1 Day project - Collage
collage
ˈkɒlɑːʒ,kəˈlɑːʒ/
noun: collage; plural noun: collages
a piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric on to a backing.
the art of making collages.
a collection or combination of various things.
"a collage of musical genres"
Origin
early 20th century: from French, literally ‘gluing’.
- Google definitions
I used to think "collage" was a very simple technique of sticking two or more "things" (items) together. Today's one day project challenged this notion and made us think about the vocabulary of the art-world and how it is often interchangeable and fluid depending on context and the intentions of the artist, or interpretations made by the audience. A lot of vocabulary used to describe or discuss art has a lot of historical background and associations that lead people to one specific idea, however this can often be easily opened up when creating/viewing a piece of art work. For example:
After the first few 'tasks' to create collages in varying time periods we discussed what makes a "collage". I asked whether a group of people all tangled and connected together could be classed as a "collage", or whether is would be a sculptural piece or even a performance piece. We decided that actually it could be defined as either one of these words, or probably number of others depending on both my intentions and how it was viewed by others.
When I think of the word "glue" I think of something that binds one or more "things" together. This could be thought of in a mental sense rather than physical (as with the above example) or it could be taken more literally but in a different way for example to bind two people together using rope - this could develop into a piece of suspension, performance work but looking at the process of this idea it started out as a collage - could the end piece still be classed as a collage?
Today we live in a very "cut and paste" sort of world where it comes naturally for us to take text from the internet and incorporate it into our own work "collaging" our words with those written by someone else. We have also come to recognise a lot of music to be more pleasing if it is a "collage" of different tracks or instruments not all recorded at the same time but merged together in the post-processing stages. A lot of digital photography is also manipulated to create a "collage" that is sometimes seamless, and other times very noticeable.
Below are examples of the "collages" I created - the first one being a 1 minute collage, the second a 2 minute collage and the third a 15 minute collage (click to enlarge):
The 1 minute collage I quite liked, but I feel it was more just down to chance that I saw an interesting piece of text - there wasn't much conscious thought behind it. For the second piece, I built on top of the original collage, developing my original piece into a more 3-dimensional and more complex piece. For the 15 minute collage I tried to still stay away from putting too much concious thought into it and looked at creating a different (long) oerall shape with a lot of colour and images that just appealed to my nature.
I don't feel any of them have a particularly strong message, especially when compared to other people's work. I found a lot of people had very strong political messages where as mine didn't really challenge much. Then again I am not someone who takes a lot of interest in politics and am more interested in art as a form of self exploration and expression.
Below are works from other people in my group. These are just a selection that I found particularly interesting for one reason or another (click to enlarge/see individual comments):
Below are a few notes I took during a post-workshop discussion with a list of artists I would like to research further if/when I next look at collage:
