Transmitter/Receiver: The Persistence of Collage
From the Arts Council Collection Exhibition

John Stezaker, Pair V, 2007, collage, Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London © the artist

This Arts Council Collection touring exhibition, Transmitter/Receiver, traces some of the uses of collage in British art from the first influences of the Parisian avant-garde, in the early work of Ben Nicholson and British Surrealists Eileen Agar and Roland Penrose, through to present day practitioners such as Steve Claydon, David Noonan and Idris Khan. It includes traditional collage on paper, alongside painting, sculpture, film and slide projections, all drawn from the Arts Council Collection.

Collage as a medium has existed and been used for centuries, whether as the assembly of materials to make artworks or the gathering of memorabilia or objects to form a scrapbook. As an art form it was made famous by the Cubist collages of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.  This exhibition covers British works from the1930s to the present day and explores how collage has arguably become the default medium of the twenty-first century – it is now commonplace to sample, appropriate, mix and match materials from across a vast range of media and assimilate these elements to articulate one’s own vision. The exhibition title comes from the words of the French critic Nicholas Bourriaud - we are no longer either passive receivers or authoritative cultural transmitters, but potentially both simultaneously.
Transmitter/Receiver shows the diversity of approaches and themes addressed by artists through the medium of collage, from the bold experimentation in breaking down the barriers of high art in the first half of the 20^th century, to the increasingly political critique of the commercial world by Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi in the 1950s & 1960s. In the 1970s, Feminist artists such as Linder used collage to rebel against the advertising industry’s casual commodification of the female image, while artists such as John Stezaker felt the need to jolt their viewers out of a passive acceptance of the relentless barrage of visual material. Recently artists such as Steven Claydon and Idris Khan have appropriated film techniques of cutting and splicing to create complex video collages.

Interior, made in 1964-1965, by Richard Hamilton, born 1922.

This artwork is a screenprint. Screenprinting is a method of printmaking where a stencil is made by selectively blocking parts of a fine mesh tightly stretched around a frame. Thick ink is pulled across the mesh with a squeegee, so that it passes through the unblocked areas on to the surface to be printed. A high level of detail can be achieved using this method and photographic images can be accurately reproduced through screenprinting.

‘Interior’ is set in a light brown wooden frame behind glass. It is in landscape format and measures approximately 50cms high by 64 cms wide, or 20 by 25 inches. The frame is approximately 74 cms high by 86 cms wide, or 29 by 34 inches. It is signed on the bottom right hand corner where the edition of the print is also written. This is the 7^th print in an edition of 57 prints.

The picture is of a domestic interior scene showing a study with a woman in the middle of the picture, looking at an early 20^th century writing table with books, stationary and book keeping equipment on it. All of the elements in the scene have been made up of images that were probably cut out from magazines and newspapers. These would have been assembled together in a collage before being made into a silkscreen for printing. The furnishings and décor in this scene suggest a fairly affluent, middle class home and the slim woman is wearing a fashionable dress tied at the waist and high heeled shoes. Her head is tipped towards us but her eyes are gazing sideways down at the table. She is looking at the table with a mixture of caution and surprise as she surveys some of the documents on it; perhaps this is a forbidden space. The table has been cropped in half and one chunky leg with a scroll pattern is visible. Most of the cut out furnishings are black and white, but some objects have been highlighted with red, blue or yellow ink. Hamilton has carefully assembled the sections and used perspective to create the impression of depth, extending the diagonal lines of the room in the background in pencil to show the corner of this interior scene.

The foreground of the picture is made up of sections of an upholstered lounge chair in the middle and rug and carpet sections as well as a more shadowy section on the right hand side where a chair has been placed beside tall windows with thick curtains. To the left of the woman, there is a television, highlighted with a yellow frame which is showing an American Football game. Behind her on a bookshelf, there is a vase with flowers and books that have also been highlighted in yellow.  In the background, there are framed pictures hanging on the wall, there is a partially obscured closed doorway to the left and an open doorway to the right of the image – leading into a dining room as you can see a dining chair and the corner of a dining table. There is an ornate mirror reflecting an image of a painting, parts of which have also been highlighted in yellow hanging between the two doorways.

