New Work In Progress
Toys and Blocks explores the moral lessons imparted in childhood through skill-based games and creative play, as seen from an experienced adult perspective. Cunningham combines photogravure with chine collé to create elegant and playful presentations of these familiar game objects, exploring themes of chance, consequences, and resilience represented in her fallen dominoes, broken crayons, and tangled pick-up sticks.
Cunningham examines tropes of interpersonal relationship conflict as represented by various arrangements of black and white square blocks. The composition of these simple forms evokes emotional distance, a geometric metaphor for how people shift, change and sometimes grow apart. The series’ trite titles add comic relief and remind how relationship cliches that permeate our culture bely the need to simplify complicated emotional dynamics in love, family, and friendship.
This is an ongoing series.