Paper Hearts

“Narrative is there like life itself …international, trans historical, transcultural.”
Roland Barthes 1

This project is about stories and how we tell them. It reflects on what we value, what we discard. It is inspired by how recycled paper still carries cultural and social meaning. In the exhibition, I play with ideas of narrative and with the process and the materiality of making work from paper. I consider the actions of the body in making work and the embedded meaning in the stuff from which it is made.

It is almost an accidental project. In disposing of a vast number of medical notes in a way that would keep these private and indeed invisible, I decided to make new paper from them and to create new stories using this paper.

Paper Hearts.

In the beginning the work was small, made with a child’s paper making kit. These were Lyotard’s petits recits-small stories not grand narratives. The pieces were dyed with vegetable dyes-parilla, mint, matcha, avocado pip, saffron and turmeric. It became an investigation of a natural way of doing things to fit in with the recycling of paper. The little forms were embossed with patterns from household implements, often vintage glass.

The works were textured and visceral. The images that came to me were of bodies both human and animal as well as abstract forms. No image form was privileged over another. I also included commercial ink and watercolour realizing that I missed the brighter colours and the desire for natural vegetable colours did not run as deep in me as I had hoped. A barking dog equated an abstract form. All stories had merit. All colours were possible. Better still was the pleasure in collaging papers together and incorporating other materials such as cloth and wool.

A great deal was learnt in the process. With a homemade deckle some larger pieces were made. I expanded into pulping 1930s magazines and a 1960s Atlas still with the British Empire in glorious soft pink and with the old borders and names. Old stories and old politics went into a sloppy pulp of forgetfulness. A new idea emerged, the phenomenon of Pulp. Pulp meant that there was no hierarchy of what was better, rather that all things were not judged in a mushing process.

In the Poetics, Aristotle stated that narrative created order through the emplotment of time which, therefore, made the concept of cosmic time more knowable.2 Through paper making, I came to believe that any telling, in any order, makes time more knowable. If you wish to forget- Pulp it and Remake the story.

Installation
There are 4 separate works in the project.
Paper Hearts 1 is a series of framed small works both figurative and abstract with no particular order and derived from memory and previous works. On the right -hand wall on entry.
Paper Hearts 2 is a series of lager unframed works primarily embossed, dyed or collaged using natural dyes or commercial inks and watercolour. On the left- hand long wall.
I Give You the World is a group of 8 works derived from the old Atlas-embossed, dyed and collaged in frames brought at an auction. On the wall under the air conditioner.
Noir is a series of works made from 1930s magazine paper and one smaller framed work on the back wall facing you as you enter the space.