#estadodelalarma

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The Art of Making Art: Week 22, Spain

Art is a powerful tool. This last week and a half I’ve been reminded of that, and making collage has served as a creative outlet and a focus for my energy.

We’re now in ‘Phase 3’ of de-escalation here in Spain. Generally, life feels pretty ‘normal’, though it’s hard to judge as George and I weren’t necessarily living particularly conventional lives to begin with. What I do know is we can enjoy walks around the town of Corbera, go to shops and bars, and that those small liberties feel like grand luxuries in the context of the weeks of lockdown we endured earlier this year. I’ve been focussing my time on collage, and have a number of pieces and projects on the go. These include my second-ever solo exhibition, which opens tomorrow night!

Since my last blog post, life has trotted on as usual. We’re still staying in our friend’s apartment which is a comforting foundation when every other part of life feels up in the air. I’d be lying if I said I was perky every day, but as time passes and we come to realise there will be no momentous end to ‘lockdown’, I count my blessings and remain grateful at least for the temporary base we have here near Valencia. We still don’t feel confident living in the van under the current controls, but also have some work scheduled here with Broaden over the coming months which means we wouldn’t be on the road yet anyway.

(images, left to right) Our first morning swim at Cullera beach, our first time into the city centre of Valencia since lockdown, and a rare moment back in our happy place driving the van.

We’ve been watching ‘Grayson Perry’s Art Club’ and it’s fantastic.

For those of you who didn’t catch the show on Channel 4, I highly recommend you watch it. The six-part series follows Grayson and his wife Phillipa in their studio, and features interviews with various celebrity guests as well as art submitted by the British public during lockdown. The show displays the wonderful breadth of mediums and subjects which can serve creativity, and is at once light-hearted, joyous, accessible and insightful.

For me, what made watching this show so special was that it reminded me of the power of making. Grayson draws various conclusions along the way about why we make art and what drives us to create, and at one point he says “the person who gets the most out of art is the person who makes it”. This idea really resonated with me, and is perhaps the reason why I’ve ended up making more collage than I probably ever have before whilst in lockdown.

Collage has taken on new dimensions for me as a way to escape. It’s a means of expression without having to use words or defined thought.

The world can feel like a noisy and overwhelming place right now. I wrote a week and a half ago about the need to address systemic problems like racism and the importance of pushing on in an attempt to make the world a better place. In the knowledge that these challenges will prevail, even in different forms, art offers me a bit of headspace and separation from it all. As my collages are colourful and surreal, they often end up injecting some positivity and humour into my life (a much-needed antidote to taking things too seriously). Perhaps playful art has an important role to play in trying times?

(images, left to right) Mounting collages ready for framing, making my most recent piece, ‘Eat Your Breakfast’, and hanging the framed collages in MiKENGO cafe.

Making art can also build bridges to others.

I’ve generally found the collage community to be a really welcoming one, and have connected with so many other collage artists (mainly through Instagram) each of whom have their own personal style. It’s interesting to see the trends in different places too - there seem to be a lot of collage artists in Central and South America for example, and the artform also seems to attract more women than men (I’m not sure what’s driving that though?).

One fantastic example of the collage community and the power of the internet has been ‘Cut It Out’, an online collage exhibition I’m part of (and was invited to by another collage artist who I met online!). Drawing together artists around the world and with 265 pieces in total which are all up for sale, ‘Cut It Out’ is the brainchild of Kate Hulett. Kate is the owner of the store Kate & Abel (located in Fremantle, Western Australia), and the innovation and drive she had to set up a collective digital show is probably what inspired me to organise my own solo collage show which opens this week (more about that later). It’s been a wonderful experience meeting other collage artists through the show, and a pleasure to have sold a piece through the site too. If you want to take a peek at all the work still up for sale, it runs until the 5th July.

(image) ‘This Is Your Cathedral’ on exhibition and up for sale at ‘Cut It Out’.

Everyone makes art in their own particular way.

