The drawing series Emotional Landscape is characterised by slippages and instability. The work invites the viewer to experience a feeling of being off balance, as horizons tilt and light vanishes. Collapsing, sagging, folded, the drawings are in a state of transition between standing up and falling down. Often placed into corners or lying against the wall, something abject and abandoned surrounds them. Drawn with pencil onto crumpled and scored paper, a topography of damage is mapped onto their surface. The open spaces surrounding the paper’s creases are filled in with graphite, in a meticulous, time-consuming process. In an inversion of the “normal” drawing process, lines already embedded in the paper are slowly revealed by the filling-in marks of the pencil. Not only is the drawing process inverted; as the crumpled piece of paper is gradually transformed into something resembling precious metal, conventional notions of value are also called into question.

Emotional Landscape, 2016, graphite on crumpled paper, 48 x 64 cm

Equilibrium, 2016, graphite on crumpled paper, 99 x 75 cm. Photo: Andrew Youngson

Equilibrium, 2016, graphite on crumpled paper, overview. Photo: Andrew Youngson

UnBecoming no. 2, 2016, graphite on crumpled paper, 55 x 80 cm. Photo: Andrew Youngson

UnBecoming no. 2, 2016, graphite on crumpled paper, 55 x 80 cm, detail. Photo: Andrew Youngson

Superwave, 2016, graphite on crumpled paper, 26 x 40.5 cm

UnBecoming no. 1, 2016, graphite on crumpled paper, 74 x 30 x 6 cm

UnBecoming no. 1, 2016, graphite on crumpled paper, 74 x 30 x 6 cm

UnBecoming no. 1, 2016, graphite on crumpled paper, overview