In an increasingly digitised world, artists are turning to shared experiences and everyday surroundings, embedding the familiar within their practices as a response to visual saturation and technological overload. Many return to the tactile and personal, using the banal to reframe a sense of control. Central to this shift is paper, which emerges as both medium and concept, evoking the sacredness of the ordinary.
Paper unites diverse practices: from Hagiwara’s lyrical suburban scenes and Claydon’s surreal animations of the inanimate, to Jones’s composed still lifes, Marchel’s painted book surfaces, Toucas’ meticulous biro journals, Nicholson’s layered oil stick works revealing memory and light, and Lin Tian Qi’s printmaking inspired by the Mogao Grottoes, where monumental murals collapse into intimate fragments. Across these works, paper is treated as a sculptural, allegorical, and an experimental material.
Through layering, manipulation, and transformation, these practices highlight paper’s texture, fragility, and sensory presence, reaffirming the enduring value of the physical in a digital age.