Stories

TitleDateExcerpt
The ink on skin: tattoo and traceThe practice of marking the body has long occupied a contested space between the sacred and the profane, the personal and the public. In contemporary…
Paper as archive in the working life of an artistPaper rarely behaves as a neutral ground in the studio. It buckles under a glass of water left too close to the elbow, yellows at the edges where the afternoon…
Plastic as Contemporary: Synthetic and DurablePlastic belongs to the present in a way few materials can avoid. It is in the casing of a phone, the lining of a medical package, the surface of a playground,…
Glass as Barrier: View and Separation in Contemporary ArtGlass promises access. It allows the eye to travel through a room, across a street, or towards an object held behind a pane. Yet the same transparent surface…
The Stone as Weight: Quarry and PlaceStone carries a physical burden before it carries an idea. It has mass, density, temperature and resistance; it occupies a room with quiet authority. In visual…
The carved wood: grain and handCarved wood carries a record of contact. Its surface preserves the direction of growth, the pressure of a blade and the pauses made by a hand deciding how far…
The mold in clay: cast and replicationFor thousands of years, the act of pressing matter into a hollow has allowed artists to fix fleeting gestures into durable form. Clay receives impressions with…
The Braid as Structure: Weave and IdentityA braid is easy to recognise, yet difficult to reduce to a single meaning. It can be a hairstyle, a binding method, a line of movement, a record of labour, or…
The knotted form: where connection meets entanglementThere is something quietly radical about a knot. Long before the canvas or the bronze, humans looped fibre around fibre to make a thing hold its shape. The…
The stitch as line: sewing and repairFor most of the twentieth century, the drawn line and the sewn line sat in separate rooms of the art school. One belonged to the life drawing studio, the other…