Paula Dunlop
CALL-RESPONSE-RESPONSE
Paula Dunlop and Cody Wood
2021
Xerox prints, steel and glass found objects, steel chain, glass beads, thread
Size variable, approx. 60cm x 100cm
A work created for the group exhibition Mutual Intent.
Call - Response - Response is a conversational exchange of images and objects. Dunlop and Wood each took turns issuing a prompt to the other (Wood sharing moments captured via phone camera, Dunlop, material remnants from her home studio) to instigate a back-and-forth exchange of the visuals, objects and materials present in their lives.
The result: seven stories composed of images and assemblages that speak of presence and place, acknowledgement and recognition — simple but meaningful impressions of the artists’ domestic surroundings and everyday work environments.
Call - Response - Response is about two strangers making connections in a spirit of openness and curiosity, and finding a common ground in their shared appreciation for the small, the quiet, the overlooked and the everyday.
ADAPT
2021
Steel ball chain, bed sheets, magnets, wire rope
180cm x 250cm
In a time of quarantines and lockdowns, ADAPT shows us a collapse of the neat separations between work and home. Bed sheets, steel ball-chain, canvas-based studio traditions, window-dressings, creative practices in home spaces — all come together gently, magnetically.
ADAPT meditates on the forces that condition our home lives and work lives; on the conventions that privilege or idealise certain workspaces over others; and on the give-and-take that constitutes our relationships with people, materials, and spaces.
Formation Studies
2020
Glass beads, silver beads, stainless steel rings, stainless steel chain, thread
Size variable, approx. 20cm x 20cm x 3cm
Ball chain is braided and spliced, and beads are woven into a series of small objects. Their presence is ambiguous; they appear as models for larger design works, or as intimate, hand-held objects-cum-jewellery such as prayer beads or worry beads. Their arrangements suggest molecular formations, spiral growth patterns or clustered celestial bodies.
They are explorations of form, and point to the grounding or steadying potential of tactile ‘things’ for both makers and users.
TUFT prints
2020
Toned cyanotype and pencil on paper
19cm x 28cm
Cyanotype photograms of TUFT (see below), created through multiple exposures of the object using carefully managed combinations of both direct sunlight and sunlight diffused through white bedsheets.
TUFT
2019
Howlite, steel wire
24cm x 24cm x 8cm
Howlite, an inexpensive stone often used to mimic other minerals, is used in its natural, pale state.
Following past woven works, the manufactured howlite beads are brought together one-at-a-time into a twisting length, then joined end-to-end to form a closed loop. The dark stringing material highlights the construction.
The weave's wave-form pattern — shorter beads moving to longer beads, to short again — is determined by the way the beads are packaged for transport and sale: 1/2 wave length = 1 package of the beads. Control over the construction is interrupted by taking design direction from the materials' packaging and commodification.
Pin Prints
2019
Toned cyanotype photograms
18cm x 26cm
Impressions of ephemeral sculptural assemblages, cast onto paper as cyanotype photograms.
The assemblages were made from hundreds of store-bought, steel fork pins — conventionally used by knitters to join seams or to hold a garment in shape during the blocking process. Experiments with the pins revealed that the ergonomic bend at the top allows for two to be connected, held together through tension. By passing pin through pin, many different shaped forms can be assembled and re-assembled.
The photograms, a 1:1 scale image created through direct contact between the assemblages and the photo emulsion-painted paper, not only capture shadowy glimpses of the pins before their dismantlement, but also become ‘things’ in their own right — present, paper things — existing somewhere between object and image.
Cover (timber, thread and beads)
2019
Timber milliner's block, glass beads, thread
16cm x 17cm x 21cm
Beads, draped and handwoven over an old hat block, following its form. The beaded rows increase and decrease, are taken around and under, the block, beads and thread bound together, now belonging to one-another.
Cover describes a sensibility typical of recent works: what seems at first glance rigid and controlled, is actually borne of yearning for a kind of surrender—to materials, processes, and constraints.
Disc (glossy black)
2019
Glass beads, thread
Dimensions variable, 33cm diameter when flat
Glass beads, handwoven into a semi-malleable, radial form taken from the pattern of beading used in Cover (timber, thread and beads). The pattern and rhythm of the beading is interrupted by half-anchored bead protrusions that can be flipped in different directions.
Disc prints 1-5
2019
Toned cyanotype photogram and pencil on paper
41cm x 27cm
Cyanotype photograms—made by placing Disc (glossy black) onto paper treated with a photo-sensitive emulsion. The symmetry and order of the object’s making is ‘thrown off’ by its malleability when placed on the paper’s surface.
Exhibition view, The Part and The Whole
2019
Side Gallery, Brisbane
The Part and the Whole explores parts, wholes and processes, in particular, the use of repetition as both a visual device as well as a process. The works highlight the formal properties of glass beads — their form, texture and geometric qualities, their pattern and repetition, as well as their ability to be assembled and re-assembled in multitudes of combinations.
Thread Drawing for Ribbon (matte black)
2018
Pigment on paper
38.5cm x 59cm (diptych)
Pigmented thread—common to jewellery-making and bead-stringing—is ‘drawn’ through layered paper, an image slowly built with hundreds of passes of the thread. The repeated gestural action of the paper and the thread is physically demanding, labour-intensive: hours upon hours of process.
Ribbon (matte black)
2018
Glass beads, thread
Dimensions variable, 15cm x 154cm when unfurled
Lightly-wiped thread from Thread Drawing for Ribbon (matte black) is woven into a soft-sculptural work with diamond-shaped glass beads, pieced together a few beads at-a-time to create an enlarged, out-sized version of a satin ribbon. The work inhabits an in-between space—an interstice between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, resembling draped fabric, but yet not entirely malleable.
Exhibition view, Some Like Poetry
2019
Space 776, Brooklyn
An exhibition of works completed while on residency at Space 776, New York City. Click here to view a video about the making of the works.
Pulses and Diamonds
2018
Glass beads, thread, thread spool
8cm x 55cm
Two pieces, brought together. Neckpieces, but also not simply things for the body.
Packages (glossy black), and Packages (transparent)
2018
Glass beads, thread, plastic packaging
Dimensions variable
An series that references the tension between the life of materials as commodities traded in the marketplace and their purity and integrity as beautiful things in their own right. Glass beads, thread and plastic packaging are handwoven into wall pieces that speak to both the manufacture and to the transport of the materials, and to their wearable and non-wearable ‘ends'. The woven bead 'strips', when attached to the remaining beads in the plastic packaging, act almost like a gauge or measure, indicating the usage of the beads. They hang, caught in progress somewhere between their manufacture and their ‘end’.
Bead prints 1-6
2016
Cyanotype photogram on paper
19cm x 27cm
The shadows of the transparent beaded forms of Loops (with gold), cast onto photo-sensitive paper. The ephemeral, fluid imagery speaks to the transitory nature of both the processes and the forms themselves (with beading often pulled apart and the beads re-used).