Queer Paper Gardens
A sequence of collage events, across three centuries, Flora Delanica (1772-1782) —Mary Delany's pioneering botanical collage on paper—the photographic collages of the Victorian era and the Modernist collage-novels—Max Ernst's Une Semaine de Bonté (1934), and Valentine Penrose's Dons des Féminines (1951). The resulting installation is a collage-salon with prints, bookworks, a double-screen video-essay, objects and drawings.
The relation between collage and art publishing is part of artists’ books history. Two relevant examples of small editions books are part of the exhibition’s material sources: Max Ernst’s A Week of Goodness (1934) and Valentine Penrose’s Dons des Feminines (1951). Both propose new perspectives on the relationship between found material and personal biography, collage and narrative, image and text. Departing from these and looking at early predecessors of the visual book- encountered in the Georgian hortus siccus (herbarium) and the Victorian photo album- the project celebrates work with found material, within a queer and feminist history of collage that looks at early precursors of collage amongst 18th century landscape female artists, female victorian photo-collage and the surrealist collage novel.
contact
paula roush ::: paularoush@gmail.com
msdm studio ::: msdm@msdm.org.uk