Things are heating up!

Thursday (Day 5).

With just one day to go before we hang our show in preparation for a Friday evening private view, the workrate, concentration and intensity have all been ramping up today. Some artists are ahead of the curve and feeling confident, a few have a little catching up to do. The one good thing is, everyone seems to be in the zone. There’s nothing like a deadline to get the creative juices flowing and speed up the decision-making process.

I’m one of the artists who is way behind, having spent the week keeping things going for the group, I’ve not had a lot of time to make some collages myself. So, today, I’m determined to find a couple of hours to make something happen. We’ve all been going across the road to the cafe, Tuckshop, during the week, which also has a small butcher’s counter. Whilst waiting for my latte yesterday, I spotted a large roll of salmon coloured paper behind the counter. I was told it was ‘butcher’s paper’ - used to wrap meat. So, I was a bit cheeky and I asked if I could have some to collage with. Molly, my server, duly obliges.

I’d brought two large board canvasses with me and I was determined to use them, so I strated two pieces at once, one with the butcher’s paper as a base and the other with found and salvaged posters from Hackney Wick.
I worked quickly and, to my surprise, the pieces turned out OK.

A quick walk around the room reveals some more stunning pieces that have been created by the other artists. There’s a growing confidence that we have the basis of a good show. Here are a few to whet your appetite…

This is a great piece from Marlene Weisman using some old sheet music with a picture of Andy Warhol to channel her inner John Stezaker.

Silvio Severino has been quietly ploughing his own furrow all week, producing some stunning pieces. He uses a lot of imagery from gay magazines as his starting point for creating thought-provoking juxtapositions.

Graham Moore has been creating colourful graphic/typographic pieces all week, often cutting up some of the earlier pieces to combine into new collages. This one is pretty cool.

Joel Lambeth flew all the way from Australia to take part in the London Collage Project! On Wednesday afternoon, I introduced another 30 minute challenge to all of the artists, to create a new collage from one of a pile of posters we’d acquired from a guy out flyposting near Hackney Wick Station. This was Joel’s response to his poster.

This was my piece using the butcher’s paper. A bit of a deviation in approach that has given me some ideas for a future project.

And finally, this is the other I worked on alongside the one above. More in my usual style, but great fun to do. Both pieces are 40×40ins.