joseph scissorhands: Hormazd Narielwalla

Sunday 13 September 2020

Hormazd Narielwalla - Rock, Paper Scissors

Hormazd Narielwalla - Rock, Paper Scissors

"Rock, Paper, Scissors is a response to the sculpture of Barbara Hepworth and to the particular experience of works that are sited in her garden at St. Ives. A series of 100 tiny paper collages, created on the pages of a found vintage pattern manual, explore ideas about materiality, journeying and space. Published in an edition of 100 copies, an artist’s book reassembles the original collage sequence, housed in a box that pays reference to Hepworth’s signature pierced forms."

Hormazd Narielwalla - Rock, Paper Scissors no. 307

It's so good to see that the world is finally beginning to open up again after a long period of lockdown. Being able to visit museums and galleries again is one of the things that I have missed most during the imposed restrictions due to the pandemic. I have been aware of Hormazd Narielwalla's collage works for a while now, in which he uses dressmaking and tailoring patterns as a basis for his art, and decided that this would be one of the first exhibitions that I would go to see post-lockdown. I was particularly interested in seeing this installation not just because Narielwalla works in collage like myself, but mainly because in this exhibition he takes inspiration from his visits to Barbara Hepworth's garden in St. Ives to see her pierced sculptural forms. Regular readers may recall that earlier this summer I revealed my own Aeolus series, in which I took inspiration from the stringed sculptural forms of not only Hepworth, but Henry Moore and Naum Gabo too. (Before leaving the exhibition it was a real pleasure to chat to the gallery owner Emma who told me about the occasion on which she had actually met Henry Moore). A visit to this small exhibition held in the intimate Cabinet Room space of the gallery then, was a must, to see how Narielwalla's vision and artistic response inspired by Hepworth's work differed from my own. Whereas the majority of the work for my Aeolus series is based around the process of stitch and collage, Narielwalla's Rock, Paper Scissors is pure collage. He focuses on strong, geometric shapes and textures from found papers in these 80 tiny collages which contrast with the text and age-yellowed papers of the found 1906 tailoring guidebook onto which they are superimposed. The resulting collages are produced as a limited edition book. The collages make for an interesting intervention, and like my own Aeolus series strongly evokes the spirit of the mid-twentieth century sculptures that inspired them.