irja syvertsen

Since the prac­ti­ce of see­king out, selec­ting, and reas­sem­bling pre-exis­ting ima­gery into new and dif­fe­rent con­stel­la­ti­ons of ele­ments has always been the engi­ne at the core of my work, I am –per­haps more than any­thing– an ima­ge sca­ven­ger. This is the case no mat­ter what medi­um the work wants to be made in, all of it is a type of col­la­ge: a way of reor­de­ring, of regrou­ping, of lin­king together (pos­si­bly dia­me­tri­cally oppo­sed) fea­tu­res of a cha­o­tic world.
Often the­se con­stel­la­ti­ons clus­ter, like star debris, into recog­ni­za­ble pat­terns of simi­lar ima­gery and, from this remix, path­ways are cre­a­ted from which new and unpre­me­di­ta­ted work can devel­op. Underpinning this pro­cess is the con­sis­tent cre­a­ti­on of tra­di­ti­o­nal paper col­la­ges: this has devel­o­ped into a form of trai­ning for mus­cle memo­ry, as well as a mode of thin­king, dis­co­ve­ring, stu­dying, and under­stan­ding – it is the fun­da­men­tal fuel on which the prac­ti­ce runs.