PAPER DOLL

Jacqui Stockdale - Paper Doll Nur Shkembi

For this series of work Jacqui Stockdale delves deep into her archive, which spans almost two decades, to bring together a selection of original photographs, world art texts and black and white photocopies. Paper Doll awakens a sense of nostalgia and familiarity, both of which are longstanding features of her work. Stockdale often invokes historical narratives which are wrung through personal experience and the imaginary present to create striking visual imagery which evoke unique yet somehow familiar characters. For Paper Doll, Stockdale draws on her distinctive image making practice to generate a tension between the visual material and process, imparting both a sense of timelessness and urgency as well as curiosity, sensuality and childlike joy.

The title for the body of work was chosen through Stockdale’s usual method of ‘random’ selection, Paper Doll is serendipitous and is just as its title alludes; it is the act of play, of making, and of creating in response to the moment, a person, a conversation with the process of ‘collaging’ images being as much about intuition and chance, as it is about her immaculately trained eye for composition and aesthetic. She has created a parade of characters, a sublime combination of pastiche seventies paper dolls described as being “reminiscent of the images in Cole's Funny Picture Book” which are coupled with the fervor of her imagination. Paper Doll is as much about the fantastical, the erotic, the everyday and the mundane as it is about truth, mythology and metaphor; it is possibility shown through the bringing together of fragments and of reimagining the impossible. The collages exude a feminine mystique, sexual ambiguity, joy, humour and play whilst documenting past and present with imagery that is both enigmatic and avowed, something which Stockdale has expressed as being “all possible within the body of one person” and of “human entanglement and potential”. She has spoken of the work as “defiant female deities or icons” as well as a self-portrait, as seen in the works Madonna Son, from The Madonna Suite. The body of work also includes Venus, a wallpaper work named after the goddess of desire and conflict, and the planet Venus which she describes as a type of duality which emanates a formidable sexuality.

Citing influences such as the surrealism of Leonora Carrington and Sally Smart, Stockdale describes not just the artwork itself, rather the entire process as a collage. Each work extends beyond the archive and is years in the making - the images are created, collected, carried, cut, displaced and reconvened through a collision of experiences and ideas, happenings and chance to be finally completed through an interaction between Stockdale and one of her muses. She explains the process as collaborative and inspired - shifting the cut-ups around the paper whilst in conversation on the phone, whilst in the presence of a friend, or when thinking of someone and drawing on their presence to collate, rearrange and reimagine an image until it “feels like it them”.

Stockdale describes the importance of the origins of the materials as well as the physicality of cutting, arranging and pasting in lieu of the more common medium of digital manipulation, “I've tried to make cut-ups using digital technologies, but I keep going back to scissors where I have more control, plus I like to use my hands, I like textures, each piece is a snowflake of a talisman.”

She speaks of the importance of showing that her “hand has been there”, with each original piece of art deconstructed and reinvented through a deeply personal and meditative process, “I start thinking and then comes the great cloud of self-censorship, editing, doubt, fear and reconstruction, my aim is to pull through to the other side until I can live with an image and be able to share it.

Is this not the process of storytelling?”

At a time when artists are reclaiming the artform of collage, Stockdale’s work is a potent addition and reminder of the importance of malleability of medium in contemporary art and in the processes of storytelling. Paper Doll is a timely body of work which presents a unique and striking synthesis of both truth and fantasy.

Jacqui Stockdale 'I' of the Beholder, 2022 Edition of 9 + 2 AP Inkjet print on archival paper 130 x 110 cm #32087 $5,950 unframed, 6,800 framed

63 Jersey Road Woollahra NSW 2025 T: +61 2 9327 3922 F: +61 2 9327 3944 ABN 38 088 015 730 E: info@olsengallery.com W: www.olsengallery.com

Jacqui Stockdale Madonna Hawke, 2022 Collage elements on Lanaquarelle 76 x 56 cm #32096 $4,000 framed

