Remember my handmade paper from not too long ago?
Back at the beginning of the semester, I was formulating a proposal for work that explores themes of creation, both in the realm of “creation” of the universe, and creation as an artist. I am interested in making art that reflects my world view — that human life is a chance occurrence in this incredible amazing universe. That certain elements, or building blocks, exist as the base of this universe, and it’s their chance interaction that causes change and growth through the process of evolution.
I’m not just interested in the science, though. I’m interested in why people believe what they do, and the stories and myths that we create in order to explain and give meaning to our lives.
This is the start of my project. I’ve been constantly amused and slightly annoyed when people see my paper and ask what images I’m going to print on it. To me, art is not necessarily about creating an image to represent something. It’s not about the end result so much as the journey. I didn’t make paper so that I could make a picture; I made paper (from offcut ragpaper and my old lithographs) because it’s one of the ways to represent evolution in my work. Creation from destruction. Renewal.
The paper has been printed on now. Both sides (because there are two sides to every story). I took 224 photographs of books on evolution, science, cosmology, myth, religion and fairytales, then used solvent transfer to get those images onto my paper. A photograph implies truth, and as a result it’s one of the best mediums to use in order to manipulate your audience. We also assume that books classified as non-fiction will tell us the truth, yet many different arguments on the same topic can be found on one shelf. Now they can be found on the same wall.
As you can see, there is some information missing.
There’s a whole side of the work that you can’t see in this setup. And one of my pages is currently missing — very annoying, especially when I would have filled the whole wall up perfectly otherwise!
The work isn’t going to stay like this though, it’s just another stage in the process. Here is how I set it up for my critique on Thursday.
I was really pleased with the outcome, and while it’s not finished at this stage in terms of my proposal, it is something that I’m interested in recreating down the track (although it could be logistically very difficult in terms of setting up anywhere outside of university for an extended period of time…)
From here, I’m going to glue several pages together and print on them with some of the etching/lino/woodblock plates I made last year, and I’m also going to carve some new lino for printing.
From there, I plan to shred the lot, weave it all back together and print over the top one last time. It may not work out how I expect it to, but really, that’s half the fun.
