I went to the private view for ‘PULP’, an exhibition that has just started at MAKE Southwest in Bovey Tracey, UK. I was over the moon to be asked to exhibit in this show alongside 30 other amazing paper artists many of whom I’ve long admired. It isn’t often that exhibitions are dedicated solely to paper art even though this material has been used in the art world for centuries, so it was really exciting to get involved with other paper enthusiasts!
The exhibition, organised in partnership with the Paper Artist Collective and GF Smith papers, is a celebration of paper in its widest uses. The work varies in scale and techniques, from miniature to vast, 2D to 3D, and from intricately detailed to broad sculptural forms. It’s aim is to show the huge variety of ways in which paper is being used by artists across the world and inspire others to get creative with such an interesting and adaptable material.
Although all 30 artists exhibiting used paper, the final creations were extremely diverse. I really enjoyed seeing how other artists were inspired by the material and it was wonderful to get a chance to meet and chat to some of them, discussing ideas and techniques and generally getting excited about a medium we all work with.
My small, life sized sculptures were hung together next to the huge cardboard figures of James Lake and Anna Shipley’s paper cloak. Seeing them in the context of other life sized sculptures really put into perspective how small nature can be and how easy it might be to miss it.
There were also lots of different techniques exhibited. You can work with paper in so many ways that as a paper artist you tend to stick to a particular building method or set of techniques to make your work so when you’re looking at someone else’s work you can still wonder how they did it. The origami figures by Juho Könkkölä were amazingly detailed (photo below!) as were Helen Wards paper cut buildings, both of which made me wonder how they'd don't that. I also really enjoyed looking at the more abstract pieces by Hazel Glass and Pippa Dyrlaga which were a completely different approach to nature as inspiration.
If you are in the area and would like to visit the exhibition it is on until the 13th of April and entry is free.
You also can find prints of my two large collections, Nature Studies I and Nature Studies II here in my online shop.
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