Folds exist everywhere, in all fabrics of life: both man-made and in nature. 

More literally, they are the fibres and cloth of everyday human life. Machine-made fabrics and the textiles of our clothing overlap, scrunch, pleat and ruffle. As do the more mundane and overlooked materials, such as plastic – which ages like skin with crinkled marks. Our skin itself creases and wrinkles from infant to elder. In the natural world, from rolling lapping tides of the ocean, to the delicate circumvolutions of a shell. Even the particles in the air we breathe fold and flex around us.  This project has been an exploration into folds, the shapes and structures they can create and an experimentation into using fabric as a medium. 

This artistic enquiry is an attempt to bridge the gap between painting and sculpture. Taking these two traditional disciplines and re-evaluating them, which in turn redefines and unfolds pre-existing perceptions of these distinguished mediums with a new light and innovative channel. The canvases are restructured and reshaped to convey to the viewer the feeling that they have a life of their own. This is traditional art unfolded; unrestricted by the boundaries of conventional theory and past framework.  

My degree show piece “Flow” used a range of techniques to create work that explores folds as visual forms in their own right and also how material can be manipulated to create the illusion of plasticity with molten and reshaped forms. Crumpled canvas fabric is warped and metamorphosed into a new forms; emerging into flowing, folding structures that cannot be contained. 

The purpose of the canvas frame changes. Initially, existing to simply stretching the fabric, it bears a new role; supporting the work in a different way.  It becomes the visible backbone of the piece and showcases the folded canvas cloth. 

Overall, the work is a visual inquiry into folds, flexure and form.