The practice of making paper was once believed to date back to first century China, when Han Dynasty court official Cai Lun created a sheet using mulberry and other plant fibres, along with fishing nets, old rags and recycled hemp. Archaeologists have since turned up paper adorned with Chinese writing from 8BC, but it wasn’t until almost 1,000 years later that Japanese poets began to embellish their scrolls with glued-on layers. So began the technique of collage, christened by the godfathers of Cubism Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, which by the turn of the 20th century had joined the ranks of modern art. The term is derived from the French coller (‘glue’), and is the preferred medium of artist Luke Gracie. “Crystals – a Collage Exhibition is, unsurprisingly, an exhibition of collages that I’ve put together over the last few months,” he says. “The pieces in this show are very simple; collage can very quickly fall into the trap of throwing too much on the page. I’ve set a rule for myself, a limit of three to four images per piece. Everything is done analogue from magazines, newspapers and other random sources (the scan and printing is the only digital aspect of the process). Some of the pieces are purely aesthetic, while others reflect my personal view of the world and political views on things such as western indulgences and social injustice. But politics is a lot like wine: you can’t really talk about it without sounding like a wanker, so I’ll just leave it at that.”
WHO: Luke Gracie
WHAT: Crystals – a Collage exhibition
WHERE: ARTillery, St. 240½ (near Mosaic Gallery)
WHEN: 7:30pm July 6
WHY: It’s what glue was invented for