From Andrew Frost…
The curse of the artist-collector is deciding what to do with all the stuff. Timothy Paul Myers has collected postcards and 35mm slides for a number of years, amassing an archive of vintage images ranging from the impersonal imagery of the mass-produced postcards to the photo trouvee of decontextualized personal images.
Myers treats his collages and assemblages in a repetitive and methodical manner creating grids and patterns: Totem gathers together an array of slides and fixes them into metallic frames and with their internal lighting transforms the images into totemic collages that lean against the wall, precarious towers of fading film. A sequence of works entitled Myron B Johnson affix pencil nubs with daubs of acrylic paint on top of vintage documents arrayed in a grid while From Parts and Pieces A & B outline picture elements within postcards, again arrayed in a grid.
The rather strange thing about collecting old and vintage material is the discovery that so much of the past is still with us. Steeped in the magic of nostalgic association it might almost be enough to leave the found material as is, but in Myer’s hands the past is given a make over in the strict aesthetic of the contemporary world. Everything old is new again.
Until September 29
MiCK Gallery, Paddington
Pic: Timothy Paul Myers, From Parts and Pieces B. (1), 2013. Vintage postcards and correction tape 72 x 72cm.
