The First Cut

Last week I went to a free exhibition in Manchester called 'The First Cut', this exhibition featured work by contemporary artists such as Peter Callesen, Rob Ryan, and Sarah Bridgland, that work using only paper, in new and dynamic ways:

This piece by Rob Ryan was very impressive, it was huge and so detailed. I have always admired Rob Ryan's work, particularly how intricate it is. I was really impressed by the landscape, as it has such a variety of patterns to create depth.

Peter Callesen creates expressive scenes using a single sheet of A4 white paper, I loved how fragile these pieces were, yet so simple at the same time.

Sarah Bridgland's 3D cutouts made from collected materials found in junk shops and old magazines, were again tiny, but had a massive impact. Being contained in a matchbox, it created an explosion almost,of brightly colored and nostalgic images and text.

By far my favorite piece in the exhibition was a animation called 'Going West' by Anderson M Studio, who were commissioned by the New Zealand Book Council to animate an extract from a book.

 It features a large bound book, from which the animation is cut out of the pages. I love that this was all done by hand with the artist having complete appreciation for the process involved even though it could probably of been done on a computer a lot quicker. I found this piece very inspirational as I always have wanted to explore using paper cutting in my own work.

Accompanying the exhibition are some free workshops and talks that I hope to get tickets for, in the meantime I'm going to practice Paper Cutting. My first attempt is below, which took about 2 hours on black sugar paper which is really hard to cut neatly! (note to self: use card.)

 I based it on Castlefield in Manchester, as I love the industrial feel of the area and thought the variety of shapes would lend themselves well to the medium.