Whilst living in Sydney, I made these three masks for Dazzle exhibition at the National Theatre, Christmas 2005. The production at the time was an adaptation of Phillip Pullmans’ trilogy, ‘His Dark Materials’, one of my favourite stories. I jumped at the chance of taking part especially as they could be made in any material. Within the limitations imposed by my budget and location I had to make them light and easy to post. They are based on characters in the story; Iorek the armoured bear, Mrs Coulters’ golden monkey and Lord Asriels’ snow leopard. Each one is a single piece of paper that is carefully cut, folded and fixed to create a three dimensional mask. Fitting them to a human head whilst making them recognisable as animals proved more challenging than I had anticipated and I actually made twenty or more of each one until I was happy with the shape.
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