Typeset

'You couldn’t pin them down. It might seem as if they’d agreed to let you one day but by the next all sorts of conditions would appear. If only they would say what they mean.

Anna had always prided herself on being straightforward, to the point. Perhaps she should get it in writing, that might clarify matters.

She put her glasses back on – her favourites, with the rose tint- and settled back to reading the newspaper. Facts, she knew where she was with those.'

Already Read Series 3. Newspaper contained by reused fence panels.  2011.  

Tracey started working with paper to make a piece of work in response to the Gulf War. After discovering the versatility of paper, Tracey has made work using only newspaper since 2004.

Much of her work starts off in the form of newspaper ‘tree trunks’ or ‘prosthetic branches’ and stays outdoors for a number of months (the longest being in situ for 3 years) in order to weather.

In 2008 three newspaper ‘tree trunks’ made for the Folkestone Trienniel Fringe were set fire to in the Coastal Park. This began a 2 year experimental phase during which time Tracey tried various ways to draw with fire onto newspaper. The images on her latest work are drawn onto the paper using a blowtorch.

As newspaper comes from wood and is turned back to a wood like product through the tree trunks and ‘prosthetic limbs Tracey makes, so charcoal, that traditional drawing material, comes from burning wood.

Cycles of nature and cycles of life. Drawn from nature, newspaper is then drawn back into nature and some, drawn on by nature.

Newspaper tree trunks and prosthetic branches, share the stories they’ve been charged to keep. Stories both from the trees they come from and from the human world branded onto the newspaper.  As the rings on the trees offer information on the land over time, the pages of the newspaper are steeped in human history.  Information, truth, opinion, fact, lies, propaganda; fed through the thin pages for all to contribute to and all to feed on. History – the writing on the wall.

Reshaping the stories into new narratives in 2 dimensions, the wall mounted newspaper works seek to reference the trees before the newspaper, the stories of the newspaper and new words suggested by the worked newspaper. Each wall based piece comes with its own story.  Sometimes in these stories it’s not easy to see the wood for the trees.