Taking the Scissors to Society: The Photomontages of Roger Hudson
Roger Hudson
Greenhills Press
English
Text by Roger Hudson and Seán Hillen.
Softcover
Edition 7/200
64 pages
300 x 230 mm
2016
ISBN 9780993122910
Fascinated with art from his school days, Roger Hudson later became committed to photomontage and to investigating and extending its techniques and styles and subject matters. Mainly in the congenial atmosphere of serious art classes, he created a whole range of works of varying sizes expressing, directly and obliquely, his attitudes to our society, war, the environment, consumerism, our relationship to animals, poverty, power, success, and other topics. Hudson used variations of scissor cutting and hand tearing, exploring especially the use of templates and the complexity of image, metaphor and meaning this made possible.
This book collects together 44 of his most effective photomontages – all created from photographs torn from colour magazines – together with two examples of his early oil paintings and his own recollections of his thought processes at the time and a few associated poems. The works are arranged in a sequence that follows the process of his explorations of techniques and topics. Presented in magazine style, it represents a visual autobiography covering the major part of Hudson’s life.
(source: http://takingthescissors.com/the-book.html)
About the Artist
Roger Hudson did Art at A-level at school and continued painting at college and after for a time. He discovered photomontage only when doing an evening class as a way to get back into art after a long break. “I got hooked by the range of creative possibilities achievable just by cutting up pages from colour magazines into new shapes and assembling them into fresh images and concepts using a technique of cardboard templates. They come out like essays, statements, narratives and poems exploring my attitudes to aspects of modern life in multi-coloured, multi-layered images within images within images.”
His photomontages have featured in three solo exhibitions in Dublin and group shows in London, Dublin and Drogheda. The previous paintings appeared in Open exhibitions in London.
rogerhudson.me.uk
(soure not available online)
About the Contributor
Born in 1961 in Newry, Ireland, Hillen lives and works in Dublin. He studied at Belfast College of Art, the London College of Printing and at the Slade School. An artist whose work has both popular and intellectual appeal, Hillen first gained notice in the U.K. with his early photo-montage works from the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ era which have since become widely studied.
His original photographs have recently been acquired as a Permanent Collection by the National Library of Ireland Photographic Archive, and published as a book by The History Press in Ireland and in 2014 in the U.S.
He has also executed commissions and collaborations including stage design, advertisements, title graphics and permanent sculptures for Citi Group and Dublin City Council.
He co-designed, with landscape architect Desmond Fitzgerald, the Omagh Bomb Memorial unveiled in August 2008.
His work is in many private and public collections, and he has won several awards and prizes including a major bursary in 2015. He given a number of lectures and appeared on a number of panels.
seanhillen.com
(source: https://www.flickr.com/people/seanhillen/)
About the Publisher
Greenhills Press is located in Drogheda, Co. Louth, Ireland.
Further Information
Further information on the project’s website.
