«In the show Dreaming through –on & into the exotic we present a mixed media collage salon, which explores travel and collage as interlinked cultural feminine practices in its relationship to contemporary art. Through visual essays and publications, we revisit narratives, which combine historical archive and speculative fiction into the study of the modernist collage- novel.
The main subjects of these works range from Mary Delany’s invention of botanical collage (Flora Delanica, 1772-1782), to Max Ernst’s collage novel Une Semaine de Bonté (A Week of Goodness, 1934) and Valentine Penrose’ poem-collage Dons des Feminines (Gifts of the Feminine, 1951). This journey makes visible ways in which collage creates spaces that facilitate experiments with botanical taxonomies as metaphors for gender and sexuality and also a critique of the domestic setting conveyed through escapist dreams and travel to exotic locations.
These works were developed in residency at Stockwell Studios (former Annie McCall’s hospital) and are a tribute to the artist’s community that built the studios’ wild life garden, a constant source of inspiration, that is being now destroyed by the Lambeth Council to make space for luxury flats.»
paula roush & maria lusitano
