Collage Conversations
“ first, you have to forget your family, then you forget your friends and finally you forget yourself, and when you have done that you are free to paint. ”
Sally Appadu
Since July 2007 I have been working on a project entitled Collage Conversations with Linda Jane James, a visual artist.
Our shared interest was based around the power of visual language. We decided to complete our own individual personal collage journals, in 2 books bought from a charity shop. We met in various locations including art galleries and local cafes and created various shared collages. We both brought with us media images from childhood and business which complimented both our professional backgrounds.
As our meetings progressed it became clear that we could not only have non verbal conversations using collage techniques but that this process was an exploratory, thought provoking and a creative one. On our last meeting at the Tate Gallery in London, we completed a collage together. When analysing the finished piece in our discussions we found that key themes from our subconscious minds appeared to emerge. Images that were important to us as individuals stood out as we analysed our finished collage piece.
In order to compare a personal experience of collage techniques to the pupil’s perspective, I decided to complete a shared collage with my year 1 class. I wanted to answer the following questions:
- What images would the children choose?
- What would these images mean to each child?
- What are the conclusions from this research enquiry?
Pupils selected images that personally appealed to them. Overwhelmingly 27 out of the 27 boys all chose superheroes that they aspire to be like or superhero toys that they were hoping for a birthday or Christmas present.
To support this finding when questioning the children on their selection of images, pupils said………
“I’ve got the Ben 10 one I want to be like him look at it, its there. I’m going to stick it here….” (in the middle of the paper)
“This is great I love cutting out especially Ben 10”
The images that the girls selected were more varied. They included dolls, jewellery, fairies, suitcases, trampolines and tents.
Following the shared collage, I discussed with the class the collage process and asked them why they had selected their chosen image. The pupils gave me very detailed and enthusiastic reasons about their choice of image. I wanted to see if this enthusiasm would translate onto the page of their news books. So I gave them the opportunity to write a recount on the day we made a class collage.
The children were all very well motivated to write a recount of our collage and this enthusiasm seemed to have a positive effect on their writing. Without exception the pupils’ writing for each ability range was of an excellent quality.
The pupils were well motivated to write and this was because they had a positive emotional attachment to the collage process. Writing had a purpose because they wanted to tell the reader about the image that they had selected.
This research enquiry has led me to think that there may be many opportunities to link subjects together to make learning more meaningful for children. In this research enquiry the curriculum links were art and writing and the collage experience directly had an impact on pupils’ .performance. Making cross curricular links where possible, enables teachers to take a holistic approach to planning and delivering the curriculum and engages and motivates pupils. At Gilbertstone Primary we are planning a creative approach to the curriculum from September 2008 where cross curricular links will play an instrumental role in childrens’ learning.
Linda Jane James
In our co-mentoring relationship we wanted to explore our different textual and visual experiences from business, fine art and childhood. Our focus was to explore the processes involved in the integration of visual and textual languages - “visual thinking”. Collage became our medium of conversation.
Political commentary, shock, anti-art, revealing the unconscious. Revolutionary and reactionary. Cutting, pasting, drawing, obliterating and reforming, making a mark. The mind can go in every imaginable direction, tapping into what you know, revealing what you don’t know. Infinite possibilities for transformation played out on paper. Ordering and re-ordering, confronting and breaking free from the limitations of the rectangle, the A4 page, the confines of the chair and the screen. The hands and the unconscious modifying, adapting and working with the possibility for change that always exists.
In our co-mentoring relationship we wanted to explore our different textual and visual experiences from business, fine art and childhood. Our focus was to explore the processes involved in the integration of visual and textual languages - “visual thinking”. Collage became our medium of conversation.
Spaces of equality, playful, unbounded and fluid. Co-mentoring collage conversations are simultaneously simple and complicated. From the private landscape of the book, to the collaborative, public landscape of a large roll of paper, languages merge into one another, expressing different histories, imaginations and viewpoints. Always present is the possibility that a new kind of reality will be invented, not limited by an ability to communicate ideas coherently or the need to explain. What happens on the page is ambiguous, silent, open to interpretation. With a desire to be seen and heard and an openness to share, explore and reflect, collage conversations open up the potential of emerging ideas, develop confidence to engage with the unknown and communicate without fear of ridicule.
Collage Conversation: a definition collaged from Wikipedia and the Creative Partnerships Reflect Handbook and LindaJaneJames.blogs.com
A collage conversation is the integration of visual and textual concepts utilising abstractions and concrete objects which make up the world we live in.
A collage conversation (as a form of co-mentoring) aims to develop a flexible range of language registers in order to frame appropriate questions, respond to different personal narratives and communicate meaningfully, seeing where your co-mentor is coming from. Informing thought and behaviour in relation to others collage conversations strengthens a person’s sense of identity and deepens their self-awareness and understanding of their personal motivation, values and emotions.
Collage conversations are the ideal form of communication in some respects, since they allow people with different views of a topic and a mix of visual and language skills to learn from each other.
Collage conversation includes mutually interesting connections that helps each person to shift their perspective, change their behaviour and develop a sense of responsibility and authorship for their professional practice in a wide range of social and cultural contexts.
Mary Kelly in her famous work, Post Partum Document (1973-1979) observes that in a child’s deciphering of parental desire ‘ actions, gestures and even silences are as formative as spoken language’. This work was a seven year process of reflection and visualisation which ‘fused aesthetics, politics, psychoanalysis and radical formalism’, ‘you complete the work by anticipating rather than judging or deciphering it’. Working in this way is liberating.
Self esteem and identity are challenged, it might be the first time thoughts have been made visual, seeing what you think. Visually working on a thought is powerful. Having confidence to make changes, to transform and to move forward encourages growth. Re- shaping, crossing out, obliterating, re-enforcing, building up or taking away layers, thoughts and identity/ideas are not lost as they often are in the hubbub of conversation. They remain on the page. Throwaway thoughts and serious thoughts become equal. Meanings emerge through interconnections, re-working and varied interpretations. They become stronger, richer and deeper. Highly visual, always alluding to an unfinished state, the collage conversation and the practice of contemplation is possible long after the memory fades.