Another resounding message from the Grayson Perry show is that there is no ‘right’ way to do art. A refreshing contrast to the stuffy art-talk and sense of exclusion the art world can exude, Grayson showcased so many people each making things in their own particular way.

My particular ‘way’ is that I love working within defined boundaries. Restrictions give me space to innovate in other ways, and I like the idea of pushing one format again and again to see how much it has to offer. If one day it seemed that my collages were no longer saying something ‘new’ to me each time I made a new piece, I’d be ready to move on, perhaps working at a different scale or with different materials. But for now, those boundaries actually give me freedom and give my work a specific ‘look and feel’ too.

Bryony’s collage criteria:

Artworks are square

Artworks are 21 x 21cm (notwithstanding a handful of slightly larger pieces)

Artworks are analogue (i.e. cut by hand, stuck by hand, using physical paper)

No post-production (apart from digital scanning and some colour correcting)

Process is free-flowing and doesn’t start with a pre-determined outcome

Avoid overthinking (especially when naming pieces!)

With these boundaries as my guiding framework, I’ve been busy making collages since Spain entered the ‘Estado del Alarma’. As well as the eight that are in ‘Cut It Out’, I had made various others and it was when I started to look at the collection as a whole that I thought about the idea of doing a solo exhibition.

Inspired by ‘Cut It Out’ and encouraged by the return to normality in Spain, I set the wheels in motion for a small solo exhibition. And now, the show is a reality and it opens tomorrow night!

My mum has always told me to actively search out opportunities and ‘make sh*t happen’ - a mantra I probably had in mind when I approached MiKENGO cafe in Valencia and asked how they’d feel about having my art on their walls! This moment of optimism paid off when the lovely couple who run the cafe said yes and then all of a sudden I was having a show… and that’s how ‘Stop Making Sense’ was born.

Since then, I’ve been somewhat frantically sourcing frames, mounting pieces and working out layouts for the exhibition. Then at the start of this week, I hung the pieces (which would’ve been impossible without George my trusty art assistant). While it’s been a busy few days, it’s also been a welcome change to have an actual physical event to be planning for and looking forward to. The act of not only making art, but exhibiting it has kept me going and now tomorrow is the big night! I never have a clue who’s reading this blog, but if you live in Valencia and fancy an evening out, please do join us at MiKENGO cafe, 6:00pm til 8:0pm on 25th June. For the rest of you, I’ll be live-streaming a small tour of the show at 5:30pm (Spain time, that’s 4:30pm in the UK) over on the Analogue Bryony page and it’d be great to see you there!

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A post shared by Bryony (@analoguebryony) on Jun 18, 2020 at 3:50am PDT

I wanted the show to be an antidote to the gravity of the current world. I’ll be exhibiting a mix of pieces I’ve made from as far back as 2016 when I started making work as ‘Analogue Bryony’ right up to work I’ve made in the last fortnight. Reflecting on the pieces, I realised the common thread was that I was inviting the viewer to suspend reality, even just for a while, and to stop making sense.

While ‘Stop Making Sense’ is really just ten small bits of paper stuck on a wall in a cafe, it’s also a small victory. I hope the least that it does is give others the courage to make and exhibit too.

As Grayson Perry said, “the person who gets the most out of art is the person who makes it”. Being part of ‘Cut It Out’, planning ‘Stop Making Sense’ and making collages for myself or as commissions definitely gives me meaning. Even if no-one else likes them, there is something about the self-expression the collages offer which is unrivalled by any other activity - not even writing this blog (which can actually even be a real headache because it relies on words and literal descriptions!).

(image) The artwork for ‘She’, a commission for Fleur Rouge’s latest single which you can listen to here.

Perhaps my desire is that through lockdown, through programs like Graysons, through seeing my exhibition or through just having a play with some materials at home, other people can start to tap into the incredible power of making art too. Whether it’s for self-expression, making sense of the world or even escaping from it, art will be a crucial tool as we carve a path beyond 2020 and Covid-19.