Horrorgami: Evil Houses In Paper
Marc Hagan-Guirey makes houses out of paper. The technique he uses is kirigami, a version of origami that involves the cutting of paper. You know in school when you folded up paper and cut patterns and opened it up to reveal a symmetrical snowflake? That's kirigami.
What Hagan-Guirey does is a little more complex, and his latest project - which will be on display in London's Gallery One-And-A-Half starting November 1st - is to create kirigami versions of famous houses from horror movies. He's calling it horrorgami.
Quite early on, I knew the best way to display the buildings was to use light boxes. The models themselves have a dual personality. In daylight they are at their most innocent: you can see exactly how the piece has been engineered and crafted, but at night when backlit, the model takes on a new character. Theatrical silhouettes bring the kirigami to life and the imagination takes over, filling in the blanks and embellishing the model with details remembered from the film. I liken this to the effect of watching a horror movie during the day as opposed the much more fearful experience of watching it a night. Horror films of the ‘70s and ‘80s are in a completely different class to those of today. At the mere mention of films such as The Shining and The Exorcist I’m always blown away by the reaction I get from people and their personal experiences of watching them. They almost have a “Where were you when” feel to them. This is why I think people have such strong reactions to Horrorgami and for me why they’re such a joy to make.
The collection thus far is incomplete, but it contains some great houses - The Amityville Horror house, above, and the house from The Exorcist and the Overlook Hotel from The Shining - with more on the way. You can visit his site right here to follow along as he unveils each house (the Psycho house is next!), and if you're in London the show will run two weeks, a perfect cure for your Halloween withdrawls.
