Paper Values

These sculptures were created in response to the Global Art Practice Collaboration 2018, a multi-disciplinary project involving nine students from Central Saint Martins (UAL) and nine from Tokyo University of the Arts (Geidai) which took place across the UK, Japan, Hong Kong and China from June to September 2018. During and since this journey, I have been fascinated by the notion of paper as a medium of exchange. I am interested in the cultural, financial, political and sentimental value attributed to paper items accreted when travelling, particularly those I accumulated throughout the cities we visited on this cultural exchange programme, including London, Wakehurst, Tokyo, Fukushima, Aomori, Hong Kong and Shenzhen. These two sculptures were exhibited at 'Transcending Borders' at the CSM Window Galleries, King's Cross, as pictured here, from January to February 2019. They are a reflection on how paper is both imbued with value and how, in turn, it is used as a socio-economic tool to value us. I sought to reduce each collected item to the material from which it was made: paper, whether it be simply a receipt which is worth very little or something much more powerful like a visa document or immigration form which grants or denies permission to cross borders to other territories. Through this material enquiry, I intended to make each piece of paper equal in value, by using papier-mâché and paper pulp casting as means to break down the geo-political hierarchy inherent to the documents I collected.