MISSIVE

Missive is a collage project of 365 individual collages created one a day in 2022.

Missives are messages, letters or a long and onerous correspondence, from the latin missus, “to send”.

Each collage began with a blank postcard (a message not sent), and throughout the year vintage references were added; classical statuary, modernist forms from architectural review, and figure references from old hollywood, glamour nudes and art photography.

This process of making followed an imposed structure while mapping the margins of the nude. Pushing at the form, the gesture, the patriarchal structures around and constructing it. Much of my collage is interested in liminal spaces, edges, negative spaces and openings. The gaps leave you space to think or fill as you may. Collage is the perfect medium to explore ambivalence, a duality or double reading.

“We can now place the female nude not only at the centre of the definition of art, but also on the edge of the category, pushing against the limit… The female nude is the border..” Lynda Nead