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In Blank eight artists respond to the most modest and basic of resources - a blank sheet of A4 paper - to create a series of new works made especially for this space, the Café Zone Gallery, a space dedicated to showcasing work by artists based in the region. In Blank, Cheryl L Huntbach, Kelly Cumberland, Katy Devine, Daren Higham, Victoria Holt, Matthew Walters, and walkerhill prick, scalpel, fold, cajole, curve, clip, emboss sheets of white paper and card, often using the slightest means of intervention, both celebrating it as material and releasing it into new realms of possibility. Devised and developed by Cheryl L Huntbach, who is course leader of Foundation Art and Design at Harrogate College of Art, the exhibition as its title Blank, suggests, takes a pragmatic starting point but from there the artists respond by working through a range of possibilities, methodologies and processes. Some work through the language and legacy of 'Modernism' and the formal possibilities of the material: walkerhill create a simple yet robust geometric form from a roll of paper, which suggests the possibility of a Platonic 'ideal' form, its core pristine and contained but incorporating too nuances of imperfection; Cheryl L Huntbach painstakingly, obsessively pricks out of paper a bank of delicate wall-drawings in which calculated procedure rubs up against gestural action; Victoria Holt disrupts the formality of the grid-system, teasing the viewer with paper-bow folds that collapse the rigid axes of what could be the beginnings of a chart or graph. Others incorporate intuition and personal and exterior histories - writer Matthew Walters uses the idea of paper to release a halting narrative, incorporating text, sound and images, that manifests itself in more than just words on paper, playing with and interrupting the viewer/reader's perception, while Katy Devine's pieces, which explore the hidden architecture that underlies letter-writing, are notable for their absence of words. The starting points for Kelly Cumberland are viral maps that she carefully cuts and then teases out of sheets of paper into hanging three-dimensional forms, while for Daren Higham devastating current affairs trigger his creation of an origami-bomb-shower which act as a dumb-show, mute and suspended as our reactions sometimes are in the face of events we don't know how to face. Nigel Walsh CHERYL L HUNTBACH : Pinhole Drawings ( 60 ) 2005
KATY DEVINE : Cut compositions i-iii ; Memo ; Formal letter ; Informal letter ; A4 Variations 2005Cut i,ii and iii. My first three pieces are compositions based on the dimensions of A4 and are governed by the activity of cutting. Embossed layouts. These are embossed sheets of A4 which represent the layout of three different forms of correspondence - a memo, a formal letter and an informal letter. A4 variations. Photocopied file paper is familiar to so many of us. In this series of nine photocopied sheets I have explored different ways of manipulating the subject which include rolling, folding and paper-clipping. DAREN HIGHAM : "Thank you for believing in me...?" 2005300 sheets of A4 paper cut and folded into the form of origami bombs, suspended and arranged as a 'bomb shower'. The standardised process to which each sheet of paper is subjected: the cutting, folding and inflating which creates the form of origami bomb, is theoretically identical. But the repetitive process does not necessarily create exact copies. The minor inflections and differences in fold and handling results in a similarity, but no two are the same. Each is a simple but unique form. Each a character with a potential that takes up space. Each is a bomb with potential. If each was filled with.... Daren's interest in multiples as installation is driven by, and attempts to offer, a confrontation, a commentary on current affairs. Our individual insecurities and indifference towards them, our apparent inability to accept and address the long histories behind these recent events and the ever growing list of named suicide bombers and victims. M WALTERS : Melvin and Stencil 2005a short story concerning the importance and consequences of a note typed to a neighbour on a sheet of A4. VICTORIA HOLT : Untitled 2005I take art and my art work very seriously but then again l don't. I like to play l like to bend the rules. I take notions of minimalist art, serious, untouched by hand. Keep your distance, if you don't know l'm not telling you art. I extract, nick, borrow elements that fascinate and keep me coming back for more. Aesthetic harmony, order, clinical and obsessive precision, I love that. I like paper I like the purity of it I like origami but l don't make paper animals. I work physically, impulsively with irrelevant, dumb, mundane and everyday materials. Why can't they be beautiful? I work small, minumental Each singular form, carefully and honestly created by hand but then repeated, multiplied, mass produced. I work big, huge, monumental sometimes But sometimes l don't. I like to compare, contrast and contradict I ask questions You please just enjoy! KELLY CUMBERLAND : Prolaritus (16x2) 2005Kelly Cumberland's interest in the link between art and microbiology is longstanding: as a Fine Art MA student at Leeds Metropolitan University in1998, she pioneered a collaboration between the departments of Microbiology, Radiology and Fine Art. Dissected objects, drawings and paper works delicately represent the fragility and strength of the human body. In a multi-layered response to the life of a virus her 32 piece series of white A4 cut-out's progressively 'decay' and break apart before reforming in perfect symmetry. They are constructed using repetitive techniques in a sequence of 16 sections, creating delicate, varied structures that express a sense of the growth, deterioration and fragility that accompanies disease. The repetitive action of removal to 'construct' these works echoes the Western Clinical tradition of (re)production and reduction. Continuous addition and removal in order to improve or 'cure', results in a coherent body of structural variations. Working in sequences, the construction process ensures each component is unique and discrete, while retaining still, in the realisation of a larger single work, the potential to coalesce and combine. walkerhill : Untitled (blank) 2005A4 copy paper in landscape format rolled up to make a cylinder. Rolling one sheet at a time, paper is added to the previous sheet, contributing to the growth of the cylinder's diameter. This action continues until the two short edges of the paper meet determining the cylinder's final diameter. The pragmatic and mechanical nature of the work though simple, does need to be executed with sensitivity and precision. However, this said, it is to be expected that there will be a human touch and individual tolerance in evidence and that nuance and incident will emerge. Perhaps it is this 'margin of error' between an idea, and its realisation, that is the location for what we call art and the poetic. Blank was on show until 9 October and formed part of the Gallery's programme of presenting new work by emerging artists resident in its region. For further information and new developments re. Blank see: blank-exhibition.blogspot.com |
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