63 Jersey Road Woollahra NSW 2025 T: +61 2 9327 3922 F: +61 2 9327 3944 ABN 38 088 015 730 E: info@olsengallery.com W: www.olsengallery.com

Jacqui Stockdale Madonna Non, 2022 Collage elements on Lanaquarelle paper 76 x 56 cm #32097 $4,000 framed

63 Jersey Road Woollahra NSW 2025 T: +61 2 9327 3922 F: +61 2 9327 3944 ABN 38 088 015 730 E: info@olsengallery.com W: www.olsengallery.com

Jacqui Stockdale Madonna Triste, 2022 Collage elements on Lanaquarelle paper 76 x 56 cm #32098 $4,000 framed

63 Jersey Road Woollahra NSW 2025 T: +61 2 9327 3922 F: +61 2 9327 3944 ABN 38 088 015 730 E: info@olsengallery.com W: www.olsengallery.com

Jacqui Stockdale Madonna Joy, 2022 Collage elements on Lanaquarelle paper 76 x 56 cm #32099 $4,000 framed

63 Jersey Road Woollahra NSW 2025 T: +61 2 9327 3922 F: +61 2 9327 3944 ABN 38 088 015 730 E: info@olsengallery.com W: www.olsengallery.com

Jacqui Stockdale Madonna Son, 2022 Collage elements on Lanaquarelle paper 76 x 56 cm #32100 $4,000 framed

63 Jersey Road Woollahra NSW 2025 T: +61 2 9327 3922 F: +61 2 9327 3944 ABN 38 088 015 730 E: info@olsengallery.com W: www.olsengallery.com

Jacqui Stockdale Madonna Oishi, 2022 Collage elements on Lanaquarelle paper 76 x 56 cm #32101 $4,000 framed

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Jacqui Stockdale Two faced (Fool), 2019-2022 Collage elements on Lanaquarelle 32 x 22.5 cm #32080 $2,000 framed

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Jacqui Stockdale Two faced (They), 2019-2022 Collage elements on Lanaquarelle 32 x 22 cm #32081 $2,000 framed

63 Jersey Road Woollahra NSW 2025 T: +61 2 9327 3922 F: +61 2 9327 3944 ABN 38 088 015 730 E: info@olsengallery.com W: www.olsengallery.com

Jacqui Stockdale Two faced (Infantacide), 2019-2022 Collage elements on Lanaquarelle 33 x 23 cm #32082 $2,000 framed

63 Jersey Road Woollahra NSW 2025 T: +61 2 9327 3922 F: +61 2 9327 3944 ABN 38 088 015 730 E: info@olsengallery.com W: www.olsengallery.com

Jacqui Stockdale Be Nimble, 2019-2022 Collage elements on Lanaquarelle 35 x 25.5 cm #32083 $2,000 framed

63 Jersey Road Woollahra NSW 2025 T: +61 2 9327 3922 F: +61 2 9327 3944 ABN 38 088 015 730 E: info@olsengallery.com W: www.olsengallery.com

Jacqui Stockdale Seasick Cradle, 2019-2022 Collage elements on Lanaquarelle 35 x 25.5 cm #32084 $2,000 framed

63 Jersey Road Woollahra NSW 2025 T: +61 2 9327 3922 F: +61 2 9327 3944 ABN 38 088 015 730 E: info@olsengallery.com W: www.olsengallery.com

Jacqui Stockdale The Vanishing, 2019-2022 Collage elements on Lanaquarelle 35 x 25.5 cm #32085 $2,000 framed

63 Jersey Road Woollahra NSW 2025 T: +61 2 9327 3922 F: +61 2 9327 3944 ABN 38 088 015 730 E: info@olsengallery.com W: www.olsengallery.com

Jacqui Stockdale Two Sisters , 2019-2022 paper elements on archival paper 51 x 37 cm #32102 $2,000 framed

63 Jersey Road Woollahra NSW 2025 T: +61 2 9327 3922 F: +61 2 9327 3944 ABN 38 088 015 730 E: info@olsengallery.com W: www.olsengallery.com