Rupture Rapture
7 August 2023
Rupture, Rapture: Womxn in Collage
August 24 - September 16, 2023
Patrica Fleming Gallery
44 Oxford House, Glasgow
Rupture, Rapture: Womxn in Collage presents Scotland’s first survey exhibition of contemporary collage art by womxn artists. Bringing together 14 artists with diverse approaches, the works on display challenge the notion of collage as a fixed category or form— instead revealing collage as a feminist praxis of transformation, rupture, and collision.
Curated by Aga Paulina Młyńczak & Nell Cardozo with support from Kelly Rappleye (16NSt Curatorial Collective) and guest curators Sam Ainsley (artist and former Head of Glasgow School of Art’s MFA) and artist Janie Nicoll, this groundbreaking exhibition generously hosted by Patricia Fleming Gallery displays a diverse repertoire of over thirty collage works, several of which have never shown before.
Artists Alberta Whittle, Claire Barclay, Kate V. Robertson, Victoria Morton, Zoë Mendelson and Louise Hopkins present multiple new and historic works. Significant works by Janie Nicoll, Sam Ainsley, Barbara F. Kendrick, Jen DeNike and Catherine Street use collage techniques for poetic transformations of everyday culture.
By putting multimedia sculptural installations together with paper works, Młyńczak and Cardozo aim to expand the notion of what contemporary collage can do. Alongside Claire Barclay’s new sculptural collage work produced for the show, the exhibition will debut a newly commissioned multimedia collage series and performance from Jen DeNike, exhibiting her work in Scotland for the first time.
Other highlights include new work by Kate V. Robertson, made from recycled CDs, and newly commissioned works from 16NSt resident artists’ Hannan Jones, Edie Baker, and Gabrielle Lockwood Estrin, developed in-situ at our host Patricia Fleming Gallery. Displaying work from womxn artists at various stages in their careers who use expanded collage processes, this exhibition aims to create an inter-generational feminist dialogue.
16NSt’s Rupture, Rapture: Womxn in Collage project also comprises an emerging artists’ residency and publication to trace an alternative, feminist lineage of collage in everyday creative practices of womxn and queer communities that have traditionally been refused art historical recognition, from scrapbooking to collage poetry. These homegrown acts of cultural transformation inform the ethos of cross-media experimentation and re-assemblage of everyday material that is shared across the works in this exhibition.
Opening night (Aug 24) will launch the limited-release publication ‘RUPTURE: RAPTURE’, featuring rarely-seen collage works by Maud Sulter alongside a critical survey of contemporary womxn’s collage in Scotland, framed by a curatorial discussion from Młyńczak and Cardozo in ‘More than Cut and Paste: a curatorial conversation, texted’. The publication, designed by Phoebe Kerr, also shares a collage image from prolific Glasgow band Comfort’s latest music video ‘Real Woman’, with essays on the use of collage in queer and feminist activism, the politics of feminist collaboration and mothering in the arts sector, reflections from Teri Henderson on curating a collection of US Black collage art, and collaged ‘Artist Statements’ from 16NSt resident artists Hannan Jones and Gabrielle Lockwood Estrin.
