Isabella Widger
Barn [2022]
Digital print on archival paper.
Wood frame.
Edition of 3
Dimensions inc frame: 60 x 83 cm
Price: £600
Notes
Isabella Widger made this multiple for the launch in February 2022 of BEET RED, a book containing a selection of her drawings and poetry.
The work derives from a background detail in one of the drawings in the book – a barn-like structure. Widger made a model of this building out wood and straw, re-imagining her original drawing in three dimensions, and then photographed it to create the print.
The image cleverly plays with manipulations of scale – original drawing, model, photograph – and it echoes the theme of storytelling that is central to Widger’s drawings, which often employ imagery suggestive of folklore and fairy-tale. Widger’s barn stands witness to the narratives in her drawings. It is also a place in which people might gather to hear stories – a receptacle for collective memories as well as goods or provisions. She sees it as emblematic and, although the structure has no specific source, it would not be out of place in either the forests of eastern Europe or the prairies of the American mid-west.