Around 1998-99 I had the idea to create 2D paper collages of vibrant areas of my home city of Birmingham in England. A tremendous amount of enthusiastic work went in, and I had long-standing exhibitions at restaurants, the large Central Library and various other spaces for two or three years.
I would use a variety of large, flat papers to textured ‘banana skin’/tissue-y papers and also decorative patterns. Using spray-mount (spray glue) mostly. I would also add less conventional materials sometimes, from glitter to dried flowers to real autumn leaves gathered from pavements.
My wife has often joked over the years that she keeps finding collage leaves around the house!
In more recent years I use paper glues and bits of paper, also combining traditional painting and pastel work with paper. I love the creativity and distinctness of craft papers.
my earliest large collage, above, ‘Sherborne Wharf’ (1999) which is part of Birmingham’s many canals
A simpler style and more offbeat composition, ‘Union Square Readers, NYC’. One of many New York scenes from my portfolio.
Venice, one of my “mosaic” collages
Michael Palin portrait (2011)
In 2011 I created a portrait of the actor and travel presenter Michael Palin, and sent it to him. I made it out of sections of maps! I had seen art made from maps before, not portraits as such though I’m sure there are some out there.
I feel like I had a lot of good ideas. There are trains in here, subway maps and the eyes are global maps of the Earth. It was a difficult portrait to make kind-of work. The execution was not perfect, and given another opportunity I would have taken more time and care over the fixing process. It may be long forgotten on a hidden shelf in a storage room at the RGS somewhere even if it’s still around. But it was wonderful to receive a short, quite positive comment from Michael through his agent and that was plenty enough reward in itself (see below).
“Dear Adam,
Please excuse this very late, but heartfelt, thank you for the ingenious and wonderfully original collage portrait which currently resides, appropriately, at the Royal Geographical Society.
Thanks for taking the time, not only to create it, but also to send it to me, normally in this busy world we don’t have much time for things like that.
Good luck in all your work and thanks again so much for the portrait.
Michael Palin”
The Handsome Family and Calexico portraits
above, a detail from the ‘The Handsome Family’ collage
In 2004 I had an idea to do “collage” portraits of kind-of well known or very well known people I admired. I was living in Spain out of season and it was quiet, almost lonesome, so I got a sense of optimism and well-being from working on the Handsome Family collage – who are a Gothy country-Americana band from New Mexico. Their music is often compelling, with Rennie’s dark humour and Brett’s baritone vocals.
I should really have been churning out pleasing Costa Blanca scenes and trying to sell them from market stalls or taking them to galleries but there didn’t seem to be much to find there at the time. I’ve always been pleased with the Handsomes piece (though it was too big and I cut it down to half in more recent years!).
Materials include a metal garland on the dress, dry grass I literally pulled out of the beach, and a spider made out of beads in the very bottom right hand corner.
Calexico
This a three panel piece from 2005, and if I ever frame it it would be around eight feet across with matting. Calexico are a band from Tucson, which music has been inspired both by the desert landscape around them and by Mexican traditions and influences. They are very impressive in live performances.
As for source material, for both the Handsome Family collage and the Calexico collage I used a photo of them through google images. After that, and for the background, the rest is a mixture of my imagination and other researched source material. Both bands are friendly enough to have posed for a photo, though at the time I hadn’t even thought about that (and would probably have been shy about doing that back then). I just wanted to get on with the projects quickly and have some fun with it.
Here are the individual panels of the Calexico piece, and as it would look if it’s ever framed.
Adam Hardy 