Blog Post: Emily Motto

Flatpacked fragments

I'm sitting in my new studio at the Bluecoat about to open a box of work I posted to myself from NLS gallery in Kingston, Jamaica, where I was on a recent residency. l am wondering what has happened to the pieces inside, and how the various elements I tried to keep with me have made the journey. The box is filled with large paper and cement planes I used to build compositions for Intervals, a series of work I made during my time there.

I'm wondering what has happened to the structure of the pieces, if they'll still be able to stand, what the textures will be like, and how they may have picked up marks from being folded into this box. I’m also wondering if the colours of the pigments that I was experimenting with in Jamaica will look different in Liverpool's light.

I’m thinking a lot about flat-pack-ability. I folded down and flat-packed the large thin paper and cement planes of the compositions so that I could post them home and perhaps work with the surfaces again, unaware that once I arrived home New Contemporaries would offer me the opportunity to work in this studio at the Bluecoat for a year.

Since arriving here in Liverpool I've been thinking a lot about the connections between places I have ended up spending time in and been influenced by as an artist. How my work, thoughts and ideas, and learning about the world, has been so fluidly led by the spaces that have happened to support my art practice at the time.