These collages record my ongoing response to those conditions that came to a head in the UK in the summer of 2016. Looking back, it was a time when the scales fell from so many of our eyes as we witnessed with dismay the degree to which our culture might succumb to its own pathologies. Since then my work has become preoccupied with understanding and responding to these problematic traits. In particular that ‘deep disquiet’ with materialistic values and their environmental consequences that now colours much of our modern living and which is neither conducive to wellbeing nor to a faith in the future.

For the sake of my own wellbeing I felt a need to understand and find a positive and creative way forward. So, following the lead of modern art history, wherein the methods and aesthetics of collage have long been regarded as analogous with the dilemmas of a ‘modern condition’, I also turned to the fragmentations of collage as the territory through which to find an antidote. Through making these works I have found that whilst the collage aesthetic does speak of these things it also offers  much more as it also calls for a revised notion of identity - one which relies upon multiplicity rather than singularity, and upon permeability rather than containment. These contentions are sketched out further within the considerations of ‘Collage Logic’ below...

Collage Logic

Collage Logic is a right brain logic. Its meanings arise aesthetically through the spatial relations and juxtapositions of fragments rather than from the linear ‘cause and effect’ narrative building of classical reasoning.

In our modern world the problem of Collage Logic is on the rise.

Collage Logic offers inferred but unsubstantiated conclusions derived from adjacency and these are what now pass for thinking in much of our modern culture. In conversation, adverts, social media, entertainment and political rhetoric alike, it is now deemed acceptable and sufficient to place one concept next to another and not have to prove the connection.  Adherents of classical reasoning justifiably decry its spread.

But perhaps at another level Collage Logic also offers a truth behind the problematic illusions of identity and selfhood that we cling to. Are we really the coherent and rationally driven consciousnesses that we like to believe? Is there an unbroken continuity from our past to ourselves?

Collage Logic stands not only as an analogue for our contemporary culture but also as an analogue of perception and cognition itself. It is perhaps a more authentic account of our thinking mode than narratives of rationality or irrationality can provide.

The conundrum of Collage Logic is therefore timely, eloquent and potentially therapeutic. It entices us with an alternative means to come to terms with contemporary life.

If the appearance of Collage Logic is one of juxtaposed elements and implied conclusions, then the process of Collage Logic is one of construction and repair - it is essentially generative and, like ourselves, it is made from fragments broken away from their origins and rejoined in a quest for a new wholeness.

Akin to the art of Kintsugi, collage recombines what has failed or broken into something that is complete, new and previously unthinkable. Like the art of architecture, collage relies upon tectonics and the cumulative significance of adjacent components. In both cases it is a physical as much as an abstract endeavour.

But the scope of Collage Logic is larger than the sum of its accumulations. In Collage Logic ‘one plus one’ does not equal two - it still equals one - but now it is a greater ‘one’ - a ‘gestalt’. The successful assimilations of Collage Logic always equate to growth rather than just the accumulation of parts.

The process of Collage Logic therefore opens up unforeseen pathways. When the playful explorations of bringing two foreign fragments together triggers our aesthetic sensibility we feel the urge to pursue it towards the new whole it implies. In the creative process this occurs again and again in a cascade of self sustaining growth.

So not only is the process of Collage Logic fast and flexible, but its open ended nature has the capacity to lead us - to be self-directing even. One gives up on ‘making sense’ in order to allow a ‘new sense’ to emerge.

Collage Logic is therefore both carefree play and considered craft. Its process allows us to remain in the zone of aesthetic receptivity, oscillating between creator and spectator. It is a game of enquiry where aesthetic concerns yield outputs with insight and direction.

Ultimately Collage Logic is a form of contemplative thinking, relying more upon implication than explication, and leading at times to a depth of insight that classical reasoning cannot reach. As such, Collage Logic is perhaps the paradoxical tool for our times - as it is both the curse and the cure.

Tony Aldrich 2022