Most of the picture is in black and white or sepia tones. There are blocked areas of yellow, red and blue which have been overprinted onto the black and white images. If the picture was split into 3 vertical sections, the middle and right hand thirds are mostly black and white except for some light green and red colouring in the rugs on the floor and small daubs of yellow on some flowers and books in the background. The left hand third is the most colourful section – the TV has a yellow frame and the floor section here is made up of two interlocking blocks of deep red and yellow. More flowers in vases are set against a pale blue and sepia background.

Richard Hamilton has embraced many different media throughout his career, including painting, printmaking, installation, typography and industrial design. He was a key member of the Independent Group, formed in the 1950s by a group of artists and writers including Eduardo Paolozzi at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. The Independent Group is widely regarded as the precursor to the Pop Art movement in Britain and the United States.
Hamilton has stated, "What I always say is: I do whatever I feel like. People don't seem to understand that an artist is free to do whatever he wants, and I've always relished that possibility.”

Haywain, Constable (1821), Cruise Missiles U.S.A (1981), made in 1983 by Peter Kennard, who was born in 1949. Photomontage.

Working mainly in the medium of photo montage, Kennard’s works are politically charged. By manipulating existing and often familiar imagery, he creates new and unsettling images that reflect his left wing political views on issues such as nuclear disarmament, the environment, poverty and war. Photomontage is the process of making an image by cutting and joining a number of different images together to create a new composite image.
This work is about 100cm tall by 150cm wide or 40 by 60 inches. It is a black and white photographic reproduction of a 19^th century painting, The Hay Wain by John Constable with a few alterations. The original oil painting by Constable is in the National Gallery and is one of the most famous English paintings. It was voted the second best painting in any British gallery in a 2005 poll of listeners to Radio 4’s Today programme.

Constable’s painting is of an idyllic English country landscape. It is based on a site on the Suffolk/ Essex border, near Flatford on the River Stour. In the painting, the river runs along the bottom quarter of the painting from left to right. On the left side of the painting on the river bank, in the middle of the left edge of the painting, is a cottage. There is a person doing some washing on the porch at the back of the cottage. There is a small dog on the left bank of the river looking towards the hay wain in the middle of the river, travelling away from the viewer. The hay wain is a horse drawn cart for transporting hay. Across the river, in the meadow in the distance on the right, is a group of haymakers at work.

Kennard has doctored Constable’s painting by superimposing cut outs of images of cruise missiles on the back of the hay wain. There are three missiles pointing up towards the sky. The driver of the hay wain has had a combat helmet cut and pasted onto his head. The child riding in the back of the hay wain, waving to the dog on the bank, has had a gas mask pasted over his head. This photomontage was meant to reflect Kennard’s concern about the effects of weapons proliferation on not only world peace but the peace of rural England. It serves as a commentary on how Suffolk in the 20^th century has seen the establishment of a number of American military bases that are armed with modern weapons and how that has affected the nature of the English countryside.

Kennard has said "The point of my work is to use easily accessible iconic images, but to render them unacceptable. To break down the image of the all-powerful missile...after breaking them, to show new possibilities emerging in the cracks and splintered fragments of the old reality."

Linder (born 1954), Untitled, 1981, Collage

This collage is approximately 30cm tall by 18 cm wide or 12” by 7”, slightly smaller than an A4 sheet of paper. It is surrounded by a white mount about 5cm or 2”wide and has a narrow black wooden frame.
This work is based on a photographic portrait of the artist taken by her friend, the photographer Christina Birrer. She made this collage as a gift. Linder made a black and white photocopy of the photograph and then altered it by adding cut out images from magazines and shopping catalogues. The head fills the centre of the top half of the picture. It is of a fashionable young woman with her hair pulled back from her face and parted in the middle with a few loose strands hanging down over her eyes. Her face is completely white and merges into the white background. Her eyebrows have been made up as thick black lines and her eyelashes are also heavily mascaraed. Linder has cut out a spoon and a fork from an Argos catalogue and pasted them on top of her eyes. The fork prongs appear to be poking into the left eye at a 45 degree diagonal angle, the handle of which extends to the left edge of the picture. The spoon is horizontal and covers most of the right eye, its handle extending beyond the right edge of the picture. The lips, cut out from a magazine, are bright red. They are in the centre of the picture and are the only vividly coloured element in the picture. They are luscious, glossed and slightly parted, revealing a glimpse of teeth, which are slightly yellow.

