Biography
Gunjan Aylawadi is an Industrial designer and a self taught artist. She was born in India and currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia.
Placed between an exploration of memory, materials and meditative sensory pleasures, Aylawadi draws inspiration from repetitive geometric patterns and relief work found within arabesque art & architecture that she grew up around in India. Influenced by her education in the sciences and design, Aylawadi’s work is textural, pure and distinct. She takes her memories of the vibrant collage of the rich cultural environment in India and processes it through a filter of modern design and aesthetic. Her work, geometric in its formal language, is an abstraction of those visuals of wonder and tactile memories of handmade objects of her growing up years.
In their current form, her works are meticulous paper weavings where paper is both material and colour. Aylawadi uses geometry and the tension in curled paper strips to create relief works that rise up from the surface and reveal their richness to the viewers as they come closer and move around them. You will see textural bands of deep contrasting colours that represent a remembrance of the rituals, ceremonies, smells experienced in a specific place or moment in time. With a unique technique born out of a longing to touch & feel her medium and to slow down in a fast paced world, Aylawadi's works articulate the her desire to draw out meaning from mayhem.
Since 2013 Aylawadi has been a part of several group exhibitions and art events like the Paper Art Biennale in Netherlands 2015 and Sydney Contemporary 2015. She has been a finalist for several prestigious art awards and been highly commended for her work at the Woollahara Small Sculpture Prize 2014 and the Alice Springs Art Prize 2014.
“Tour de force” by an artist “with a passion for the qualities of paper”, very successfully drawing on historical imagery and refiguring it, a difficult challenge. - Dr. Michael Brand, Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales
Alice Springs Art Prize 2014 / Highly Commended”
