Paper Forms and Woven Structures

Details

Year: 2023

Medium: Paper Pulp, Cardboard, Emulsion Paint, Wood, Brass, Wool, Cotton, Watercolour Paper, Gouache, Fineliner

Size: Various.

Comment

‘Paper Forms and Woven Structures’

My desire to create structures, dwellings and hideaways is borne from my childhood memories of my family building our home. As a young girl I would spend much of my time on the building site, surrounded by a variety of building materials including hand-made concrete blocks, sand and timber. I would play among these materials to create my own dwellings, my secret hideaways, before they would be given new form by the adults as part of the home they were building. This period of my life awakened an obsession with nesting which has never left me.

According to Gaston Bachelard’s ‘The Poetics of Space’ one of the primarily instincts for human beings is a need for a safe shelter. In general, we spend over 80% of our lives inside buildings and I believe that architecture has a huge impact on the way we feel and function. I’m interested in how we perceive and experience physical space and design. How the built environment supports our wellbeing and fundamental human values, how it affects our mood, our behaviours, and ultimately shapes who we are.

Materials speak to us through interaction and the human brain understands materials best by their contrast. I often communicate this by combining contrasting elements (rough with smooth or hard with soft) to demonstrate that soft becomes softer in contrast with hard and vice versa. In doing this, I’m trying to understand what makes people comfortable and joyful in a given space by creating colourful and tactile tapestries, sculptures and paintings to then observe the relationship between the artwork and the audience. Ultimately, I’m trying to learn how we should live, what it means to be human and how our surroundings impact our relationship with the world and ourselves. Art, design and architecture, when used with more holistic approach, can become our tools to enhance humanity and create a better future.