One of my favourite experiences of a recent trip to London Town, was an encounter with the sublime collages of John Stezaker. Stezaker with a single deft cut through a postcard or a film pubicity portrait, managed to convey a something both witty and unsettling. It’s the nature of collage to produce a dialectic between images, that suggests some new hidden meaning.
It is also my fate to encounter collage by chance. I saw a small selection of Wayne Matthews work at the Turbine Art Fair, and I was instantly charmed. These pre-photographic wood engravings that Matthews uses as source are fascinating material, falling somewhere between photographic truth-telling and 19th century modernist fantasies.
Matthews will be exhibiting some of these collages in a show entitled, ‘Passages back to the Old World’ at Tonic in Johannesburg.
Wayne Matthews Adoration of the Vagi: Gilded for Wetter and for Worse, 2014. Woodcut collage
Wayne Matthews Haussmanns Dithyramb, 2014. Woodcut collage
Wayne Matthews By the light of my green candle, 2014. Woodcut collage
Wayne Matthews The Immanent Sublimation of the Dark Continent, 2014. Woodcut collage
Wayne Matthews Alamut Bethelm Ch.-De-Silling, 2015. Woodcut collage
Wayne Matthews Parsifal Propagule-Schopenhauer Abdicates, 2015. Woodcut collage
