Collage allows the opening up of conscious, which is very direct... it's also a way of looking at what you are consuming all the time
- John Stezaker

In this studio you will explore contemporary collage, montage and mixage as a studio practice. From the early 20th Century, through the work of Picasso, Braque, Hannah Hoch, Eileen Agar with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements, collage has been a new medium for critical, irreverent and rhetorical image making. In the one hundred years of the medium, collage has developed into a salient visual language reflecting our fragmented image-saturated environment, and a potent voice for social, political, personal and global concerns.

Karen ann Donnachie will lead you through a series of theoretical and practical workshops with the objective of creating a rich portfolio of original experimental collage-based works in a range of mediums, both analogue and digital, across image and typography. You will push the boundaries of contemporary collage while navigating conceptual frameworks, methods, design theory, as well as specific discourse around the ethics of appropriation techniques. The context of collage will be introduced through short seminars focussing on landmark case-studies and critical theory in the field.

At the conclusion of the studio you will have developed a portfolio of collage-based works for a range of speculative uses from posters to album covers, animation to large scale installation. Your work will build a publication (analogue and digital) over the semester that will be your "Proof of Work", which will become the basis for your SKO submission. You will have contributed to the organisation and promotion of the LESS Festival of Contemporary Collage 2021, and finally, your experimental collage works will be published through a public-facing dedicated website.

Collage Workshops

***No Scrapbooking allowed!***

Collage...is a true reflection of the world we live in today...[it] is all about the recycling, reinterpretation and reprocessing of our collective past, present and future
-Gallagher, 2011

This studio is about bringing Contemporary Collage techniques to your professional design studio practice.

You will expand your design toolkit by developing analogue and digital collage techniques in paper, sound, animation, code, web design, 3D design, and mixed media. You can expect to make a mess every week through the guided activities, individual and group challenges [please note the obligatory materials required in the 'Notes' section below]. You will be required to be camera and mic on for most online activities, and you will be expected to gather new collage materials weekly. Your engagement in in-class activities and discussions will be assessed in your assignment tasks under the rubric criteria 'Engagement' and 'Working with others'.

You will be introduced to the broader field of collage via a series of short, lively seminars with case studies and critical theory.
You will be encouraged to develop a critical position vis-a-vis collage and appropriation techniques. The studio will engage with readings from within and around the field such as Guy Debord, Nicholas Bourriaud, Jean Baudrillard, with a weekly 'book club', and you will be expected to lead discussions on your allocated reading (roster tbc).

You will assist in the organisation, and delivery, of a hybrid online and Viborg-Melbourne edition of the LESS Festival of Contemporary Collage Exhibition, to be held in September 2021.

The assessment tasks in this studio are designed to help you produce a number of original typographic fonts and designs:

1. A group project: contribute to a collaborative-collage work.
2. A major individual collage-project presented as a digital publication &/or new-media project.
3. An SKO: capturing all the theory and skills from the studio that were significant to you, including a reflective piece of critical writing on your personal research into generative, parametric, and computational collage.

Fragmented Vision: https://mikedempsey.typepad.com/graphic_journey_blog/2013/01/fragmented-vision.html

LESS Festival of Contemporary Collage, 2021 Melbourne-Viborg Edition.

Design and the Post-Digital, Designing through Image, Designing Disobedience

REQUIRED MATERIALS: You will be expected to have a collection of printed materials that you can cut up and collage throughout the semester. These should include, but are not limited to [picture] books, magazines, catalogues, posters, snack packets, advertising, personal notes & letters, photographs, postcards, newspapers etc. Variety is key. It is recommended that you gather these materials into a dedicated box or crate that you can access throughout the semester.
REQUIRED TOOLS: You will need to have a space to work that can be filmed/photographed. In this space you will need a cutting mat; ample blank paper & card (coloured, black, white, patterned?); ruler, blade, scissors; markers; acrylic paint (black/white); chalk pens; a scanner or quality camera; a printer (or access to a printer).
WORKSPACE SETUP: You will be expected to stream and document your work in progress, during every class, you must have a working microphone and webcam. For the sharing of work, you will need to set up a tripod or clamp for your camera/cameraphone that points to your working area. You should also install and test still-image capture, stop-motion and time-lapse apps for your setup, possible lighting setup, and file management (ie. how you can move images from your device to your computer or to the cloud).