Wallpaper Book of
Collages Š2012
WALLPAPER DANIEL Mc KEON.
Daniel Mc Keon is an Irish born Visual Artist who has been working as a professional artist for nearly thirty years. His practice comprises Painting, Drawing, Artist Books, Video, Print and Photography. For the past fifteen years he has worked from a studio in the historical Henrietta Street area of Dublin.
WALLPAPER INTRODUCTION They say the term collage derives from the French word “Coller” meaning to glue. Some famous past exponent of the Collage Technique being Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters in his Merz pictures Max Ernest, the Surrealists and far too many to mention here each bringing their unique vision, ideas and approach to assembling making images. In an ever dynamic speeding up world especially after the second world war. Now in our media saturated digital age we inhabit this increasingly fractured world environment we exist in, I feel the collage approach is one of the most suitable mediums to be able to embrace this disjuncture. The term collage is also attributed to both George Braque and Pablo Picasso in the beginning of the twentieth century when collage became a distinctive part of modern art. I have been using collage as an integral part of my practice over the thirty year “journey of being an artist” my interest being reignited most recently by a collaborative project called “The Round Table” which was conducted over the internet and using the postal system initiated by the Berkeley USA based artist Marty Mc Cutcheon. The collages I have selected for this first Collage Book is fittingly called WALLPAPER it is made mostly from images taken from magazines and journals cheap discardable materials like our disposable culture we inhabit. These collages have not been digitally altered in any way like using Photoshop except through their scanning into the computer to be prepared for this online book, future selections I may produced using editing software as I have amassed a sizable collection of collages while working towards this project. I find the low tech approach in this series very appealing where the joins are not slickly disguised but reveal the process in their making. The way we process information today is very different from the past we are experiencing the world in a very different way and many younger people knowing no other way since the start of the internet also in their music were sampling has become the norm. While online we are often multitasking glancing over multiple images stories, advertisements each vying for our attention in an insistent way. Today when we are expected to be constantly connected and be online almost twenty-four seven we are bombarded with information and frequently suffer from information overload which itself can manifest ironically with symptoms of attention deficiency. Collage for me is the perfect vehicle to use to try to express this fleeting feeling in a fun and engaging way causing amazing juxtaposition and reconfigurations. This aesthetics allows the individual to fill in the missing parts to project their own narrative to make a coherent personal statement for themselves. Telling new stories in ways we could never imagine if we are only thinking in a literal way. This is some of the thoughts that come to mind to explain my present engagement and fascination with the collage technique and its relevance today. I hope this book Wallpaper is interesting and fun and helps to fire up your imagination to re imagine the visual stories within its pages, to be bubble gum for your mind or wallpaper for you consciousness. Daniel Mc Keon. © 2012