Words are Inadequate: All Cut Up

To go with a fairly fractured state of mind and a personal history of hours spent creating moodboards (that’s textiles for you), more and more often I’m drawn to collage as a form of art.

I’ve always been fascinated by colour and texture. I was that child who couldn’t stop feeling/breaking things, so much so my parents implemented strict no touch policy in shops, which if anything acted as encouragement. Yeah, yeah I was subversive from an early age, I know. This preoccupation is far from dormant.

So maybe this is why I enjoy the juxtaposition of media fundamental to collage. Not only does it usually offer a veritable explosion of hues but also an opportunity to contrast material.

Ben Giles

Bryan Olsen - Slice of Life

Bryan Olsen - Land of Degaussed Souls

That isn’t to say collage intrinsically lacks subtlety. The works of Peter Yumi provide a master class in sensitivity, his black and white pieces stand out for me as a result of their understatement.

Peter Yumi - James Dean

It seems that, although collage is transforming from peripheral to focal for me, in their own way great, established artists like Picasso and the cubists in general create effects similar to collage, with their broken and reassembled objects. Thinking about it Surrealism and Dadaism also capture this smashed up quality providing a precursor to modern collage.

With all movements beginning in the early 20^th century, Surrealism emerging from Dadaism, which coexisted with cubism, it’s possible to see their fractured works as a strong reaction contrary to the war emerging from a capitalist, colonial and ordered society. Tristan Tzara, leader of the Dada movement emphasized collage was anti-art, appropriate for a society which was undeserving of art’s beauty. For him the college was the destruction not the creation of works.

Or maybe collage can be seen as a developing innovation that reflected a need to match the technological advancements of the era. With photography growing in popularity and technicality other artistic forms were encouraged to flourish too.