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HIDE INFODrawing influence from elements of twentieth century architecture, modern cityscape and industrial production, Emma Papworth makes sculptures and installations that look curiously at urban environments.
The production of her sculptures often revolve around ‘drifts’ taken around cities. Like a scavenger on a mission to extract essential sustenance, she collects and references architectural forms and materials, sifting through demolished buildings and industrial heaps to reformulate the discarded remains of contemporary culture. The use of concrete and artificial building materials in her work seems to express contemporary culture at large that drifts towards a distancing, de-sensualisation and de-eroticisation of the human relation to reality and natural environments.
She is interested in how architecture is deeply engaged with the metaphysical question of the self and the world, interiority and exteriority, time duration, and represents the changing values of the times. She would like her work to question urban environments we inhabit drawing on materials and forms that express their age and history, as well as the story of their origins and history of human use: to offer imaginary futures as well as contemplations on technology, tradition, community and long timescales.
