Abstract Automatic Collage: 81, 2020 (paper collage)

In 2020 I undertook 'The 100 Day Project' on Instagram. I set myself the daily task of creating an abstract in 30 mins or less. The idea was to shake me out of my preferences. I wanted to limit myself timewise and make myself uncomfortable. I wanted to do things that I did not normally do or like. Earlier on during Covid I'd created a piece named ‘Covid Colour Therapy’ - this is where it all begun. I wanted some relief from my surroundings so decided that I would take the colourful contents of my cut-offs and create abstract collages with them. And yes, although this is not the first time I had done this, it got me thinking back to the start. My obsession for playing with cutoffs was influenced by the Dadaists and their process in making poems whereby they would take a newspaper article as long as the poem they would want to make, cut the words out one by one, put the contents in a bag, shake it gently, pick the words out one by one and place them on to a piece of paper to form a poem. Abstract. Recently, I had so many cut-offs that I was forced to put them in a bag and it reminded me of the Dadaists and their automatic poem. I thought to myself, whether I work directly from the bag picking pieces blindly or if I empty the whole contents on to the table I am still working in an automatic state. And so was born the automatic abstract collage and my project.