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Jacki Parry Artist’s Statement
Recent small objects in cast handmade paper explore the colour yellow and the way it appears to hold and reflect light within a simple form. The materials of print and paper are implicit in the dissemination of knowledge and information, not only in the sense of printed matter but also in the development of a personal aesthetic. In responding to the Tower of Babel legend, earlier concerns have resurfaced and provided a direction to the work - specifically the notion of change in relation to the elements and to the language of information. Five large-scale digital prints from the Tower of Babel series will be shown in the UK for the first time at the Maclaurin. On a much more intimate scale the theme of memory has been explored in a number of woven paper drawings which have then been further developed as etchings on handmade paper. My influences span the history of art and literature - and I continue to find sustenance there. Perhaps this can be demonstrated more specifically with reference to three of the works in the Tower of Babel series: 1. The Library of Babylon FIRE The Library of Babel and The Wall and the Books - two stories by Borges are loose background references for this work. The burning of books, the auto-da-fe, and the great Alexandrina destroyed by the Romans and other libraries destroyed by fire. The looting and burning of the library of Baghdad in April 2003 was a recent potent news story and a reminder of the vulnerability of the wisdom and knowledge of our civilisation... 2. Procession EARTH
Boullee’s 'Truncated Cone-shaped Tower', a pen and ink drawing, is simple and monumental and on close inspection a linear spiral of people wind their way to the top. I have appropriated part of this image and stretched it digitally. According to Rosenau, Piranesis' Carceri probably influenced him, and also his Roman ruins (The Antichita Romane, published 1756, and the second version of the Carceri in 1760) here also 'the allusion to Trajans Column reveals B's admiration for Roman architecture’. The truncated pyramid and cone, as well as the spiral motif of the tower, combines the tradition of the Tower of Babel with Roman reminiscences. 3. Homage to Brancusi - Endless Column AIR The space between the two symmetrical vertical forms is made positive by the use of a rich luminous blue - the column which, if only fleetingly, formally has echoes of the Brancusi sculpture. For the exhibition I will show a development of this idea as a screen print. |
During the last 30 years my investigations have been based on developing ideas in paper, using it variously as independent medium, as substrate and in combination with other materials. For most of that time while exploring a breadth of approaches and applications of the medium, my most intense interest has been in the structural aspects of the pulp itself and with the development of a paper membrane, which is both strong and translucent.
The repetition of the stylised figures in combination with a diminishing scale was intended to produce from a distance a semblance of text. A visual reference to Trajans Column - the movement of peoples, the subject I seemed to become obsessed with - this despite the fact that I never work with the figure directly in any sense. I was driven to do it despite the difficulty I had in discovering a visual language to try to deal with the vague notion of a tower/column of people on the move. Recently though when re-organising my studio, I came across a magazine article I saved years ago, maybe in the eighties or even before, about two French visionary architects, Boullee and Lequeu, known for their proposals on paper for buildings, which were mostly never built.