Paper Bowls
Paper Bowls 2011-2012
This series continues a movement away from representational imagery towards a more consistent fusion of material and meaning. The bowl form functions again as shorthand for the human condition – the context (culture and nature) of my life. The bowl is the only remaining reference to observed form - the works explore the possibilities of abstract line drawing. The papers used resonate with references to various aspects of my experience: An anthology of Afrikaans poetry; Junk mail from my postbox; A Thai newspaper; Chinese funereal papers; love letters; a map of Atlanta; a map of my birth place, Gansbaai; bank letters; encyclopedias; my daughters’ childhood drawings; Biblical texts; Bills…
The individual qualities of the papers makes the cutting and pasting of each ‘drawing’ different and the resultant curves and bends, sweeps and folds of the lines, the colours and textures of the strips, particular and singular in each work in the series.
The process, labourious and meditative, is an indulgence where I slide into the making. Sometimes the text on the papers absorbs me, always the ideas around the origins and contexts of the papers determines my mood and my thoughts. The papers are conductors of cultural messages, conveying diverse aspects of my life experience and of society by extension. The act of unifying these opposing aspects in the strictly shared format of the series serves to convey the universality of the aspects of human life, represented in the papers: – the good and the bad, the celebratory and the sad, the secret and the public, the past and the present, the shameful and the honourable, the mundane and the extraordinary, all are woven into intricate drawings. Each one has it’s own character and texture, but each one exists in relation to the others.
An ongoing series…