Paper Den Membrane

Throughout various zones in the rural banality of the countryside there are usually dens, sometimes made by inhabitants of that space, or unknown visitors, strange interventions sitting somewhere between the personal and the eerie.

​A den in the woods might be seen as a hideaway but it could also signify a meeting point between internal space and external space, a shroud over a working space which contains the contradiction of being, but not being seen, a membrane between worlds. I thought what would happen if I created a version of an interior shelter in the studio.

I chose to use gummed paper tape for the ‘membrane’, a material usually used to seal boxes for exportation, along edges of exhibition walls, in framing, etc. It's 100% recyclable and biodegradable, and somehow represents an end point for processed wood and in this case a starting point for an artwork.

Upon completing the work, I found there was a dialogue between interior and exterior spaces and how the environment or space where something is made affects the outcome. There is the paradox of co-reliance in there somewhere. The other components of this installation work together to describe a kind of rhythmic deconstruction or chain of mutability.