Dates: 13 November – 3 December 2023
Location: Studio 12, Backwater Artists Group, Wandesford Quay
Project Showcase: TBC
This project is intended to provide an opportunity for me to disassemble and re-examine some of the methods of indexing and categorisation used while building a database of found print imagery over the past 20 years. During the residency this bank of imagery will be shuffled in an experimental approach to indexing, with the intention of sparking new artistic directions.
The project is less about the process of collaging or splicing imagery than it is about examining my initial approach to associating imagery by theme. I will be working in an experimental and playful way, organising clipped images by their juxtaposition or association with other imagery, forming relationships by family, colour, subject or contrast.
This project draws inspiration from some of the scrapbook albums of Hannah Hoch, which create meaning from the associations between intact images and seem to form a collective pictorial narrative of their own.
About the Artist:
Tom Doig
Tom is a collage artist and photographer who has been based in Cork since 1994. Originally from Scotland, he grew up between London and Ireland. Tom graduated from CCAD in 2009 and completed a Masters in Arts and Process there in 2017. He is currently a member of Backwater Artist’s Darkroom, Cork Printmakers and Outlaw Studios.
Tom’s collages take their starting point from a database of found imagery which has been evolving for more than 20 years. This collection, which often draws from pictorial encyclopedias and scientific journals, reflects a preoccupation with material explanations of the natural universe.
Tom’s current work has evolved from a period of research examining the interplay between numbered illustrations and visual indexing, a common format in popular encyclopedias. The resulting photographic documentation has produced a series of compositions which play with academic conventions of categorisation and description.