Rupture, Rapture: Womxn in Collage brings together new and existing works, alongside special commissions to showcase collage in an expanded field, incorporating multimedia, sculpture, sound and performance art. Displaying over twenty collage works by 14 womxn artists, this exhibition challenges the notion of collage as a fixed category or form—instead revealing collage as a feminist praxis of transformation, rupture, and collision.

Commissioned works will be presented by 16NSt resident artists’ Edie Baker, Gabrielle Lockwood Estrin, and Hannan Jones, developed in-situ at Patricia Fleming Gallery, along with a collage installation and performance from Jen DeNike (16th Sep), exhibiting the artist’s work in Scotland for the first time.

New and historic work will be shown by Sam Ainsley, Claire Barclay, Barbara F. Kendrick, Janie Nicoll, Kate V. Robertson, and Catherine Street.

Significant existing works will be displayed by Louise Hopkins, Zoë Mendelson, Victoria Morton, and Alberta Whittle. 

Curated by Aga Paulina Młyńczak and Nell Cardozo with support from Kelly Rappleye (16NSt Curatorial Collective), Sam Ainsley (artist and former Head of Glasgow School of Art’s MFA) and artist Janie Nicoll, this survey exhibition hosted by Patricia Fleming Gallery displays a diverse repertoire of over twenty collage works, several of which have never been shown before.

By putting multimedia sculptural installations together with paper works, Młyńczak and Cardozo aim to expand the notion of what contemporary collage can do. Displaying work from womxn artists at various stages in their careers who use expanded collage processes, this exhibition aims to create an inter-generational feminist dialogue.

16NSt’s Rupture, Rapture: Womxn in Collage project comprises an emerging artists’ residency and publication alongside this exhibition to trace an alternative, feminist lineage of collage in everyday practices by womxn and queer communities, which have traditionally been refused art historical recognition, from scrapbooking to collage poetry. These homegrown acts of cultural transformation inform the ethos of cross-media experimentation and re-assemblage of everyday material that is shared across the works in this exhibition.

PUBLICATION

Opening night (Thursday 24th August) will launch the limited-release publication ‘RUPTURE, RAPTURE’, featuring rarely-seen collage works by Maud Sulter alongside a critical survey of contemporary womxn’s collage in Scotland, framed by a curatorial discussion from Młyńczak and Cardozo in ‘More than Cut and Paste: a curatorial conversation, texted’. The publication, designed by Phoebe Kerr, also shares a collage image from prolific Glasgow band Comfort’s latest music video ‘Real Woman’, with essays on the use of collage in queer and feminist activism, the politics of feminist collaboration and mothering in the arts sector, reflections from Teri Henderson on curating a collection of US Black collage art, and collaged ‘Artist Statements’ from 16NSt resident artists Hannan Jones and Gabrielle Lockwood Estrin accompanied by an editorial contribution by Rappleye.