Helen Pailing and Miriam Hancill artist talk

Helen Pailing studied for a BA in Embroidery and then an MA in Glass and Ceramics. After finishing her BA she decided to go traveling around the world and ended up in Brisbane where she created some street art that lead her into more site specific sculpture. She uses everyday, found and donated materials to create her work because she is interested in the throw away nature of the materials. She worked with VARC, a community project that enabled her to work for a whole year in secluded countryside and develop how she made her work. She decided to make a small piece of work everyday from found materials she discovered on her walks and once people heard she was creating work they donated all sorts of obsolete materials. Once she enrolled onto her MA at the Glass Centre she realised she liked the off cuts of glass that nobody wanted and decided to place them back into the world with added colour but yet still keeps the dainty and fragile nature of her pieces. My favourite piece of hers was a piece done during her time on the Scotland/England border placed in a barn where they used to do lambing. She wanted to represent the tranquility of the barn so strung fishing wire from the beams in the ceiling to the floor where the light could hit them and dust could gather. I find that very calming and one of the loveliest ideas for a piece I have heard.

Miriam Hancill studied for 4 years at Newcastle University and is now completing a course with the University of Sunderland A2A scheme where she can work alongside students and use our facilities. She is a printmaker, who occasionally uses paint on top of her monoprints. She wants to put across a deeper meaning within her work rather than it just being pictorial. She likes the control of applying a flat colour with the roller and the freedom she had to change and manipulate the paint over the top. She seems to be stuck in the landscape because of her countryside background. She wants the viewer to see the atmosphere and the colour as one rather than two separate things. While sitting on trains she writes and films creating a sense of the indistinct; a moment or place trying to be remembered but still being forgotten somehow. Her work tries to bring back the memory. The sense of fleeting that her work gives is the most important thing. Slowly she moves from A4 monoprints onto bigger scales, making it more physical for her to create her work but also giving her more freedom with the print and paint. Her work became linked together, drawing one line onto another piece even if just by accident. After curating a show she liked the idea of working in close proximity with her work and seeing it change into an installation. Her obsession with willow trees brought her to this conclusion because of the way her paint came together. She wanted to move her work around the room and manipulate the space so that the viewer became more immersed in the actual prints, away from the white cube.

Right now she is focusing on the fleeting, writing notes from her memory and how light travels through those memories.