On Collage

I wanted to press this, so asked them about Alison Pullen's work. Rather than books, Pullen uses magazines. For some reason this was absolutely fine with them. I began lightly defending it by explaining some aspects of Pullen's style that I think are effective and successful. This was dismissed fairly quickly. I don't think many people walk into a random gallery on a Sunday afternoon to have their tightly held opinions challenged. The part that really caught my attention was that magazines are fine to slice into ribbons, but books aren't. Why? Is a magazine less important than a book? I assume the answer is usually yes, but why? Is it the amount of time and effort? Is it the price? The size? The page count? The fact that someone, one hopes, poured their life and soul into putting this together? Well, Alison Stockmarr did that, too.

That got me thinking. About collage as a medium itself. It's been around for a while by now, and all these conversations have been had before. But here's my experience with it.

Painters paint. Sculptors sculpt. Artists use mediums to convey shape, form, idea, colour, anything they want to. They need a way to manifest it physically, otherwise it's just philosophy. Or politics. I'd argue Art is always both, but that's yet another article. As an artist, you need a platform, a medium. Maybe it's acrylic on canvas. Maybe it's coffee and paper plates. Maybe it's 18mm birch ply I stole from B&Q. Maybe it's books. These are all processes of transformation. Taking something that was one way, doing something to it, and making it do something else, say something else. I think collage, and specifically Alison Stockmarr's style, fit perfectly into the list of ways to change things to make them say something. 

It may seem destructive, cutting 50-odd squares out of a book and jamming in a bunch of pictures and letters that you've cut out of other books, but in this case, destruction is creation. There is something spectacular about taking some ephemera, some lexicology or semiology from one place, one context, and removing it from that context, then forging a new one with nothing but intention, scissors, and a pritt stick. To me, personally, this has the potential to be so much more interesting than paint. 

Let's move away from Alison Stockmarr for a moment and invent an artist. They collage. They use images from newspapers. Their work features a sentence, it's politically cheeky, but still non-threatening. Indirect. The sort of thing that'd pair well with a cheeky drink at lunch. There's an image of a person on there, like they're saying the quote. IF - and no one's expecting this of you - IF you were to explore this made up artist - find the source of the quote, find where the image is from, you'd be able to learn a little something about the artist. Turns out the image is from the daily mail. Turns out they're a regular reader. Turns out they really enjoy what the daily mail has to say - yeah, they're just telling it like it is. You'd continue to learn more and more about this artist and realise after a while that all their work is influenced by this political lean. Turns out they think a certain former writer has a point and really is just advocating for safety. Then you think hey **** the daily mail, **** that former writer and, yknow - kinda **** this artwork, too.

Collage has the potential to offer so much more insight and depth and opportunity for exploration than many other mediums. Most of the time it won't be anywhere near the above totally made up and totally not real example. But it'll still be informative. Why does Alison Pullen use London Interior magazine to create images of, mostly, London interior scenes? Why did Picasso use that headline in Guitar, Sheet Music, and Glass? What can this decision tell us about him? Who he was then, what was happening, what he thought about it, how and why he acted in the ways he did, and to what end?

In short, sure - chop up that book. Who was going to read it? They still can. Now they can also read this artwork, if they can just get past that initial reaction. Sure, it's an act of destruction. So was Stone Henge. Doesn't make it a bad thing.