Melbourne in Origami

The case of the folded paper-trail

One would think that an art-writing class would mean you writer better – or at least differently – about art. And that assumption is not wrong. But you write better, not necessarily because of any drastic improvement in your writing, but because your ability to notice things drastically shifts.

You stop. You see things. You pay attention. You watch. You listen.

You draw connections.

The art hasn’t changed. Nor has the writing.

You have changed.

And when I undertook my recent art-writing class, I noticed this shift. Murals I had never given a moments glance had me pausing on the sidewalk to get a closer look. Random objects took on new shapes, new meanings.

Street-side artworks became not just another object on the street to dodge, but an image to question and explore. I started noticing a bunch of little artworks spread around the place. Artworks I’d never seen before.

The ones that interested me the most, however, were the origami shapes that I found littered around, almost in many cases as an afterthought.

The first I encountered was a paper crane.

Folded from some sort of poster or flyer. Just left on a random card access post. Around the uni.

But when I photographed it, it didn’t look nearly so good as it did to my naked eye. The post was dirty and the background unappealing.

This was not an artwork.

I didn’t want to move it. That seemed to break the nature of this “found” artwork, to make it less than what it was when I discovered it…

But some creative re-angling did the trick:

I didn’t move the crane, but with the right colours around it, in the right angle, it began to be an artwork.

I have no clue who crafted it, who positioned it there, right outside the door of the Bowen Street press. I don’t know its story or its background. I can’t even remember what was on the piece of paper. That wasn’t the point. Someone had left it there for me to find and I found it.

A few weeks later, hurrying through the busy university thoroughfares, I spotted a second piece of origami art, just lying on the ground.

Unfortunately this time I would have been run over by pedestrians had I stopped for too long to get a better angle, so I was forced to leave without a ‘truly artistic’ picture, but it was nonetheless intriguing.

Who left this here? Was it folded by someone wanting to make an artwork? Refugee rights printed on a paper boat has a certain symbolism to it. Or was it merely done by someone who was bored. Someone with idle fingers and a piece of unwanted paper to fold and discard.

I’d like to think of it as one in a series of origami pieces, left around the university, just for me to find.

I am reminded of my childhood visions of being a detective sleuthing around with a magnifying glass for clues. This one would be ‘The case of the origami bread-trail’ or perhaps ‘The case of the folded paper-trail’. Something of that sort.

Perhaps these two artworks were left by the same person. How many others did they leave that I didn’t find? Who did they leave them for?

I will never have the answers to these questions, but it did get me thinking. What would it be like to do a series of origami artworks. Use ‘found’ or somehow relevant papers in a series of paper cranes. A piece of music on a piano. A book page in the library, a menu in a restaurant. The opportunities are endless.

And I never tried any of them…

…or so I thought.

But the idea must have influenced me more than I thought, because for another class, there was the opportunity to do a creative assignment that engaged with the landscape in some sort of ‘phsychogeography’. The particulars are irrelevant, but the mode of creative expression … artwork I used was a series of origami flowers. Hand drawn, illustrated papers, folded into a bouquet, to represent my time in this place.

I only realised when I went to frame a photo of the completed work, that I had been following my vision, in a way.

Melbourne in origami.

I am eager to extend and transform this project. It feels like a project that could last a lifetime, a sort of journal or visual diary. A collage of life’s great events.

The opportunities are endless, if I only have the dedication to follow them.

Perhaps I shall call this collection “the case of the folded paper trail” who knows. But I think it must be begun, not matter what its name.