Words and pages are redefined in the work of these artists, bringing together ideas of history, identity, and story-telling to craft new narratives.
Batool Showghi | Jeremy May | Jo McDonald | Katie Mawson | Mónica Fierro | Thurle Wright | Tracey Bush
Batool Showghi uses a multidisciplinary approach to explore themes of cultural heritage, memory, identity, and loss in very personal ways. Her work is concerned with the experience of women and the way in which this experience relates to cultural and religious boundaries as well as reflecting on the theme of turbulence, immigration, disintegration of the family and the experience of displacement. Creating faces of women with fabric and thread, and connecting them with Farsi script, Batool brings her narrative to life.
Jeremy May transforms reclaimed books into unique pieces of jewellery carefully cut from the pages of the book. The layers of text and images are visible through the lacquered surface of each piece, which is painted and polished before being returned to the space in the book from whence it came.
Jo McDonald is fascinated by the written word and books as a sensory experience. Using traditional tapestry techniques, Jo uses paper as an alternative weaving material. In her work, Jo explores the life and storytelling ability of books - cutting them by hand to deconstruct and reassemble their materiality into a new memory and story.
Katie Mawson has been collecting vintage cloth bound books from local charity shops, she uses the cloth from these books as both her palette and canvas. Katie slices, cuts, rips and skins these beautifully marked and faded cloths from their boards; this is all part of the making process. The array of colours is infinite, many of them faded and marked through time; they all have a former life and story.
Monica Fierro works with old, damaged books and gives them new life. Her practice has been inspired by embroidery, sewing, textiles and clothes making practiced by the women in her family. Her books reveal feminine characters, particularly from illustrated English books from the XVIII Century. Her heroines appear from the curled up or folded cut out pages, becoming exquisite sculptures.
Thurle Wright works with a plethora of text materials, transforming atlases, books and dictionaries into complex paper works. Thurle’s practice revolves around the printed word. She patiently folds, morphs, cuts and contorts her various paper sources, in order to distort and deconstruct their original meaning and purpose.
Tracey Bush uses scrapbooking techniques as a way of recycling both materials and images in a process of reconstruction. Her materials emerge as Lepidoptera; butterflies and moths, ancient symbols of transformation. Each moth or butterfly is hand-cut from layers of recycled papers and then sewn together using a bookbinders pamphlet stitch. They are then pinned out in entomological boxes.
