The book left on a train, the memory of her, the smell of home, the road you didn’t know you were meant to take, the cave in the hillside only you know about. These are the lost and found. Poetic postcards in steel and found objects ponder the lost and found in new works by Alex Scheibner and Katy-May Maurice.
Alex Scheibner’s work explores ideas of home and one’s place in the landscape through repetition of the arch motif, that is both hill and valley and the delineation of the interior exterior divide. Whether an ecological, psychological or an architectural reference these sweeping curves combine with weighty nuggets, either fabricated or found, charging the negative spaces with a forceful presence. Fabricated in mild steel and Corten steel, Scheibner’s works range from petite to large scale outdoor sculptures. Book covers, the guardians of tales, keepers of knowledge, have their own private stories to tell. Objects held by countless hands unknowable times; they have had a relationship with the outside world in a way their interior tales could never. If they could talk how would their stories intertwine with those in their employ.
Katy-May Maurice has been working with found objects and in particular an extensive collection of book covers for nearly two decades. Part collage part drawing, these mixed media works have an intimate scale appropriate to the relationship one has with a book however in some instances they stretch to larger ‘Gascoigne-esque’ works. Scheibner and Maurice share both a home and a studio and the relationship between their independent art practices is clear.
