Small World Collages

This series began while preparing work for an exhibition at Print Council Gallery with the nowhereprint collective in 2024. The show had the title “Latitude” and I had been thinking about how my practice has always had a ‘mapping’ element running through it. The exhibition called for 2 pieces of artwork to be hung above and below an invisible central line running through the gallery, or a latitudinal line. I created Small World 2 and 3 for that exhibition, but only ended up only exhibiting one of them. But the ideas began to flow, and soon there were many small worlds coming together in the studio. My solo show at Salamanca in 2025, “Elevation”, brought many of them together in a large salon style hang. All different shapes and sizes, they came together as if in a constellation or solar system.

With the small world series I wanted to see how far I could push the collage works. Using the torn edges like latidudinal and longitudinal lines on a map, I found lines and shapes within my linocut prints that seemed to ‘go’ together. The process is meditative, and involves tearing, cutting and moving pieces around until suddenly a new entity seems to appear, almost as if it were always there waiting to be revealed. The worlds seem to have their own characters which suggest colour palettes to me. Once they are securely glued, I paint them with watercolour.