Paige Jansen^[8]

Artist bio:

Paige Jansen is a maker based in Lyttelton, New Zealand, working across clothing, weaving, craft, costume and installation.

Lacing together sensory observations, topics of home, language and the body, Paige sets out to unveil our intimate texture of experience, through intuitive material response, bewitching dye techniques, repetitive gestures and careful hand stitching. Offering pieces as both examination and invitation for ones own secret enquiry.

This beautiful very first collection of Paige Jansen’s for Public Record is called ‘Lightly peppered’.  

Artist Statement / Hands on process of this work:

Language epiphanies, arrival while making, for this work; peppered, malleable, stretched, nerve, unfold. I looked at the artist Gwen John and the painting, Woman Holding a Balance by Johannes Vermeer, c. 1664. These words and works are what inform the material response. Hands to textile, stitch on cloth, I’m using language as tool for feeling, feeling as a tool for making. I try to uncover the intimacy that lies within what arrives during the making. The texture of the experience unveils through a kinaesthetic approach. A process of arrival, holding and unearthing. It’s always a response to what I’m experiencing or observing at the particular moment in time.

Always a continuation, moving through and developing on past work. Starting with textiles, identifying fibres and responding to them. I merge draping with flat pattern cutting, mixingbetween both mediums during construction.

Weaving together bewitching dye techniques, meticulous marathon weaves with careful, close and subtle hand stitched details. Repetition to the point that the process becomes anew. The first pleat is not the same experience as the last. Physical texture, surface, and robust absorbing material choices are integral to the work. The energy is laborious. The concept is always the intimate texture of experience. I hope that the work can act as both an examination and invitation for ones own secret inquiry.