Roy Voss: All the World’s a Sunny Day

About

A single word can be powerful; it could make your day, it could break your heart.

A series of collages made by cutting a word from the back of a found postcard and inserting it into the image on the front. The multivalent words always conflate with the postcard’s image and in describing something of it, characterise an emotional state. Seen in series, the artworks form short open narratives.

Most of the cards were posted between the early 1960s and the mid 1980s. Many of the photographic images allude to paintings through imitating classical compositions; others are more prosaic, but contain delightful details and idiosyncrasies that are exaggerated by the printing technologies, embellished colours and deep shadows.

Sent through a sense of duty, but with love and a need to communicate and share, the mass-produced cards are now out of date and out of time. In an age of super-speed microchip communication, there is something melancholic about the brief, blue biro messages. There is also tenderness and an attempt at intimacy; a postcard is both intensely personal and private, but available for any number of people to look at and read.

All the World’s a Sunny Day is generously supported by Arts Council England.