Emma Bingham’s artistic research investigates ways to visualize the acts of holding, being held, and gestures of care. Bingham uses materials that remind us of the body’s surface, such as paper, cloth, and wax. Creating abstract forms with these materials, she encourages audiences to consider how these forms evoke bodily sensations of holding and touching. She is interested in exploring how the memories of these sensations accumulate through human connections and encounters with the other.
Presented within a darkened void, the boundaries between seeing and feeling become blurred. Inside the space can be found a wall of softly folded fabric, a collection of hand scaled sculptural objects, and a crumpled paper form resting on the floor like a huddled human figure. A series of watercolour drawings serve as an invitation to the encounter within the darkened room. The gathered folds and pockets of fabric invite a sense of the potential of the void as a site of holding. The paper, cloth and wax objects were formed with and within the artist’s hands. As the softened wax cooled, her gestures were captured. Through these encounters, of touch, holding, shaping and enveloping, there remains a presence – the traces and residues of the other.
