Winsome Jobling

Sunshine Coast National Art Prize 2024 - Finalist

_{[Image courtesy of the artist and Australian Galleries, Melbourne. Photo by Fiona Morrison]}

Artist Statement

Plant fibres are the raw materials for paper makers; the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen that make up cellulose are also the most common elements in the human body; therefore, as a papermaker empathy for the environment is in my blood! 

The reciprocal relationships of all living and non-living things are an elaborate and all-encompassing mesh of networks.  

All things are made of atoms – little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting and repelling one another. All matter is granular and this granular view of the world creates a sense of the profound unity of all things. We are all made of the same substance as are the stars, and the sea. 

Printed paper pulps, bushfire charcoal and ochres are added on the wet sheet which is haunted by watermarks. The paper becomes both the substrate and content, an interplay between the method and the message, about the human impact on the world around us.  

Hand-papermaking allows me to transform fibres into new materials, to make paper that can bring an ecosystem of very real issues into tangible form.  

As a papermaker I am immersed in the materiality of my media in a deeply physical and analytical way, combining science and art, chemistry and ecology; the alchemical nature of papermaking, where natural matter is transmuted into a malleable material that can be moulded into artistic form. 

My paper is not a neutral support.