Surreal Seas: An Interview with Artists Prue and Honey

Surreal Seas: An Interview with Artists Prue and Honey

Meet the curious creators engaging in surreal dialogues between the body and landscape.

For lifelong collaborators Prue Stent and Honey Long, art is a vessel to explore the tactile experience of our world. Ignited by a shared curiosity to push the boundaries of form, colour and texture, the multi-disciplinary duo aren’t defined by a singular creative practice. Instead, they fluidly navigate between photography, performance, installation and sculpture, creating a distinct visual language that challenges the conventions of each medium.

Perpetually drawn to the unexpected, they capture things unseen; the wet surface of locked tongues or the slimy texture of an unknown matter. There’s a playfulness to their imagery—body and material merge with land and space, distorting into new forms that are almost alien-like in their presence. In a similar vein, their glasswork carries a viscose and voluminous quality; molten glass solidified mid-pour, creating sculptures that appear to melt into their surroundings.

Often provoking you to confront your own discomfort, Prue and Honey’s work is conceptual and captivating but also raw and deeply connected to the natural world. Resonating with their approach, we collaborated with the artists back in 2020, when they created a body of photographic work inspired by our Skin collection. This year, we invited them to join our Mark of a Milestone project, where they crafted two interpretations of our new brand symbol: an organic hand-blown glass sculpture and a macro photograph of an otherworldly sea creature.

In this interview, we delve into the minds of Prue and Honey to unearth their inspirations, collaborative process, and how experimentation informs their artistic practice.

Honey & Prue's studio

“When something resonates, we both feel it instinctively. There’s a lot of fluidity in our dynamic—we respond intuitively to the materials, spaces, and bodies we work with.”

Tell us a bit about yourselves as individual artists—what inspired you to pursue art?

Honey: Art has always been a way for me to give form to abstract or intangible feelings. It’s like an ongoing conversation with myself and the world and I’m drawn to it as a means of communication. I love the process of selecting different elements—textures, objects and materials—and seeing what they become, creating space for the unexpected.

Prue: For me, art has been a way to explore the physicality of the world, the tension between beauty and discomfort, and the tactile experience of things. I’ve always been fascinated by the ways bodies and materials interact—the visceral responses they evoke. I enjoy pushing the boundaries of what we can do with form, colour, and texture.

'Worm Piece', hand-blown glass

Seabed, photographic print

How did you meet and how did your artistic collaboration come about?

Honey: We met in high school and creative exploration has been a part of our friendship since the beginning. We would make clothes, shoot little movies and play with things we found in op shops. Over time, that playfulness naturally evolved into something more structured and intentional. Our collaboration grew organically, and we started to take our creative practice more seriously.

Prue: It wasn’t planned in any formal way—there has always been this shared curiosity between us. As we developed individually as artists, our paths kept overlapping, and collaboration became a natural extension of our friendship.

“The final form is never predetermined. The piece takes shape as we respond to how these elements interact with one another, almost like a conversation unfolding.”

What can you tell us about your collaborative dynamic—how it has evolved over the years and influenced your work?

Honey: Our practice is deeply tied to our friendship. As we've grown together, our trust in one another has grown too, which allows us to experiment freely. We bounce ideas around constantly, and when something resonates, we both feel it instinctively. There’s a lot of fluidity in our dynamic—we respond intuitively to the materials, spaces, and bodies we work with.

Prue: There’s a kind of unspoken understanding between us now. We’ve evolved to the point where we’re often working with the same language, even if we come at it from different angles. That balance helps keep our work fresh, pushing each other toward new ideas and approaches.

How do you balance or lean into your different creative perspectives?

Honey: It’s all about trust and fluidity. We give each other space to explore different ideas, and when something sticks, it feels good for both of us. There’s no rigid structure—it’s more like following threads that feel right and seeing where they lead.

Prue: We’re often on the same wavelength when it comes to aesthetics and themes, but the differences in our approaches help add complexity to the work. It’s not about balance so much as an ongoing process of building on each other’s ideas.

“It’s a constant process of experimentation, bringing together different elements to create new associations and meanings."

What can you tell us about your creative process from inception to the final outcome—how does the idea for a piece or project usually start and evolve?

Honey: Our process is very experimental from the beginning. It often starts with a material or a space that excites us, and we begin playing with it—whether that’s bodies, textures, or natural elements. The final form is never predetermined. The piece takes shape as we respond to how these elements interact with one another, like a conversation unfolding.

Prue: Sometimes it’s a very tactile or visceral response to something—a colour, a texture, or the way the light hits a surface. The work grows from that sensory experience, and we follow its natural progression, letting it evolve until it feels complete.

Your work is an incredible mixture of photography, performance, installation, and sculpture—how do artistic freedom and experimentation feed into your practice?

Prue: We’re always on the lookout for things or places that will inspire an idea—this might be a piece of rubbish, a pond, an interesting fabric, an old magazine. It’s a constant process of experimentation, bringing together different elements and to create new associations and meanings. The boundaries between photography, sculpture, and performance often blur, informing each other.

“Working with glass again has been really exciting. As a material and a process, we can create these forms that have a strong sense of liquidity and emotionality to them.”

Where do you draw your inspiration from, both individually and collaboratively? How does nature play a role in your works?

Prue: The natural world—whether it’s the ocean, landscapes, or organic matter—offers us endless sources of imagery and textures. We’re interested in how these elements interact with human bodies and how they can merge and transform one another.

What are your favourite mediums to work with, and is there a particular discipline that you feel most drawn to at the moment

Honey: Recently, working with glass again has been really exciting. As a material and a process, we can create these forms that have a strong sense of liquidity and emotionality to them.

Prue: Photography has always been at the core of our practice, but we’re increasingly drawn to working with installation and sculpture, creating more immersive, physical experiences.

Details of a hand-blown glass sculpture

Miscellaneous organic matter

“We’re continually drawn to exploring the tension between beauty and discomfort, the familiar and the alien.”

Your works create unexpected dialogues between body, sculpture, texture, and landscape, often resulting in something organic, surreal, and even confronting—are there recurring themes that you find yourselves coming back to time and again?

Honey: Yes, definitely. We keep returning to themes of fluidity, transformation, and hybridity. The body is always central, but it’s constantly in flux—merging with its surroundings, becoming something other, something strange. We’re continually drawn to exploring the tension between beauty and discomfort, the familiar and the alien.

Talk to us about your glass-blown works and how you first became interested in this craft.

Honey: I’ve always found the process of glass blowing so mesmerising. I remember visiting my mum's friend's studio when I was a kid—watching the way the molten glass moved was so satisfying. Similar to photography, you are able to capture and crystallise these transient moments and it’s been interesting seeing how these different mediums speak to each other in our practice.

Lastly, what are you most looking forward to for the rest of the year?

Prue: We have a solo show at Arc One gallery opening in November, which we are currently working towards.

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