Gary Colclough

(b 1977. Lives and works in London)

“My recent collages explore combinations of images of wild and cultivated landscapes.

I have been working with bookplates from nature and travel from books of the English and European landscape that encourage us to appreciate and value the landscape, but are also part of a tradition of commodifying it. The books often present the landscape in picturesque terms emphasising its beauty and presenting it as something that exists for us to consume, either vicariously or in person as tourists and site-seers".

“Working with collage and the processes of cutting, reshaping and constructing new images of the landscape I’m reminded of the area I grew up around in the South West of England. A subtly industrial landscape, although green and bucolic, it has been shaped by hundreds of years of farming, grazing and cultivation. My collages are an attempt to weave together thoughts and ideas about the landscape as a construction and to think about the images I work with as a collection of ideas, histories and perspectives as much as places”.

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