A changeling is a replacement baby, which the fairies leave for you when they steal your own child. A child is a replacement baby, which time leaves for you as it steals away the years. This project examines childhood through the uncanny lens of the fairytale, borrowing its tropes and its metamorphoses.
As well as exploring “traditional” mark-making, I’ve considered paper’s own potential as a medium for expressing change, violence and re-membering, through cutting, tearing, layering and stitching.
Grounded in depictions of the sweet and horrifying everyday, my practice is concerned with an understanding of time as a construct created purely through memory and fantasy. I situate childhood as a nodal point through which time flows multi-directionally, a place where transformation is not only possible but necessary.
'wear your future like armour'; Carbon paper, biro, thread, ink on found card, 17 x 31cm
'oh! amorphous you!'; Pencil, pen on tracing and acid-free paper, 57 x 42cm
'unhinge'; Pencil, acrylic, thread on baking parchment and paper, approx. 16 x 50cm
'out the window backwards'; Ink, collage on paper, 56 x 220cm
'makes the heart grow fonder'; Acrylic, carbon paper, biro on paper, 21 x 15cm
'monstrosity. marks. mistakes'; Posca marker, tracing paper, photocopied original artwork made (conte on black paper), 30 x 21cm
'piece meal'; Ink on index cards, 21 x 15cm
'pink changeling'; Tracing paper and ink on pink sugar paper, 42 x 30cm
Notebook pages
Notebook pages