JANE PERKINS
Jane describes herself as a ‘re-maker’, taking inspiration from found objects and working them into something new. She says “I love art with an element of fun and the unexpected. I hope my work will make you smile.”
Jane graduated in textiles in 2006, focussing in the final year on using recycled materials. For her degree show, she made brooches from small toys and broken jewellery. Larger works followed with her first portrait – The Queen – in 2008. Jane uses random small objects: plastic toys, shells, beads, buttons etc. No colour is added – they are exactly ‘as found’.
Her work needs to be viewed in two ways: from a distance (to recognize the whole image) and close-up (to identify the materials.) Since 2010 Jane’s work has sold world-wide in galleries, art fairs and by commission. In 2023, she was commissioned by TIME magazine to create a portrait of Taylor Swift to mark her award as TIME Person of the Year.
Having been inspired by Bowerbirds for many years, Jane had the idea to create a human-sized Bowerbird bower, collecting blue items from Powderham Castle as if she was the bird and the Castle was her territory. This idea, combined with a desire to collaborate artistically with Gillian, led to the seeds of an idea which grew into The Coolest Colour.
GILLIAN TAYLOR
Gillian is paper artist. She makes collections of tiny envelopes, using different kinds of papers including Japanese hand-printed papers, maps, books, music, old postcards and letters.
Her inspiration comes from a childhood fascination with insect collections in museum cases; her framed envelope collections reflect these. She is also interested in how we communicate, and how this has changed over the years. She has made larger installations of paper poppies created from copies of love letters written during WWII. Hints of messages of love from long ago are visible on the poppies. The installations have been exhibited at the Northcott Theatre, Exeter and in the Thelma Hulbert Gallery.
Gillian has started working with papier-mâché. A musician herself, she has created a paper cello inspired by the musical instruments in the decorative plasterwork on the Castle.
Gillian has been photographing the sky ever since the first lockdown. For this exhibition she has created a 'Sky window' using a selection of the images.
