Hand cut collage from archival photographs, 26 x 32 cm
Luke Tarpey's work centers on reimagining found black-and-white photographs, particularly those with architectural themes. He transforms these images into surreal and ethereal living spaces, challenging real-world boundaries. These pieced together compositions are a form of portraiture for Tarpey, each image takes on a personality of its own carefully considering balance and meaning.
Hand cut collage from archival photographs, 21 x 29 cm
Collage is my escape, sanctuary, therapy and way of making sense of the world around me. I’ve only been working in collage for 2 or 3 years so I’m still learning and finding my way but in this short time I’ve found a way of working that is as addictive as it is fun. I often find myself laughing out loud at the sheer absurdity of what I’ve created and that can only be a good thing in my book.
Hand cut collage from archival photographs, 24 x 34 cm
My process starts by playing around with shapes and photographs until I find a starting point where I feel a structure has begun to appear. These structures are as much portraits as they are buildings so giving them a personality is vitally important — naturally friends, family and daily life play a huge role in helping to shape the anthropomorphic elements in my work. The work evolves slowly over a period of weeks or months with each change in the composition bringing new challenges in terms of balance, meaning and personality. I never really set out with an end goal in sight and let the structure evolve naturally which helps give each piece its own unique feel.
Hand cut collage from archival photographs, 26 x 32 cm
Hand cut collage from archival photographs, 37 x 37 cm
The work began as a way to reflect on the effects the lockdowns of 2020 – 2021 had on us all. Being isolated in our own homes brought unique challenges for our mental health and I took to making my own lockdown houses as a form of therapy. The project has evolved beyond the lockdowns and is ultimately about imagination; creating a world to escape into, letting go of preconceived ideas and living in fantastical places where anything is possible. Constructing narratives and structures that celebrate our individuality and sense of place. The work can be both serious and playful but will always honour the transportive power of art as therapy.
Hand cut collage from archival photographs, 34 x 45 cm
Collage is a historic and storied medium but too often gets overshadowed by painting, printmaking, drawing and sculpture in terms of support in the Fine Art world. I hope to see more high profile art fairs and exhibitions dedicated to the medium in the future.
Hand cut collage from archival photographs, 21 x 29 cm
Luke Tarpey is currently based in Castle Donington, UK.
For Your Viewing Pleasure
Daniel Alcalá (b. 1974), analyses the limits of urban landscapes and its trajectories. He explores the games of shadows, questioning perception and the medium itself in each image. His urban landscapes draw attention on those city structures that are often overlooked, inviting us to reflect on our relationship with the space.
In her analog approach, Katy Williamson meticulously deconstructs found photographic portraiture. This process of dissection and reassembly transcends mere visual alteration; it becomes an act of introspection and a meditation on time's malleability.
Eleonora Agostini (b.1991) is an Italian artist based in London. She received her BA from Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan in 2013 and her MA from the Royal College of Art in London in 2018. Eleonora’s practice shifts between photography, moving image, performance and sculpture, exploring and analysing the difficulties of how human experience is constructed. Her research is strongly connected with the experience of our surroundings and she is interested in finding a possible fracture within our socially constructed rules and the spaces we inhabit.
Born in 1988. Cristóbal Ascencio is a Mexican photographer who currently resides in Madrid. He has studied for a degree in Audiovisual Media and Advertising from the CAAV in Jalisco and a master's in contemporary photography at EFTI. His work and research focuses on the relationship that exists between images and memory and how we build identities and realities based on this correspondence, while his practice expands to new forms of the image such as virtual reality, data manipulation, and photogrammetry.
Akshay Mahajan (b. 1985, India) is an artist deeply invested in utilizing photography as a mirror to culture and collective memory. His practice thoughtfully examines the tapestry of post-colonial cities, landscapes, folklore, and mythologies, meticulously scrutinized to reveal myriad "failed futures." His work observes how our postcolonial reality is often anchored in a pre-colonial memory, using the camera as a tool to lay bare these connections.
Out and About
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
READ
Media Farzin on the art of Fereydoun Ave
It's not easy to find the right moniker for Fereydoun Ave. Cumbersome hyphenates like artist-designer-gallerist seem reductive as labels for a métier that is more than the sum of its parts. Ave’s own artwork, marked by a theatrical sensibility, spans media (painting, collage, assemblage). He has produced stage sets, costumes, domestic interiors, and furniture, in addition to making frequent forays into graphic design.
VISIT
Galerie Chantal Crousel presents Wade Guyton
For this exhibition, Wade Guyton presents lithographs made with the Swiss printing company Steindruckerei Wolfensberger, in Zurich. These are ten catalogs from a 1928 exhibition dedicated to Edouard Manet. The pages of these copies have been detached and overprinted with one of the artist's bitmap files. He reassembles the pages of the ten groups of unique lithographs into new publications. The exhibition brings together the first two published catalogs as well as the 121 framed lithographs from volume II.
LISTEN
Zack Mexico - Get Rich and Live Forever
Zack Mexico is a ferocious Psychedelic POP / Indie Rock band whose original songs are a collaboration of the technical prowess of multi-instrumentalist band members and their visceral love affair with creating music. In 2011 the North Carolina based Experimental Rock band Zack Mexico was formed in Kill Devil Hills by John Saturley, Jamie Brumbeloe, Joey LaFountaine and TJ Harrington.
