Like several artists, London-based Tonya Corkey has created a series of portraits using old photos as reference. The difference here is that the portraits are rendered not with paint or pen, but with lint.
Lint Portraits of Old School Photos
In her current series, “See you in the future”, a collection of lint portraits of old school photos, Tonya uses lint as a medium to recreate to create images of people whose memories have been lost in time – as they are without the person to whom they belong. The titles of the pieces are evidence of this (much read like signed yearbooks) which come from the personal messages on the backsides of the reference photographs, most of which are school photos.
“Our desire for memory in absence is triggered by sensations of smell and touch, a trait of my work. The void spaces of raw canvas in the works are intended to reflect memory, described through the standing out of key features: the eyes, mouth and hair. The less significant features have been left blank. The viewer’s mind fills in the rest of the image the same way a photograph would. The doubling of images reflects memory and its tendency to distort over time.”- Tonya Corkey
Shown at top: The cows are happiest when they’re chewing their cud,lint on canvas, 16″ x 20″, 2013:
ARTIST’S STATEMENT (from her site):
Being within the discourse of painting, craft and photography, my work investigates an unavoidable aspect of human nature, the desire to seek memories. The series, “See you in the future.” investigates the role that the photograph’s referent plays in memory and its loss over time.
My work hybridizes the discarded material of lint with the second hand image – the iconic school photograph- to conceptualize my interests. The materiality conceptually layers the work. As a byproduct of society, lint consists of fibers, hair, dead skin and other debris and thus directly referencing people and their daily activities. By using lint and cast off photographs, both being discarded materials; these materials reflect the idea of a decaying memory. Our desire for memory in absence is triggered by sensations of smell and touch, a trait of my work. The void spaces of raw canvas in the works are intended to reflect memory, described through the standing out of key features: the eyes, mouth and hair. The less significant features have been left blank. The viewer’s mind fills in the rest of the image the same way a photograph would. The doubling of images reflects memory and its tendency to distort over time.
Tonya Corkey was born in Kingston, Ontario in 1989 and graduated from OCAD University’s drawing and painting program in 2012. She has always been interested in untraditional paint mediums; in challenging and bridging gaps between different disciplines.
