5 artists turning paper into sculptural wonders at Collect art fair

Maybe it’s the looming prospect of the ‘paperless society’, but many gallerists are seeing a growing appreciation for works sculpted using paper. This year’s Collect art fair features arresting examples by a cluster of artists – as explored in Crafts magazine’s March/April issue. Here, we give you a taster of the works, which are all available to buy on Artsy until 24 March. For more paper wonders, get your copy of Crafts.

Kuniko Maeda

London-based Maeda combines digital technology with traditional craft techniques in an effort to make use of discarded paper. With Ruup & Form gallery at Collect, she is showing three-dimensional artworks made out of paper stiffened using kakishibu, tannin-heavy, fermented persimmon juice traditionally used as a natural dye in Japan, where she grew up, onto which she then laser-cuts patterns. ‘It’s a digital process but somehow creates a natural organic form,’ she says.

Jane Ponsford

Ponsford works with handmade paper, making hundreds of near-identical fragments into sculptural forms and installations. Based in the UK and showing with Sarah Myerscough Gallery at Collect, she is interested in paper’s historical associations, as well as its tactile qualities. ‘I enjoy using this material because it brings together surface and form,’ she says. ‘It is evocative, reminiscent of documentation and archives. Staining and tearing easily, it can be seen as the receptive surface for forensic investigation or a blank form to catch light or shadow.’

Lis Costa

Costa studied architecture and worked as an interior designer for years in Brazil before turning her own hand to craft. Now based in Italy, she cuts and carves paper into complex patterns of light and shadow that spring off their pure white, two-dimensional surface. ‘In my hands, under the scalpel, that white canvas comes to life,’ says the artist, whose work is being shown by Jaggedart at Collect. ‘The infinite potential enclosed in one simple element becomes animated and turns into an artwork.’

Sanaa Gateja

Gateja was studying jewellery-making at Goldsmiths in London when the lustrous colours of glossy junk mail caught his attention. Since then, it has become one of his primary mediums as an artist – he works with groups of craftswomen in his native Uganda, who roll paper into the beads from which he constructs his works. ‘People at my studio then treat or colour them in the way I want to create my palette, and those units are assembled into my tapestries,’ he says. Gateja's work is being shown by 50 Goldborne at Collect.

Genevieve Howard

The Irish designer and maker laser-cuts Japanese linen paper and then assembles it by hand into three-dimensional, wearable forms inspired by music. ‘Paper was an obvious choice for me as it is the material that music notation is recorded on and read from,’ says Howard, who now lives in Austria and is showing with Galerie Marzee. ‘I love how the material’s quality changes when it is transformed from a flat sheet into a three-dimensional object. Some people have mistaken my work for rubber or wood, while some think it has been 3D printed.’

The works in Collect 2021 are on sale online via Artsy.net until 24 March 2021. This article is an excerpt from Crafts magazine’s March/April issue. Buy your copy now.