PAPER MADNESS/A LITTLE BIT OCD/C

(I plan to more comprehensively document this project. The photos above are but a slither of a glimpse.)

I’ve used newspapers & magazines as the main source of my Artwork since I was at Art school (Coventry Polytechnic 1983 - 86) & before that used to stick whole pages from magazines onto my bedroom wall as a teenager in the late 70s/early 80s (no doubt inspired by my brother Gary who covered his bedroom walls with magazine cut outs when he was a teenager in the 60s). 

A major part of the collecting/using magazines/newspapers is the frugal side of it - they are free! (from friends or recycling) or cheap to buy…I like that these are materials that anyone can get hold of…common…everyday. As well as the wealth of imagery within them I love how the paper/inks discolour/fade over time. 

I started accumulating/collecting newspapers in earnest (as a source material for artwork) right after my mum died March 1983. It was Daily Mirrors as that’s what she used to buy. I know I did it because it helped me feel connected to her still. I remember deciding I wanted to go & buy a Daily Mirror from the same newsagent that she used to as this felt normal. When we were clearing my mum’s things from her room I came across Daily Mirrors that she had kept from when men landed on the Moon & when Kennedy was assassinated. I was fascinated that these important dates in history happened in mum’s everyday life…but somehow the aspect of just keeping newspapers from important historical dates/events got lost on me & I went for bulk. 

When I’m given a huge stack of magazines by someone it’s like being given a box of paints. I know I work in quite a long winded/convoluted way - I cut out everything & anything I think I might use, then decide how to use it. A bit like if they were tubes of paints squeezing out all the colours then going, right!…now…what do I do with all this! 

Sometimes it feels like I’m doing a jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box. Cutting & sticking is something I feel quite compelled to do…collect & gather…cut & stick…try to make sense of the world. 

At some point during my 3 years in Coventry on the Fine Arts Degree course we had a trip to The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, it made a big impression on me, I was fascinated by their collections & the way things were labelled ( draws of shiny beetles & insects, a lampshade made from skin, bartering currency in the form of rolls of fabric.) Apparently General Pitt Rivers was one of the first people to collect & have displayed ordinary everyday things. 

Likewise in more recent years on visits to The Natural History Museum in London, I love seeing how extremely small…shells…stones…no bigger than…the tip of a small fingernail have been kept, cared for & labelled..or at The British Museum a slab of rock fossil…I think about seeing David Attenborough on television splitting open a rock fossil, a plant or animal likeness preserved in the soft rock…& it makes me think well at home I have piles & stacks of newspapers & when I spilt/open one of those I see a Princess Diana fossil or a Michael Jackson fossil..their likenesses preserved…now extinct…

Have you seen any of those Channel 4 programmes ‘The Hoarder Next Door’ where someone’s hoarding has got out of control, is helped to confront the origin of their hoarding & clear out their home ? A friend used to alert me when these programmes were on! I did have a huge amount of newspapers & magazines at one point ( still have some & other collections) but I’ve always felt like it was ok they are/were materials/street finds accumulated for future artworks. My home is more workspace orientated than comfort admittedly but don’t a lot of artists who use recycled materials in their work live like that, with piles & collections? 

I’m hoping to find curatorial help and get this madness out of my house and into the outside world.

POPSTAR HEADS

172 x A4 

The heads of people that popped up a lot in magazines.

Common…widely distributed…rare…now extinct. 

Elvises/Marilyns/Talisas/Yasmins/Cindys/Lindas/Claudias/Jerrys/Imans/Joans/Lizes/Naomis/Michaels/Paulas/Madonnas/Dianas..plus appendages...(Dianas form the bulk..most common..) 

I know it’s a slightly odd thing to do…to spend my time…cutting out heads & collecting them but I was thinking how strange it is the obsession that the magazines had with particular people…fame…

…she thinks she’s the bees knees then new improved knees for bees come along.

& HEADS I’M NOT COLLECTING

35 x A4 

PORN WEAVES

35 

( 2 x magazine pages per piece, measured, cut & woven together) 

Like self-censoring porn can’t quite see what’s going on. 

They will fall apart if not handled with care. 

I like that they have started to unravel a little. 

TABLOID RHYMING HEADS

67 x A4 

Cutting Press/Press Cuttings.

Written of/Written off. 

“Men could not acquire fame by deed alone there had to be someone to report the deed.” 

PAPARAZZI MOTION STUDY

Tabloid newspaper & black photographic back drop paper. 

18 pieces various sizes. 

Paparazzi are the modern day fossil collectors, in Victorian times there was a value in hunting for & collecting fossils, the value now is in capturing photographic likenesses of the famous. 

BIKINI CATASTROPHE

Chunky tabloid lists 

Like old story ingredients 

POPCUNTY

Postcard Packaging.

A surface to use that’s already graffitied on...cropped words/product names/incomplete messages/promises promises.

Jumpy nervy mosaic. 

Approx 400 Postcard sized - 6x4inch - pieces cut from bright & colourful cardboard packaging…things I’ve used/consumed & picked up from the street. 

Arranged into blocky jagged edged segments to be joined/arranged together to form…not sure yet what final form will be..

Maybe use floor & ceiling as well as walls. 

To be added to/to become much larger than current 400 x 6x4inch

PAPER SAINTS

Irreplaceable/Interchangeable 

People deemed important enough to be represented by their whole figure - with the date of the newspaper page they are cut from attached. 

35 groups of varying sizes of whole figures. 

Plus 17 groups of heads & torsos. 

Lots of marauding footballers & scantily clad women. 

(Could/should look like prison wall/teenage bedroom collages.)

Yet to finalise how the groups are arranged in relation to one another…perhaps as one enormous piece. 

GLITTER GUTTER CLUTTER SPLATTER/PAPER PAINTS

Magazine cut outs. 

Brown/Green/Pink/Grey/Blue/Yellow/Purple/Orange/Flesh/Multicolour/Red/White/Off-white. 

Raggedy edged clusters of varying colours/sizes. 

TABLOID CLUSTER HEADS/STARVICTIM

Repeat words…certain words cropped up a lot…underneath single portrait head-shots in tabloid newspapers…such as…

Star/Victim/Angry/Accused/Dead…the most common being Star…or Victim. 

SPACES WHERE FACES ONCE WERE

…need to add more (as I hacked off a huge chunk) so it’s currently a higgeldy piggeldy skew-whiff shape. 

SHAME WORDS

To be scratched/doodled (in different people’s/styles handwriting) onto toilet door(s) of gallery.

Words gathered from trashy magazines written about people (where the offending body part is circled) 

In medieval art people’s likenesses were reproduced/painted because a person was considered special/holy…the saints…depicted with a gold halo. 

Now the halo has slipped to become the circle of shame…humiliating/pointing out failings…name calling…like playground taunts…like toilet door graffiti published for fun in glossy magazines. 

Reproducing the likenesses of people solely to be spiteful…like medieval stocks…chucking rotten words at them.