White Collage

Following my research into Rachel Whiteread's work I decided to investigate absence in the form of negative space and the use of white.  I wanted to make this as simple as possible so I used only sheets of cartridge paper glued together, with no mark making other than the cut edges.  Using a stencil created from a photograph (taken during the photoshoot) I cut partial figures from individual sheets of paper rather than from all of them at once.  I wanted to include an element of variability and random chance into the creation of the figures through movements of the stencil, accuracy when cutting and relative sharpness of the blade, in order to make the layers partially visible to the viewer.

I first glued the negative space paper cut outs on top of each other to create a relief effect, which I further enhanced by gluing the figures I had cut out onto the substrate to one side - I wanted to push the negative space further away from the uppermost layers.

I think the minimalist composition is successful in relation to the brief, but the idea would need more experimentation and to be pushed much further - perhaps at a bigger scale with a lot more layers; or perhaps using a variety of papers taken from different sources.