Curating Collage Workshop hosted by the Kolaj Institute - January 2023

🔸🔹🔸CURATING COLLAGE WORKSHOP - JANUARY 2023🔸🔹🔸

I am absolutely delighted to have been accepted to take part in the Kolaj Intitute's Curating Collage Workshop hosted by the illustrious Kolaj Magazine over the course of January and February.

I am really excited to learn more about the various considerations and aspects involved in curating collage exhibitions. The organisers statements create a picture of a wide reaching and in-depth investigation of the exhibition of collage. I am really looking forward to it!

The organisers have this to say:
"Curating is a vital part of art’s function: a curator creates a bridge between artwork and audience. For artists, this process can be confusing and mysterious. The goal of the Curating Collage Workshop is to equip artists with the tools to curate their own work, to work with curators, and build exhibitions that connect with diverse audiences.

The Curating Collage Workshop will focus on the role of the exhibition: How do we exhibit collage? What is needed from collage to function in a commercial gallery, art center, or museum? How do we build exhibitions that go beyond the “Cut and Paste” group show model that is prevalent today? What does it mean to be artist-centric, medium-centric, or viewer-centric in the presentation of collage in exhibition? And the workshop will explore ideas around Curation: What is a curator and what is their role? How do we introduce collage to viewers? How do we build an audience for collage and generate enthusiasm and a sense of value for the work? How do we take collage where it needs to go to reach the viewers it is intended to reach?."

To find out more about the Kolaj Institute and this workshop programme click here:

Residency: Poetry & Collage hosted by the Kolaj Institute - March 2022

🔸🔹🔸POETRY & COLLAGE RESIDENCY - MARCH 2022🔸🔹🔸

I am absolutely delighted to have been accepted to take part in the Kolaj Intitute's Poetry & Collage Online Residency hosted by the illustrious Kolaj Magazine over the course of March.

If you follow my work you will know that I really enjoy to pair visual work with both poetry and short stories. I am really excited to take part in this programme over the course of March, to meet the other international artists, writers and poets, listen to their perspectives and see their work; and of course to learn new things about the vibrant intersection between the written word and visual art.

The organisers have this to say:
"It says something that in the Poetry Foundation’s Glossary of Poetic Terms, “collage” is one of the few visual art terms they define. Perhaps this is because so many poets have also been collage artists.

This project-driven residency is open to artists and poets. Participants will work together to investigate the intersection of collage and poetry by exploring concepts of found poetry, blackout poetry, collage poems, haikus, centos, response collages, response poems, word scrambles, concrete poetry, scatter collage poems, and other poems and artwork that inhabit this world. Together we will create working definitions and document techniques."

To find out more about the Kolaj Institute and this residency programme click here:

Upcoming Exhibition - Empty Columns are a Place to Dream at Kolaj Live: Knoxville, Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA - 1st - 7th of November 2021

"Empty Columns are a Place to Dream" as part of Kolaj LIVE Knoxville.

Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee,

U.S.A

November 1-7, 2021

I am absolutely thrilled to hear that the "Empty Columns are a Place to Dream" project, which took place as part of the amazing Birr Vintage Week and Arts Festival has won the County Award at the Heritage Week Heritage Council's awards yesterday.

Co-ordinated by Caroline Conway, and curated by Ric Kasini Kadour, It was a real pleasure to take part in this project and a big congratulations to everyone involved.

I'm also blown away by the incredible news that the exhibition will travel to the Knoxville Museum of Art where it will be part of Kolaj LIVE Knoxville, from November 1-7, 2021.

This project featured local and international collage artists and their interpretations of the empty column in Emmet Square which was formerly the site of a statue to the Duke of Cumberland. Infamous for his brutal oppression of a Scottish uprising. The statue itself has long since been felled, leaving an empty void.

The artists in engaging with this curious absence sparked a timely and creative debate about the role of monuments, the values we uphold, the things we choose to forget, and how this is decided.

To find out more about the tremendous Kolaj Live festival in Knoxville visit:

https://www.kolajinstitute.org/kolaj-live-knoxville.html

To visit the "Empty Columns Project Archives" and view the work you can go to: https://emptycolumns.weebly.com/

Upcoming Exhibition - Schwitters Army @ MERZ Gallery, Queen's Rd, Sanquhar, Scotland, DG4 6DH, United Kingdom

It is truly fantastic to have an opportunity to take part in this international collage project organised by Ric Kasini Kadour and hosted at the MERZ Gallery, Sanquhar, Scotland.

Running from January 8th - February 20th 2020

MERZ Gallery
Queens Road
Sanquhar DG4 6DH
Scotland, United Kingdom

More about Kurt Schwitters, MERZ and this project by the our host Ric Kasini Kadour below:

For Kurt Schwitters, MERZ was his manifesto. He explained it as “the combination of all conceivable materials for artistic purposes, and technically the principle of equal evaluation of the individual materials.” His intention was to give anything from a used bus ticket to a piece of wire found on the street “equal rights with paint.” MERZ liberated artists by declaring anything potential material for their art making and, to illustrate this concept, he made hundreds of collages which he called MERZ pictures. Such forward thinking led art historian Isabelle Ewig to call him the “Father of the fathers of Pop.” Really, any collage artist working today owes a debt of gratitude to Schwitters, who not only legitimized the medium, but also established a working practice and aesthetic that is the basis of many artists’ contemporary practice.

For more about the Schwitters Army Project march on over HERE.