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The knowledge that each piece is handmade draws us toward the process-oriented practices of each artist. We carefully examine the objects themselves, and contemplate the labor-intensive method by which each work has been created. Yet the implications of form and material run deeper: substance and subject matter are inextricably linked to a critique of culture. Given the post-industrial and technological times in which the work is being produced, the varied pieces in
make reference to recent advances
in the biological sciences, space travel, virtual reality, computer parts,
and engineered landscapes. Jane South’s sculptural/architectural constructions appear at first sight as factory-produced cages or complex contraptions made of metal or wood. Upon closer inspection, they reveal themselves to be comprised entirely of hand-cut, hand-colored, and hand-assembled strips of ordinary paper. South’s “containers of space,” as she refers to them, are paper objects that are essentially fragile and delicate. They likewise, yet mistakenly, appear sturdy, rigid and suggestive of intricately engineered machines and vessels. Conscious of the tension she crafts in her work, South relishes the capacity of her ephemeral hand-made creations to deceive and surprise. She actively explores the slippage between the implication of something and the actual thing itself, using the vocabulary of the machine as a stand-in for technology.1