The bottom half of the picture is taken up by the shoulders of the artist. She is wearing a black blouse which has a black lace panelled section over the shoulders with a small frill on the edge of the neckline for the collar. The lace is fine and her skin shows through as pure white. The outline of her neck is lost into the background in places. Hanging from the base of the V-shape neckline of the blouse is a small key hanging on a cord. The overall impression, with the fork in her eye is alarming and shows how the addition of a few elements can change the subject and feel of an image.

Linder is the pseudonym for Linder Sterling, a British artist, musician and performer. She is known for her photomontages. Photomontage is the process of making an image by cutting and joining a number of other photographs to create a new image. Linder’s work shows obvious links to British Pop artists like Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi, who used images cut from pin-up magazines.

In an interview in 2010, Linder said, “I have always worked with found material—a photograph, a magazine, a film still, myself. I commence the creative act and I’m quite happily guilty of theft.”

Camilla Løw (b.1976), 7, 2004, Perspex, enamel and metal

This work is a sculptural installation made of Perspex, enamel and metal. It is composed of 7 thin sheets of Perspex which are skewered onto a thin 2.4m or 8 foot high grey metal pole. The Perspex panels are rectangular in shape and of varying sizes and are fixed roughly 1.8 to 2 m or 6 or 7 feet up the pole. Each panel has a hole which the pole passes through – the holes are off-centre which makes the Perspex sheets slant at different angles. The whole sculpture is precariously poised, leaning against the gallery wall.

The panels are placed close together, making it quite difficult to establish how many there are at first glance, and they are quite thin, around 5mm or 3/16^th of an inch. The pole stands directly on the floor and slants vertically up against the wall with the corners of 2 or 3 of the panels touching the gallery wall.

The larger sheets are placed in the centre of the stack and reduce in size above and below. The overall effect is quite haphazard, there seems to be no rhythm to the way the sheets are placed and slanted.
The panels are painted with white, green, yellow or black enamel paint in trapezoid and triangular shaped blocks. As well as the painted shapes there are also clear, unpainted sections. From afar the overall pattern of the panels appears to be set, but when close up, the layered, slanted effect of the panels gives a splintered, fragmented and random effect.

Born in Oslo, Norway, Camilla Løw studied at Glasgow School of Art. Her works lean, suspend, float, dangle or stack. They have an industrial or minimalist tendency and are influenced by Scandinavian design and Russian Constructivism. Løw states, that her works “investigate what might be seen as traditional sculptural or architectonic concerns with form, space, rhythm, tension, balance and the properties of materials.”Chris Ofili (born 1968), Popcorn Shells, 1995, Paper collage, polyester resin, map pins and elephant dung on linen

‘Popcorn Shells’ is part of a series of paintings by Chris Ofili that feature the heroes of jazz, hip hop, rap and black popular culture, combining them with decorative African art motifs. This work is made up of a large canvas approximately 170cm tall by 70cm wide or 5’6’’ by 2’3’’ that rests on two grapefruit sized balls of elephant dung that are close to the bottom left and right corners of the canvas. There are four slightly larger coconut sized balls of dung attached to the canvas. The canvas has cut out photographs of heads of black musicians and actors such as Stevie Wonder and Samuel L Jackson. There are 18 main heads which are placed randomly around the canvas. For example, a wreath of small heads surround a larger head of the singer Aretha Franklin. All of the heads, except for one on the middle right of the canvas, have a number of smaller cut out photographs of heads arrayed in arcs above each head to form a halo or an Afro haircut-like shape. Thin bands of pastel yellow, green, blue and pink stripes outline each grouping of large and small heads and radiate outwards, sometimes joining up with the bands surrounding the other heads. Each of the larger heads has a frame of up to 12 stripes. The effect of this is that the heads look like islands on a map, surrounded by pastel contour lines.

