Mask (Film Portrait Collage) CLXXXII 2015
John Stezaker (1949 – )
Details
- Dimension
- Media
- collage
- Accession number
- P8593
Summary
Using found photographs and printed material, Stezaker’s collages juxtapose disparate sources to creates compelling new images. The writer and curator Michael Bracewell recently wrote, “Disquieting, poetic, compelling, romantic, inscrutable, glamorous and strange, Stezaker’s re-arrangement and intervention into the virtually infinite resource of mass imagery conflates aesthetics, psychology, cultural and visual theory. In this his work resembles nothing less than a visual encyclopaedia of human consciousness – a ‘lectio divina’ of semiotics.”
Hands of figures in historic film stills and actors’ promotional material feature in many of Stezaker’s collages, a part of the human body often seen but rarely considered. Using discarded hands from display mannequins as his sculptural subject matter, Stezaker re-appropriates their original use and function by presenting them in a new, revised context. Here both found image and object engage in a sensory interplay, exploring touch as a visual motif.
Glossary
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Curator
A person who creates exhibitions or who is employed to look after and research museum objects.
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Film
A transparent, flexible plastic material, usually of cellulose acetate or polyester, on which light-sensitive emulsion is coated, or on which an image can be formed by various transfer processes.