‘Finding the Pattern’ – Delicate and slow process of paper cutting

When the Covid-19 pandemic struck artist and business owner Mariapaola McGurk’s world came to a standstill.

At the time she was running a business in Johannesburg, paying staff salaries, studying towards an MBA and raising a family.

The pandemic forced her to shut her business and move away from the city.

McGurk, who has been an artist for 20 years, expanded her body of work in the little-known medium of paper cutting.

“I work with thin paper and cut out the work. It’s a very delicate and slow process,” she says. “I have been working in this medium for the past 12 years and I have only found three other paper cutting artists in South Africa.”

ALSO READ: KKNK festival: Vaxxed and unvaxxed welcome, under strict terms and conditions

The culmination of the past two years is currently on exhibition at the Candice Berman Gallery in Riverside Bryanston, titled “Finding the Pattern”. It’s her first solo exhibition.

“When I grabbed my toolbox, I also grabbed a pile of photographic portraits of staff, artists and collaborators who worked with and visited our business, The Coloured Cube,” McGurk explains. “These faces served as a memory of my everyday life before lockdown.”

McGurk’s interpretation of these portraits forms a large part of the exhibition. The process of paper cutting involves cutting away negative spaces for the work to become visible within the page, resulting in a very fragile art piece.

“I started playing with patterns to both hold the work together and allow for negative spaces to form the composition.

This technical solution led to a more conceptual questioning of the spaces between and what actually holds us together.

“We live in the spaces in-between important or special occasions. It’s in those spaces that our lives come together.

Without the pattern, many of these works would be impossible to achieve.”

The exhibition runs until March 24.

Compiled by Michel Bega