Here’s our next installment of Angle on Artists. And today we focus on British artist, Jennifer Collier.
It’s no secret that I’m completely crazy about paper and cardboard art. And also about up cycling. And there is something irresistible about these objects which are replicas, yet in a completely non-functioning way.
And Jennifer Collier has led the way in the upcycling revolution in art and craft; a veteran maker of vintage material, investigating the re-used and recycled since 1999. “Giving new life to things that would otherwise go unloved or be thrown away,” is central to her practice.
Welcome to her fantastical world, where every exquisite detail is made, folded and manipulated from paper. Once books, maps, envelopes, wallpaper or scrap, the paper is transformed into textural forms. Like cloth it is stitched to construct two or three dimensional objects, decorative and functional: lampshades, cameras, tools and furniture. The origin of the paper often provides a starting point for the artwork: the narrative of the books and papers suggesting idea and form.
Jennifer’s work uses the idea of the domestic space, to set a stage for the work: upholstered chairs, kitchen utensils, and garden tools hanging in their shed invite you in. References to fairy tales, films, literature, music and nursery rhymes– the layers of paper and meaning together build the narrative.
