Elaine Mullings

Currently my work evolves from a concern with the shifting value of things. It also stems from a fascination with the transformative potential of mundane materials and the transient impact of light on form, surface and space. In manipulating and reworking them my aim is to re-present materials that linger in the background of our everyday landscape creating new forms and physical interventions that reveal the poetics of very simple things.

Although drawing often forms a starting point for inquiry, my practice is underpinned by my interest in facture – the act of making and creating material form. Evidence of the rhythm of labour and time sustained in the making is imbedded in the work in the hope of retaining honest connections between the material, process and form.

Endangered Species is a recent body of work that centres on the material qualities and sculptural possibilities of a single manufactured object – a greaseproof paper bag. Concentration on a seemingly fragile everyday material invites contemplation of the tension between a Western desire to protect and conserve objects – imbuing them with meaning and ‘value’ – and a celebration of mortality and transience that stems from Eastern aesthetics.

The central piece, Strength in Numbers (SiN), is an installation of some 6000 bags housed in a small, high-ceilinged room. It is a perversion of scale where the idea of ‘saving’ bags has gone too far. And as an intense sculptural arrangement it draws on the spectacle of the multiple and its relation to the singular object.

An endeavour of handling, Endangered Species is also a record of time and labour. Through simple repetitive gestures of crushing and rolling or crushing and opening the bags are transformed, each one becoming an individual object with its own fingerprint – its own ‘alibi of use’. Inspired by Giuseppe Penone’s approach of drawing through contact, every newly formed line or crease on the bags’ surface is a mark made by hand.