Elise Love-McCorkle

“The woodcuts that make up Elise Carlton’s series ‘Court’ were created using offcuts from another work. The artist describes them as material and emotional negatives. Like photographic negatives, they have a kind of opacity, they point beyond themselves and make you wonder about the image that they could potentially reveal. And they’re visually intriguing in their own right. The marks and forms are both simple and inscrutable. They include everyday details, such as a toothbrush, and abstract shapes that look like broken maps of unknown cities. The artist describes the work as dealing with non-linear narratives and themes of identity and historical amnesia, and the blend of the everyday and the abstract evokes personal and social archeologies, about ways to unearth the unsaid and unsayable, by arranging and re-arranging its fragments. This is why I loved this work: its visual power in the use of leftover materials and the space it opens up to reflect on the potential of the leftovers of our lives.”

– Alia Zapparova, Art Editor of SAND Journal

Developed in December 2021 while in residence at PADA in Barreiro, Portugal—exhibited during an open studio event at PADA in December 2021. Published in SAND Journal, Issue 24.