LONDON.- Since August 5th at Messums Wiltshire our in-depth focus on materials investigates paper. A series of exhibitions across our venues presents artists working with paper and showcases the diversity, breadth and potential of the material with works ranging from print, drawing, sculpture and installation, and exploring a range of scale in two and three dimensions.

Japanese contemporary artist Kaori Kato has filled the barn gallery at Messums Wiltshire with a site-specific installation. Kato creates geometric patterns and organic three-dimensional forms by hand-folding paper. As artist-in-residence for a short period at Messums Wiltshire, she has made work on site, responding to the interior of the thirteenth-century tithe barn. Her paper sculpture dynamically integrates with the space – suspended from the ceiling, unfolding from the floor, rhythmically rolling over plinths and curling over the walls. This installation is accompanied by a series of smaller scale wall-based works and run until 18 September.

Launching at the same time as Kaori Kato’s installation, a group exhibition has opened in the Long Gallery at Messums Wiltshire presenting the work of four female artists – Becky Allen, Purdey Fitzherbert, Alice von Maltzahn and Emilie Pugh whose practices are also dedicated to working with paper. While the practices of these artists vary in their nature and approach, there is a shared affinity in the work and their relationship with the material.

Becky Allen explores drawing as a form of meditative catharsis. Drawing on natural papers, such as Japanese mulberry and Chinese bamboo, with pencil or extremely fine rotring pens, she channels the movement and energy of repeated mark-making to create artworks that express a visual record of a passage through time.

For Purdey Fitzherbert, the process of creation is paramount. She stresses the importance and the innate beauty of traditional craft techniques and embraces the full journey of this in her works, starting with hand-ground pigments all the way to relinquishing her dominant role as a maker and trusting the natural processes to carry through her artistic vision.

Alice von Maltzhahn creates structures that transform interior spaces, encouraging us to reimagine our surroundings and our place within them. She creates installations which explore the concept of wallpaper, growing intricately crafted, three- dimensional relief work across wall surfaces while other works include floating, hand- cut Japanese Kozuke paper panels that reanimate our field of vision, playing with the way light moves through nature’s network of branches and leaves to create shadow patterns that shift as we pass through them.

Emilie Pugh draws inspiration from nature and belief systems, working between the spiritual and the scientific, the material and the immaterial. She experiments with a wide-range of mediums and processes, from unconventional methods of mark- making using incense sticks, soldering irons, chemicals and light, to the more

Messums Wiltshire
Kaori Kato, PAPER: Unfolding, Unfurling
August 5th, 2023 - September 18th, 2023
Quiet Strength: Working in Paper
August 5th, 2023 - September 25th, 2023