Perspectives on Collage

About

As part of the Gallery's commitment to exploring photography's dynamic relationship with other media, previously seen in The Photographic Object (2009) exhibition and forthcoming Photography & Drawing (2014), Perspectives on Collage offers eight individual approaches to the subject of collage. From artists using techniques to explore the conceptual limits of the photograph, to those working within a tradition of political and cultural critique, this show aims to highlight the enduring relevance of collage across a range of creative practices.

Jan Svoboda's photographs provide the exhibition with a historical starting point. These include Fragment of a Table (1973), which represents a formative period in the artist's exploration of the photographic plane using torn-up and folded remnants of his own works in simple arrangements.

Peggy Franck creates assemblages from everyday materials in her studio that are photographed and re-presented as ambiguous two-dimensional images. For this exhibition Disliking my own self-control (2007), a photograph depicting an arrangement of tape, paper, reflections and drawing will be shown in tandem with a newly commissioned site-specific floor sculpture.

Nicole Wermers' collages borrow motifs from the worlds of design, fashion, advertising and architecture magazines. Her works rearrange their source material into semi-modernist abstractions while retaining a sense of their original commercial allure. In works such as Untitled (Thread Grid / Metal Grid) (2009) the artist has created an abstract composition from details of designer metalwork.

Batia Suter will present Wave (2012)a floor piece comprised of a selection of overlapping books featuring photographic illustrations of waves. The books form the sculptural structure of the work while the images on the pages correspond with each other into a poetic narrative where applied photography and art mix together.

Anna Parkina works in sculpture, painting, photography and performance. Her collages re-appropriate her own photographs into densely layered compositions while echoing the Russian avant-garde, Seventies punk and the cinematic. Among a selection of her images due to go on display is Untitled 10 (2011), a piece depicting Parkina's deconstructed figure, standing against a replicated background, holding a camera.

C.K. Rajan's collage series Mild Terrors (1992-96) juxtaposes newspaper images of man-made landscapes or buildings overlaid with close-up details of glamorous magazine images. Delicate but politically charged, the series responds to the surreal, social and cultural contradictions of economic modernisation.

Roy Arden's tactile collages cast an analytical eye on history while exploring psychological and political themes with individual and collective memory. The exhibition will feature nine works by Arden including Sweeper (2009) in which the figure of a man sweeping the ground throws up a cloud of coloured papers and photographic fragments. Pieced together using scraps from the artist's studio floor, Sweeper plays with a tension between illusion and material surface.

Clunie Reid will showcase kitsch internet icons printed on photo paper collaged alongside loose marker pen drawings, stickers and text. Borrowing from advertising, the Internet and other mainstream media, her work throws today's visual culture into sharp critical light.