Paper has this kind of delicate aspect to it and sometimes you really get a kick out of the actual
feeling of the print on the paper. My name is Max I'm a visual artist and designer and I've got
to introduce my pup Frankie there too. So, the word collage comes from a French word uh collar meaning
to glue and in its purest essence it's essentially materials which are stuck onto a backing. So, these
are loose collages, so they've yet to be glued down. I seem to have one ear here so there we go it's kind
of a tuning out rather than having a clear concept. In a way it's kind of meditative playing around
with arranging. So what I'd say for people wanting to get started, don't necessarily have an
idea in mind. Just kind of enjoy the process, play, start simple, cut out a few different elements and
just kind of see where the journey takes you. Before you even start arranging I just spend a
nice amount of time with the radio on a certain podcast and snip away whether that's 45 minutes
or you know four to five hours just enjoy the nature of cutting and believe me it's highly
addictive . And then when kind of the energy and the inspiration strikes you then start to pull those
various different puzzle pieces and see how they might be combined back together Cutting as well
is always a two-for-one moment because not only do you get the thing that you were after we're
getting an interesting scrap or we're getting an interesting negative. Sometimes the negative may
be more interesting than the thing we meant to cut out. One thing that's slightly different about my
collage practice and which might be surprising is that I rarely actually use glue and for the
most part these days now I'm working by hand, hand cutting materials, I'm arranging them like
you would but before you glue them and instead of glue what I'm doing is choosing to use a
camera or even a scanner to capture those various loose ideas. So, as my practice has evolved and
emerged I've been cutting out for well over 10 years and I've got all these different cutouts
from different times and places and now I can kind of go to different archives, play with different
cutouts, have a have it as a loose arrangement, and then when the idea and the composition is
right, give it a scan at the end, so as much as I can now, I'm avoiding the sticky stuff and using
just kind of paper in a glueless environment, and then giving it a scan whenever the idea is
ready. One of the main ethos or kind of things that we've really tried to stand by here, is to
use second hand wherever possible. You know, that's along with collage as well, it's trying to be kind
of an amalgamation of mixing things from different places, so the space itself has really grown from
going to various op shops, trash and treasure markets, even online marketplaces and so on. So, it's
kind of grown week by week, treasure by treasure. Well to begin with, you know, rather than the person
I'd love for you to isolate - here's one cut out - that, that, there. Give it some really jazzy,
punky bits to add to your collection. I've always been into kind of decorating and adorning things
ever since I was a kid, whether collecting stickers or patches, as I got older I love to travel and
keep visual journals with various tickets and ephemera and it's kind of grown from there through
an education in graphic design, freelancing as a visual artist. A big appeal to collage can
be how little you need to get going. You know one magazine, a pair of scissors, or just peel
your hands and tearing. It's something that you can do on the fly, there's something that can
happen in just a matter of seconds, a magic moment where two different elements come together and
create something completely new. That one cut out placed with one other cut out, but it's equaling
more than two. Collage for me, it's playing with paper. For some reason I've just always had a
fascination with it, whether it's going to markets and collecting beautiful vintage postcards that
maybe have got a bit of hand paint on them or kind of how the various handwritten scrawls
on the inside of a book jacket might still be there. Even kind of how tapes might kind of brown
and crack and interact with paper too. The more tarnished and kind of degraded for me, sometimes
even the better. I just feel like there's so much creative potential in every different sheet so
it's something that I've been addicted to for years and I don't see it ending anytime soon
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