Lesley Hilling

My work explores two themes - the exterior, architectural layering of buildings and cities and the interior home space. Each with an emphasis on memory, collective and personal, the passage of time and how it impacts upon our lives. I build collages out of salvaged wood - floorboards, driftwood and furniture is re-worked into new forms - jigsawed and layered with an obsessive joinery. I create something new from objects that had a previously different life. My early work shows an interest in openings, compartments and drawers that can house tiny artifacts of memory - a photograph, a shell - a forgotten treasure. These works take the viewer on a journey. The work has to be interacted with - the opening of doors, the pulling out of drawers - an interplay between what is hidden, what is revealed and what is to be discovered. These pieces have a flat closed plane and openings, doors and drawers allow the viewer to see what is hidden behind. In my most recent work the closed plane has given way to a fretwork of wooden pieces built up in layers that allow glimpses of what lies inside. I imagine lifting the roofs off a row of terrace houses or a block of flats to see how people have transformed their homes and created meaning for themselves making completely personal, an identical space. In my more architectural pieces I make purely structural forms - instead of forgotten treasures secreted within there are layers of greying timber with eroded paint reminding us that people once used, worked and lived with this material.