Collage exhibition

I recently visited the Cut and Paste exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. It was an absolutely fascinating exhibition!

I found it interesting the types of things that are regarded as collage that I hadn't thought of before - photomontages, Victorian paper scraps, scrapbooking, beachcombed items, stickers, and the time when I was at school and covered one of my folders with black & white photos of celebrities (there was a folding screen in the exhibition that was the Victorian equivalent of this!). As someone who does quite a bit of collage, I was surprised by how little I knew about the subject!


Some of the things I really liked in the exhibition were things that evoked nostalgia for me - paper scraps, Fuzzy Felt, stickers, neatly arranged objects, sepia photographs, and a toyshop window.

The first things I saw in the exhibition were some flower pictures. At first I though, "Oh, I didn't know pressed flowers were collage!", then I read the captions and realised that only some parts of the images were made from real plants - and it was impossible to see which! Of course, pressed flowers probably do count as collage anyway, but these images combined them with paper in an amazing way.

I liked how some pictures were done with painted paper that was then cut up. It was very difficult to distinguish these from actual paintings. I'd really like to try some of this kind of collage. I really admire an artist I follow online, Clover Robin, who does this sort of work.

I was very excited at the very end of the exhibition to find some Matisse collages, including the one that inspired one the illustrations for my 100 day project!

I came out of the exhibition fired up with inspiration and ready to create! And so I immediately stuck my exhibition sticker onto the sketchbook page I'd been drawing, and when I got home I added some of the scraps that I bought in the gift shop. I love that collage is such a versatile medium and everyone can use it in their own way.