Paper cutting artist Mariapaola McGurk finds the pattern

When the Covid 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 for an MBA and raising a family. The pandemic forced her to shut her business and move away from the city.

McGurk turned to expanding 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 said.

The culmination of the past two years is on exhibition at the Candice Berman Gallery in Bryanston, titled Finding the Pattern.

“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.”

Her interpretation of these portraits form a large part of the exhibition.

“I started playing with pattern 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 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.”