recent work / projects | Paula Dunlop

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.

tableandcyanotypes_thepartandthewhole.jp

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).