27 October – 12 November
Jennifer Douglas, Neil Gall, Peter Lamb, Paul Merrick, Fay Nicolson, Matt Westbrook
Curated by Matthew Hearn and Paul Merrick
slung over the bones of a collage wilfully borrows its title from John’s Kelsey’s essay ‘Collage and Program (Rise of the Readymetal Maidans)’. This gesture of appropriation itself mirrors the ways artists ‘exploit and occupy readymade systems of display’. Split across two gallery spaces, Gallery North and 36 Gallery, slung over the bones of a collage considers a wider definition of the processes of ‘collage’ as represented in the practices of the six artists. Collage here is understood in its a verb form, conveying the overlapping ways in which artists self-sample, rephrase and re-model combinations of both their own source content and other appropriated material.
slung over the bones of a collage has been imagined relative to the learning environment and studio culture of an artist studio group and an art school – the two contexts in which 36 Gallery and Gallery North are constituted. On these terms, the two linked exhibitions amplify the crossovers in how artists individually and correspondingly make work; drawing connections between the gestures, détournements, graduations or step-changes that occur privately in the artists’ studio, whilst simultaneously reflecting the processes of production of more conventional finished artworks.
