Piled and Askew

Piled and Askew, Cut Paper by Gail Cunningham

Cut Paper
2011
24" x 32"

 

 

The City Recollected 

 

Memory is the ability to recall information. Items many of us keep on instant recall, such as a password, a bank account number, or a person’s name, are hard facts. They are either remembered correctly or they’re not. Then there are other memories, ones that are more elusive and imbued with feelings. A first kiss, the first time visiting a new city, a birth or a death, these types of memories are often mutated by emotion. Recollections can be shortened, elongated, or remembered out of sequence. Sometimes our wants and wishes are substituted for reality in a memory, other times memories seem to disappear completely. 

 

This body of work concentrates on memories of a place - Philadelphia. The images of buildings in this work are all based on actual structures from different neighborhoods all over the city, but here they are jumbled and rearranged through the filters of memory, distance and emotion.  These images allow the city to take on a new physical form and become a semblance of Philadelphia. A view of the city that is intangible, but through these blueprints, has a distinct history.

 

This series of paper cutouts were begun during an Artist Residency in Wexford Co. Ireland and were shown at an exhibit in The Philadelphia International Airport in 2011.