FRAGILE ALCHEMY

Experimenting with a synthesis of disciplines (performative, sculptural and photographic) to explore themes of transience and the ephemerality of life through the visual representation of a temporary paper artefact, fabricated to be photographed and subsequently destroyed. What remains is the photographic trace. Paper, a two dimensional material used and disposed of everyday with little thought, yet delicate and vulnerable in nature, becomes a three dimensional object. Not only visible as the surface upon which representations appear but also as the substance of a work itself, finding its own expression. The interventions effected upon the paper such as folding, piercing and ultimately burning, implicate notions of creation, transformation and destruction that are the fundamental conditions of existence.

©JulieDerbyshire 2020