Wednesday 7 July 2010

Notes on/from - Shredding Paper

Wanted a new material to play with but a material where I am still able to explore notions of' the 'line' and within that, form. A material that can hang and drop but at the same time still open to more manipulations. It seems odd that I hadn't played with shredded paper before since a lot of my interests and research are 'paper based'. It felt like a re - wind: coming across the shredded paper as shredded paper, rather than paper and then through studio experiments, shredding it. Shredding is what happens to the paper and I went through the repetitive process to get the paper to this altered state but I wasn't aware at the time of what I was doing, I was initially shredding so to get rid of 'confidential information' and then the paper sat there for weeks. I like that idea, the paper sitting there for weeks have no function, until it the human interaction and manipulation. Picking up the bag of shredded paper was like handling gristle and sponge: bouncy , soft but extremely prickly. Using the paper in the studio, I soon became frustrated; it wasn't perfectly straight, different lengths and would just move of it's own accord... so I ironed it. The flicks at the end stayed, but I didn't mind after using it with other materials, black plastic pots and biro pen.

I am now shredding myself. Larger sheets of paper, holding the top of the shredder [minus the bucket] at various heights. I quite like the notion of using shreds of paper which are roughly the same height as my body and at the same time making small sculptures and installations. These small sculptures have stemmed from the work I did for Project One, a small cardboard like document which contained various elements of drawing, collage, photography and objects research. Snippets of a body of work and a work within themselves. These and the shredded paper agenda is what I developing for the exhibition at PAD in January 2011.

I also drew the shredded paper.Sublime. The repetition, the almost 'formless' repetition kept me wanting to do more. I drew on cardboard, mainly because I have stacks of it at the moment and because I can cut and bend it and it still stands up. As in the past with my work, the drawings for me, stand in some mid - way 'limbo', I always want to draw from my own sculptures, these drawings can be the start, at the end [not an end, finito but end as in when I just decide to stop] or they can be part of the process somewhere in the middle, a catalyst for new thoughts, ideas, desires. I am committed to their potential as threads of thought, of what they suggest to me for moving into the sculptural and then what the sculpture can provide for the drawing rather than their direct transformation into a product. In there two dimensional state, before any further transformation I feel they hold a certain precariousness, a certain elements of something that could happen that could be out of my control.

2 comments:

  1. Pleased that project one, was a step in your researching, drawing and making. It certainly is interesting to read the development and thought process that goes into the making of your sculptures and drawings.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Lisa,

    I have been meaning to reply to this for a while. I love the way your work is self perpetual and the way you bring elements together physically with sculpture and metaphysically in the drawing. The drawing beyond the sculpture then reaching back via new idea's and new interactions.

    You have a commitment to a certain aesthetic but I would be interested to know what it is about these materials/aesthetic that interest you so much? if in fact you can articulate this or is it more a case of 'rightness'? or spirituality? (in a secular way)

    Nathan

    ReplyDelete