Ailish

My practice comprises sculpture, painting and installation, but it is paper that is central to much of my work. For my recent exhibition at Slugtown Gallery in Newcastle, I presented a series of 7 wall-based paper sculptures. They are cut, sculptured and delicately folded from sheets of paper carefully made by me. I imbued the colour gradients and speckled flecks of colour into the paper during the process of hand-pulping, sifting and sheet forming. Taking control of this intricate technique is integral to my practice and the highly composed finished pieces. I manipulate paper’s inherent flatness, bend, shape and warp the handmade sheets into sculptural forms. They fold in, over, through and around themselves – I like to imagine the forms as bodies. Held down and cajoled into position by delicately placed pins, one feels a tension and resistance and a sense that the works want to spring back into their usual state of flatness. The compositions seem uncomfortable and unfathomable in their construction, made all the more so by the inescapable flattened perspective of their form. Fashion, dress and ornamentation all heavily influence my work. The highly-composed objects and images I make present the body as an amalgamation: Made up of recognisable imagery, natural forms, objects, patterns and motifs, a process amounts to a kind-of objectification, exploring ideas surrounding control and subjectivity. At the heart of the work is an involvement with found materials and ‘low’ or ‘pop-culture’. I’m interested in the ways that my art practice and consumerist habits and tastes intersect.

No response.