On top of the collaged photos and the coloured bands, Ofili has poured a shiny transparent yellow resin which covers the dung and canvas in parts. On top of the resin, he has painted patterns using many small white dots which may have been inspired by African cave paintings. This adds a lacy texture to the whole work. Ofili has used these delicate dot designs to embellish some of the heads, also covering some of their eyes.

Ofili is British of Nigerian descent. In 1992, he was awarded a British Council travel scholarship to Zimbabwe. During his stay in Africa, Ofili began to incorporate lumps of elephant dung into his canvases. He has said that it was a way to literally incorporate Africa into his work. Four pieces of dung have been placed between the heads on this canvas. All of the balls of dung have been covered by the resin and while this makes their surface smooth and shiny, the grass and rough texture of the dung is still visible. Each ball of dung has been decorated with coloured map pins which look like colourful beads as only the heads of the pins are visible. The first dung ball is in the middle of the top left quarter of the canvas. It has K-R-S-1 spelled out in black, green, red and yellow beads, possibly the name of the elephant that produced the dung. The second ball of dung is to the right of the first in the middle of the canvas and slightly lower than the first ball. This dung ball has the words Aretha spelled out in yellow beads and Franklin spelled out in red beads. The third dung ball is below and to the right of the second ball, halfway down the canvas and has the name Shirley Bassey spelled in multi-coloured beads. The fourth ball of dung, with Stevie Wonder written on it in a similar fashion, is below the third ball of dung and attached to the middle of the canvas like the second ball of dung.

In an interview in 2004, Ofili said, “I like [hip-hop’s] cut-and-paste attitude. You can often hear where one joint ends and another begins, which is something I try to make apparent in my work so you can see how things are made. Hip-hop takes existing beats, restructures them, and injects the individual in the form of a rap. You might not understand the lyrics, but you always recognise the voice of a particular rapper.”

Grayson Perry (born 1960), Spirit Jar, 1994, Earthenware

Grayson Perry is best known for his decorative and seductive pots. Spirit Jar is made of earthenware, is approximately 60 cm (or 2’) tall and is decorated with a multitude of intricate and highly charged images that are unexpected in an item usually associated with domesticity.  It has a narrow, circular opening at the top, approximately 5cm (or 2”) in diameter and then the jar widens to about 25cm (or 10”) across, creating a voluptuous shape which then tapers down to the base, which measures approximately 18 cm (or 5”) in diameter.

At first glance, it appears that the background colour is a shiny sea-green, overlaid with brownish-black abstract shapes which resemble seaweed. The glaze on these shapes is more matt and slightly metallic-looking. On closer inspection, however, the green areas are actually horses with riders, either standing or in mid gallop.

Dotted around the jar are small, circular black embosses, approximately 1cm (or just over ½”) in diameter, which have been attached, almost like wax seals. Each one contains the imprint of a swastika.
Also randomly placed all over the jar are egg-shaped pieces, about 5cm (or 2”) long, each one containing Paisley-style designs in shades of brown and black, the designs looking like parts of feathers or curling ferns.

On either side of the jar there are two detailed pictures, set within oval outlines. The top of the ovals sits at the ‘shoulder’ of the jar and runs down the length of the jar to within 12 cm or 5” of the base. Both ovals contain black and white drawings of what appear to be a mother and child. In one, the maternal figure looks very masculine, with a stubbly bald head, stubbly beard and moustache. He, or she, has heavily made up eyes, with sweeping eyelashes, and full, sensuous lips. However, the face is heavily lined with sunken cheeks and bags under the eyes, and prominent tendons in the neck. There is a boy – or perhaps he is a girl – sitting on the adult’s lap and they are reading a book together. The boy is wearing a frilly dress, very similar to the kind of dress Grayson Perry has worn as his transvestite alter ego, Claire. The adult figure is wearing a colourful coat and his head is haloed, with both coat and halo decorated with pictures of game birds and peacocks, pink flowers and trees, evoking a pastoral scene. Over the adult’s shoulder we can see a glimpse of a black and white drawing of part of a suburban house with a car in the drive and a tall tree behind it. The book the two figures are reading has ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ written on the spine and the cover shows a skull emerging from a vase or jar. Beneath this picture, near the base of the jar, are engraved in capitals, the words, ‘Spirit Jar’.

