Thursday, January 30, 2014

extract form a letter to Dan Kelly, re: collage

Background: Dan Kelly is an artist in Ballarat, we're having an exhibition together [HERE]. Link to his blog on the right hand side of the page, or [HERE].

"Collage is vandalism", eh wot?
I dig them words, I dig 'em a lot.
You know Outre Gallery in Melbourne? ( http://www.outregallery.com ) I love that place, even if I find most works in there shit. I went there yesterday to chuck in some of our flyers and I asked them "You fiends being knowledgable in the ways of the lobrow, recommend me some awesome contemporary collage artists!" They couldn't. They even googled it. We ain't shit in the world of lobrow. I kinda dug that. I practically threw the flyers at them and I actually yelled "I AM IT! COME TO MY EXHIBITION!"
Point being, we're so lobrow, not even lobrow will touch us. Vandals man, outcasts of art. Brut? Good place to be. It don't pay the rent, but it feels good.
I made this series of collages using a Rembrandt book (+ some other old masters books), which I was originally gonna call "I raped Rembrandt". Good thing I didn't. But I was totally driven by the urge to destroy, desecrate and vandalise these revered images. Great brush-strokes, but boooo-ring-uh!!!! Get over it! They didn't turn out as smutty as I would've liked, but they're pretty bloody good ( http://www.gadzooxtian.com/images/collages/simpleviewer/web/collages1.html ). The process itself is vandalism, yes, but surely you've heard Bakunin's oft-repeated anarchist declaration that "The urge for destruction is also a creative urge!' So yah, for me, it's two sides of the same coin, but depending on what I'm doing. (And besides you stupid twat Bakunin, sometimes a cigar is a cigar and sometimes destruction is just that.)
I like to collage over notions of "beauty" and mess 'em the fuck up and make it BETTER. "Ugliness is a form of genius." - Genesis P.Orridge. "Beauty will be convulsive or not at all." - Andre Breton - they should totally knife-fight in a graffiti covered alley. My monies on P.Orridge - though Breton was a war veteran...
What was my point again? I'm gonna appropriate your slogan sir, *collage* it into my world.
Lovely!

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