COLLAGE: ‘ Material Thinking’

COLLAGE: ‘ Material Thinking’

BRIEF: From the resource material supplied students are to collect approximately 20 separate images and complete a series of three collage works. The images can be very deliberately cut with scissors or stencil blade or simply torn from the pages of the resource material. Be conscious of engaging with a variety of images and don’t stick to one resource for your collection. The style of images may be figurative or purely abstract surfaces. The decision to cut or to tearand how that action is juxtaposed with other edges becomesa fundamental part of the overall feel to your piece. At some point the introduction of another medium may also be considered.

Essentially these works will rely upon the most basic intuitive response from students. Without a specific concept or narrative you have full creative license over the associations you set in place. Once you have gathered a selection of images asuggested starting point is to spread them out in front of you and begin playing with possible associations. Take time to allow images and shapes to suggest how they might come together butjust as crucially be aware of what needs to bediscarded.

Through the collision of disparate images and surfacesthe process of collage continually swings between opposing realms of experience, from the permanent to the fragmented, the structured to the chaotic. How collage artists navigate their response within these realms often relies on the juxtaposition of images or surfaces that instil the work with unexpected meanings and associations. These out of the blue interplays often come from an instinctive response towards the fundamental elements of line, shape, value, texture, and colour.

For this initial collage exercise you will not be given any guidelines in terms of the ‘aboutness’ of your series of works but simply encouraged to recognise your most innate intuitive response in the collecting of random and disparate images.