreciate the structural integrity and surface tension found in nature, you get a wider understanding of the frameworks behind structurally sound forms and surface textures. This just makes your life working in 3D easier and promotes experimentation.
You could go further to say both nature and architecture, being the natural and manmade forces, give us tangible ways to experience the immaterial world. When you look at how things are built in nature and by man you can draw parallels with metaphysics and ask: How are ideologies formed? How do they grow? What’s the basis for this subculture? Just another way to experience.
Q: Lately you’ve been thinking about cooperation and collective ideologies. How do you see art opening conversations around that?
A: Cooperation is the way forward. There’s no doubt about that, and expanding on collective ideologies will get us in a better place in the future. We are far better together than not. I mean, we've seen "The Walking Dead." Creating art that has layers of meaning and is open to nuanced interpretation can encourage individuals to consider their own levels of cooperation and collectiveness and create an internal dialogue. When done on an intimate level it can be extremely profound, as it gives us a chance to ask what is our role to play with the act of cooperating and working together.
