Legacy
These two groups of work in handmade paper were produced during my 2019 Artist Residency at Dieu Donné. Both series explore ideas about cultural inheritance and take inspiration from themes in Seamus Heaney’s poem, Bogland. The poem considers the preservative properties of the bog and ruminates on our ties to the past; for me, a natural place from which to consider ancient narratives and their capacity to endure. My attention was focused in particular on the ancient Pandora narrative and how the character of the prototype woman is intrinsically bound up with her female form. In my works Pandora's box is replaced by eight books, containers of stories. These are pigmented in a range of skin tones, the pulp manipulated to evoke the folds and wrinkles of skin. In Little Liar Pandora's box (or, correctly, vessel) is a vase decorated with classical artworks depicting the naked female body.