In contrast, the picture on the other side of the jar shows a more voluptuous woman but with the same masculine, stubbly beard and upper lip.  She is looking directly at the viewer with a rather aggressive stare and is sticking her tongue out of the side of her mouth. She wears dangly earrings and a circular pendant around her neck. Her veined, pendulous breasts are exposed, and below them she has a roll of flesh. The woman is holding on her lap the same boy as on the other side of the jar, but in this picture he is naked and extremely thin, with his ribs painfully obvious. He is suckling at the woman’s left breast and has his hand on her right breast. Both figures have long, pointed fingernails. Again the woman is wearing a colourful coat, but this time decorated with images of traditionally clothed Japanese men, women and children. The woman has no halo, but does have long, straight, brown hair. Behind her we glimpse black and white drawn images of a broken car, an old pram and a ramshackle caravan.

Two brown circles of unglazed, exposed earthenware sit between the ovals, on opposite sides of the jar. Pictures, rather like primitive cave drawings, have been drawn in the circles in a cream colour.  In one circle, the picture appears to be a symbol for woman, with two X’s on either side of a naive picture of the female reproductive organs. The other circle contains a definitely male stick figure with winged arms and prominent genitalia.

A common theme in Perry’s work is an inversion of a happy childhood, but his subject matter also embraces his transvestism, growing up in rural Essex and his thoughts on the British art world. Spirit Jar is an example of Grayson Perry’s provocative and challenging works and seems to encompass several of these themes.

Perry has said: “One of the subjects that has long exercised me is what I might call the mind, body, spirit movement. This floaty trend that encompasses astrology, faddy hippy therapies, homeopathy, scented candles and pseudo spiritual pampering all wrapped in a bland West London tastefulness. I have always enjoyed the artefacts that come out of traditional mysticism/ shamanism but dislike the earnest inoffensiveness of these coffee morning belief systems. In Spirit Jar I think I was trying to portray a more unsettling earthy idea of suburban ritual.”

John Stezaker (b.1949), Pair V, 2007, Collage

This work is part of an ongoing series that Stezaker has made by strategically placing found landscape postcards over found film stills and film actor portraits. It is approximately 24 cm wide by 18cm tall or 9.5 by 7 inches and is mounted in a white washed wooden frame with a 10cm or 4 inch border. The work consists of a colour tinted landscape postcard placed over a black and white film still of the head and shoulders of a man and woman.

The man is on the right side of the photograph, behind the woman, but holding her close with his right arm around her right shoulder. He has dark wavy hair which is thinning on the crown and is wearing a light coloured sleeveless vest or tank top. His head is tilted over his left shoulder, so that their faces are very close and his face is angled towards her neck or cheek. The woman is on the left side of the photograph and she appears to be facing the viewer. She has dark, wavy, chin length hair and is wearing a top which has a delicate pattern of small flowers on it. The faces of the man and woman would take up most of the picture if they were not covered by the tinted postcard which is about 9cm wide and 14cm tall or 3.5 by 5.5 inches. Stezaker has positioned the postcard to cover up the actors faces so that only a fraction of their chins and foreheads are visible. The postcard has been attached towards the left side of the photograph so that the whole of the top of the man’s head is still visible on the right third of the photograph.

The tinted postcard that is covering the film still is of a landscape in the Lake District. Tinted postcards are black and white images which have had colour added on top, sometimes by hand. This postcard shows a country scene with a hillside on the left, a small river, partly filled with rocks in the middle and trees flanking the left and right side of the river. The river recedes into the middle of the postcard and there are hills in the middle background. There is a path running along the left side of the river. On the top of the postcard in the left corner, the words “In Borrowdale” are printed in small, pale red italicised letters. 

The postcard has been attached directly on top of the actors’ faces and acts like a mask, covering all of their facial features. The river in the postcard almost follows the edge of where the man’s profile would be. The trees on either side of the river take the place of where the man and woman’s facial features would be. The viewer is left guessing about what is taking place in the photograph but a new view is opened up with the image on the postcard. The overall effect of the postcard covering the photo borders on the surreal, but elements in the postcard such as the location of the trees and river also seem to fit well into the composition of the image.