Paper power, Issimo

As the digital age encroaches on our lives, the simplest of mediums is inspiring artists, writes ILDI AMON. Read full article below.

It was all in a day’s work for Bianca Chang.

The Sydney-based artist - making a TV commercial last year -  took charge of a surgical scalpel to individually cut over 500 sheets of paper, which she then layered to create shapes to fashion the inside of an eyeball.

Plain, old, everyday paper.

The following piece was published October, Issimo Magazine.

By Ildi Amon
Melbourne

As the digital age encroaches on our lives, the simplest of mediums is inspiring artists, writes ILDI AMON.

It was all in a day’s work for Bianca Chang.

The Sydney-based artist - making a TV commercial last year -  took charge of a surgical scalpel to individually cut over 500 sheets of paper, which she then layered to create shapes to fashion the inside of an eyeball.

Plain, old, everyday paper.

To many, the fragility and plainness of paper would make it an unlikely art form.

But for Chang, commissioned in this instance by spectacles maker OPSM, nothing else would do.

Her extraordinary work involves each sheet in a stack being individually cut to exact measurements with precision and accuracy that can be quite mathematical and akin to machinery.

“The effect can’t be made unless each sheet is accurately cut,” Chang said. “It’s kind of incremental changes between each layer, if it’s a quarter of a millimetre off it’s quite obvious it’s off,” Chang  said.

Paper has been a medium on which stories have been told for thousands of years as simple designs have been rendered astoundingly beautiful by simply folding, cutting, layering, sculpting, embossing. Or just pricking with a pin.

It’s this playfulness coupled with the precision required to work with paper that sees artists here, and internationally, taking the genre to unprecedented levels.

In Australia, it's an art form that has increased in popularity in recent years, making the grade to exhibitions in major galleries and with works selling for up to thousands of dollars.

It has emerged as a powerful medium embraced by some artists as a reaction to the digital age.

While working in graphics, Australian paper artist Lizzie Buckmaster-Dove felt compelled to get her hands on paper and start layering.

“My initial steps were almost in response to the digital world I’d been in, so using things like Photoshop and layering in that and then using that in my paper work,” she said.

She sees the growing demand for hand-made, hand-crafted and unique pieces as a reaction against the highly manufactured products.

Another Australian paper artist, Emma van Leest, agrees.

“As life becomes more mechanised and more removed from the hand-made, they (art lovers and consumers) really appreciate it and are fascinated by it.”

Lisa Rodden says people are often awe-struck by her creations.

“People said ‘I’ve never seen anything like what you do.' It’s not like I’ve discovered something new. Paper’s been around for centuries,’' she said.

“But, I think it may be related to raw materials making a comeback. Reusing, recycling and innovation.

“People are looking closer to home for everything, looking for a simpler everything and paper is just one of those things that is so readily accessible and everybody can relate to it,” she said.

But Sydney-based, Benja Harney, whose work was displayed in the World Pop Up Art Exhibition in Seoul in March to May, said he also loves the technical aspect.

“I really love the kind of engineering challenge, it’s like problem solving,” he said.

Harney calls himself a “paper engineer.”

“I’m not just cutting out pretty pictures in paper, I want to make something that has  a technical brain behind it.

“I think at the beginning I wanted to prove it’s not something light and airy-fairy but something serious and thought provoking. Not just cutting out paper shapes and sticking them together. And now it’s become the word du jour,” he said.

And Harney - whose commercial jobs included paper dresses for David Jones and other works for insurers, fast food chains, musicians and even the Mardi Gras- believes the future of design is a synthesis of the digital and the “humanness” of the hand made.

Paper in its most ancient papyrus, reed-based form was invented in Egypt, and while there is evidence of paper folding from this time, more intricate forms of paper art  only became possible with the invention of wood-pulp based paper in China.

Senior curator at the National Gallery of Australia, Jane Kinsman, said that while paper art has roots both in Asia and Europe it doesn’t have one linear story.

“Paper art comes from a rethinking about what art is and also the breaking down of  the media - for example, sculpture - it doesn’t always have to be metal or marble it  can be a paperwork too,” she said.

She said paper artists stretch the boundaries of known techniques in an ongoing  process of exploration.

Paper artists even have an association. The International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists started in 1986 in Germany and the group has a congress scheduled in Italy next year.

Its president, Gail Shiffe, said she wishes there was more demand for the art form in Australia and that private buyers may be uncertain about how long the a piece could last.

Discolouration of the paper is a big issue, as is the fragile nature of most artworks that would see them ruined if they were squashed.

Harney thinks its frailty is part of paper's appeal.

“I actually like the ethereal (nature) of it, it can easily be ruined. It won’t last forever, which is kind of something nice. Nothing lasts forever.”

State-based groups such as Papermakers of Victoria, Papermakers of Queensland and Primrose Paper Arts in New South Wales have also popped up to support the craft.

Earlier this year Rockingham City Council in Western Australia held free paper art workshops after a local publisher donated hundreds of faulty books.

The books were reincarnated into art pieces and displayed in a recycled-book art exhibition.

Internationally, a significant paper art movement stems from Japan, Korea and China and in Europe.

German artist Simon Schubert’s fascinating work uses a paper-folding technique that makes a plain white sheet look like it’s been embossed.

“People very often don’t believe, that the pictures are only done by folding the paper and that the images become visible only through light and shadow. They often think I’ve coloured the works or used pencil for the shades,” he said.

“It took some years to perfect the technique, but now it is not that difficult anymore.  It is important to start with the smallest folds and carefully work step-by-step to the larger folds. This prevents the paper from taking more folds than actually planned.”

Schubert said his first attempt at this technique was a portrait of author, Samuel Beckett.

“Paper as the writer’s material seemed to be the right media for such a portrait,” he said.