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Creating a shared practice with Alex Moss & Maggie Jeffries

Creating a shared practice with Alex Moss & Maggie Jeffries

In this podcast you will learn how artists Alex Moss and Maggie May Jeffries developed a shared creative process that bridges traditional painting and interactive media.

In this interview, Alex Moss and Maggie Jeffries discuss the creative process behind The Weather at midnight. The exhibition combines painting, projection, and real-time interaction to create a shifting environment of light and movement. Through subtle digital overlays and live painting, static canvases become dynamic, evolving works that change with audience presence. The exhibition was presented at Moonah Arts Centre.

Alex Moss is a Lutruwita/Tasmanian-based media artist whose work transforms spaces through projected light, sound design, and interactive elements. Maggie May Jeffries is a painter from Lutruwita/Tasmania whose practice explores memory, environment, and sensory experience through layered, detailed compositions.

Listen to this podcast to learn about:

  • The role of experimentation, trust, and structure in cross-disciplinary collaboration, and how shared workshops shaped Alex and Maggie’s evolving process.
  • How data, audience presence, and live performance intertwined during the exhibition.    
  • What “slow noticing” reveals about time, attention, and the perception of creative work.

 

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Chapters

  • (00:00:00) Introduction to artist collaboration
  • (00:01:18) Meet Maggie and Alex
  • (00:01:52) The weather at midnight project
  • (00:04:17) Audience experience and interaction
  • (00:05:51) Inspiration and process
  • (00:09:11) Live painting and performance
  • (00:18:06) Workshops and collaboration
  • (00:23:26) Future directions and advice
  • (00:25:13) Conclusion and farewell

About Alex Moss  

Alex Moss is a media artist based in Lutruwita/Tasmania and a member of Second Echo Ensemble. With over ten years of experience, his work spans projection, sound design, and interactive installation, transforming spaces through light and sensory engagement. He has created work for the University of Tasmania, Hobart City Council, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and the Huon Valley Mid-Winter Festival. Alex received the 2023 Best Sound Design Professional Theatre Award for Outside Boy with Second Echo Ensemble. His practice explores how digital systems and performance environments shape audience perception and collective experience.

About Maggie Jeffries 

Maggie May Jeffries is a painter based in Lutruwita/Tasmania and a member of Second Echo Ensemble. Her practice explores memory, place, and the natural environment through layered paintings that merge observation with imagination. She graduated with First Class Honours in Fine Art and Psychology from the University of Tasmania in 2022. Maggie has undertaken residencies in Paris and lutruwita/Tasmania and works with artists of all abilities through mentoring and community engagement. Represented by Despard Gallery, she received the NEXT Award in 2018 and was a finalist in the 2024 Women’s Art Prize Tasmania

Takeaways from this interview with Alex Moss & Maggie Jeffries

The Weather at Midnight brings together painting, projection, and performance in an evolving collaboration between Alex Moss and Maggie Jeffries. The exhibition features two interconnected parts: Maggie’s finished paintings animated through Alex’s subtle projections and a large evolving canvas painted live throughout the show. Together, these elements form a living artwork built through data, time, and shared experimentation.
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Weather, data and process

“We used a combination of data that we collected from the weather at midnight each night to determine the colours, the brush strokes, the direction of the new painting.”- Alex Moss

Each night’s weather data shaped the development of the evolving canvas. Temperature, wind speed, humidity, and rainfall became rules that guided colour, brushwork, and texture. This method transformed environmental conditions into a creative system, turning data into both process and rhythm.

Slow noticing

“Recently while writing something about the project, I ran a bit of it through ChatGPT just to see what it would do. It came up with a phrase that I thought was a good description, which is "slow noticing.” - Alex Moss

The idea of slow noticing describes how subtle shifts in light and timing invite patience. Instead of spectacle, the exhibition rewards close attention, mirroring how details in nature gradually reveal themselves. The concept extends beyond the viewer’s experience to the artists’ own pace of making and reflection.

Collaboration as shared practice

“It’s about developing enough trust that you have your third practice that is something totally different.” - Maggie Jeffries

Through workshops and shared experimentation, Alex and Maggie created a new space of practice that sits between their disciplines. These workshops became laboratories for testing, negotiating, and discovering-a working method built on trust and continual dialogue.

Audience as co-creator

Audience presence became a live part of the work. Visitors’ movements were captured as silhouettes, projected onto the canvas, and incorporated into the painting. Maggie’s act of painting in the gallery blurred boundaries between artist and audience, transforming spectatorship into participation.

Painting as performance

“There was something really exciting about painting live in public and the conversations that I was having.” - Maggie Jeffries

Painting live in the gallery introduced a performative element to Maggie’s practice. The act of painting became a dialogue-between artist, audience, and projection.

Advice from Alex

“Work with what you have and make it happen anyway.”  -  Alex Moss

Alex’s advice centres on persistence and curiosity. He reminds artists to begin with the tools and resources available, to test ideas through doing, and to let the process guide what happens next. Progress emerges through practice, not perfection.

Advice from Maggie

“Create an open space for collaboration to develop — to let it grow naturally, with curiosity and the motivation to keep showing up.” - Maggie Jeffries

Links from this podcast with Alex Moss & Maggie Jeffries

Posted 25-10-2025