Joanna Gair
Flight and Fight

My piece is about the duality of being a woman and trying to live in harmony with our environment. The two forms reflect the choices we make for ourselves and the demands we respond to in our lives. They represent the real and the perceived, the commercial and the spiritual, the staying and the going.

Sometimes a feeling of peace comes from “doing our duty” and sometimes it comes from using the momentum gathered ….. and leaping.

The forms are made from folded handmade paper that I’ve made from a recycled double-bed sheet combined with native plant fibres. (Dianella – Native Flax) The fibre connects the work to Tasmania, whilst the sheet speaks of the bed, a symbol which has come to represent so much for women in the 21 st Century. In this instance the bed has been deconstructed and is no longer simple to recognise, but instead has become the fabric for these forms.

The pair look deceptively simple: they are transient, fragile, voluptuous, and organic, yet at the same time manufactured and similar. I’m trying to avoid the word ‘metaphor’, preferring the term ‘totem’.