Cardwell + McLachlan

Stuart McLachlan hand-cuts white paper animals and architectures—moon gates, bamboo scaffolds, velvet-rope barriers—then stages them inside living dioramas. Simon Cardwell photographs these sets at cinematic scale, translating fragile paper into luminous, believable world-building. The result is a double register of seeing: up close, the works are clearly constructed; at a distance, they read like documentary scenes from a future we still might choose.

Through cutting, building and forming paper the artists searches for ways to reflect alternate narratives to issues that compound humanity. All aspects of the tiny sculptures are created by hand – from the drawing of concepts to the cutting, gluing and eventual building – everything is considered. Painstaking care is taken to create these stories, to draw the viewer into an alternate world.

Their final photographic scenes create a sense of awe, exploring identity, in the context of environmental concerns, human freedoms and isolation.