Festival of Paper

About

FESTIVAL OF PAPER is BHVU's 5th calendar exhibition and one that has grown out of a seedling of an idea. This exhibition brings together three London based artists who each share a different understanding of the subtleties and otherworldly qualities of paper. Collectively, their work seems to ask us to be quiet, stand still for a moment and to enjoy the hush of living material as it resonates with ideas of nature, fragility and chance.

Lynn Hatzius captures the playfulness, excitement and fluidity of a process in her collage work. The outcome is not necessarily a 'final' piece, but rather a snapshot of a momentary combination of disparate elements. This way of working allows a constant re-organising and re-evaluating of visual material. Pieces are shifted, cut, re-assembled and juxtaposed until they 'fall into place', revealing new meaning to seemingly unrelated subject matters. As the paper seems to take on a life of its own, the process of gathering, selecting, recombining and composing bits of found imagery is continuously guided by chance and intuition.

Fiona Hepburn's images are studies of found material, deconstructing and magnifying surfaces and interpreting organic formations and structures. Objects are enlarged, dissected and deconstructed, which grow and metamorphose through repeated forms and actions. The labour intensive, obsessive process is an integral part of her practice. Watching a work in progress by Hepburn is like watching the cells multiply of growing mould. The cutting and piercing that takes place is irreversible and destructive, and it mimics the precarious, fragile state of the natural world.

During her performance, 'Porter Papier Ciré' (To carry waxed paper), Mildred Rambaud animates a large sheet of pleated paper, which has been stiffened with thin layers of wax. The pleated paper moves between sculpture and prop, at times dictating the artist's movements and at others being silently led. Throughout the piece the pleated sheet folds and un-folds: it guides us through the space, increasing our awareness of surrounding light, shadow and architecture. Using physical gestures drawn from aspects of butoh and contemporary dance, the performance explores original archetypes and human emotions. Rambaud's sculptural piece, 'Resting Mountains', creates a silent opposition between the materiality and the subject, as fragile paper mountains rest on a paper plinth.