CHAOS / containment
- Jul 1
- 2 min read
Last week, I posted about the exhibit where I found one of my own paste ups incorporated into a new artwork. 💚
I felt MEGA inspired. I’ve got boxes and boxes of magazines, books, newspapers and other random materials that I’ve been hoarding in my studio so it’s about time I dedicated a special space to collage ✂️
I find the process really cathartic - I don’t see it as work so I decided to move everything out of my work studio & into my living space. 🛋️
The problem was that I live in one room… and of COURSE the space needed to be aesthetic. The stacked plastic tubs wouldn’t do…time to get creative.
I am often wildly (🤪!) creative but I can’t function in chaos, or at least, I can’t start with it. I need systems. There’s a reason I got ‘CHAOS’ tattooed on one arm and ‘containment’ on the other.
Shelving seemed like a good place to start, so off to IKEA I went.
I bought two metal and glass open shelving units - I like to be able to see the things I find inspiring.
Fashion mag stories, sensationalist headlines, vintage newspapers.
Everything now has a category:
👄👁️Lips & Eyes
📝Words
🦠Textures
👯♀️People
and so on.
I also had some huge perspex sheets that I’d foraged for free a while ago, so I’ve used those as a backdrop. The top half is great for Blu Tack-ing scraps to.
When I’m leafing through in my manic, ripping chaos, certain things jump out at me. A phrase, a colour combo, a texture, a sentence so the stuck up references are like my physical Pinterest board.
main collage pictured by Cecil Touchon using CANCEL CANCEL CULTURE
So I can still work the same way - ripping, foraging, collecting and making connections. The difference is that now I have a space that works the same way I do. 💚
P.S. The scanner came out almost immediately and I started with my own arms… They wouldn’t fit in the ‘Body Parts’ box, so they ended up as the post cover instead. 😂
More on the scanning next week…
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