Leonie Oakes has been awarded our July Laurel for her paper dress that breathes.
Leonie Oakes is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Tasmania/Lutruwita, the southernmost state of Australia. Leonie has investigated textiles, paper, artists’ books, paper as wearable object and sculpture, often creating art objects that utilise all her skills. She is a hybrid artist who uses material and method as an integral element of her practice. These include casting, stitch, and surface decoration.
Slippage: two small figures scrambled to their feet is a wearable paper dress that was created in 2012 where it was a finalist piece in the inaugural Paper ™ on Skin award. First held in 2012, Paper on Skin™ draws on the papermaking heritage of the northwest coast of Tasmania (Australia) and has grown to become an international event. This dress intends to take on the environment it is responding to and the body’s responses to being in that environment.
The piece is currently in an exhibition at the 20th Lucca Biennale Cartasia which is the biggest event in the world about paper art and architecture. Leonies work marks the beginning of an intercultural exchange and ongoing partnership between the two organisations.
The papers that have been used for this wearable paper dress are both delicate and resilient. Slippage, the dress fits the model like armour-like skin. The paper is crushed gently and mindfully in a bellows action, mimicking the action of the lungs of the body filling and expelling air. This work explores that moment of stillness found between the action of breathing entering and leaving the body, here made analogous and connected to the seashore at the edge of night and day.
Endings and beginnings move in both directions. The story intertwines.
Visit www.paperonskin.com and follow @leonie_oakes_artist
