What Are the Odds?
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I am sitting here in my studio looking at a print of a collage I made a few years ago and thinking about the sheer improbability of all the things that had to come together to make it.
How many individual little bits of paper went into the collage? I stopped counting at about 50. There are bits from a British music magazine, some from an Italian fashion mag, an American science magazine, and Australian surfing magazine. And more. So much more. I can see a bit from an interior design magazine, a bit of a comic book, and another fragment from some street press.
What are the odds, the probabilities, that all of those things would come together at a single place and a single time in order for me to cut them up and turn them into one of my artworks?
How many people have been involved in that process? Photographers, models, hair stylists, fashion designers, magazine editors, graphic designers, publishers, printers. Then there is freight and transit to get these bits and pieces from one place to another. Then the initial retailer, and since most of the materials I use are second hand, the original owners, the journeys they have taken with each magazine, and ultimately passing it on through an Op Shop, where I picked them up for 50 cents each.
But it doesn’t stop there. I could have used each of those pieces in a previous collage. Many of these things sat in my studio for an extended period of time, sometimes even a decade before I used them. There were probably a hundred opportunities for each one of those little scraps to be used in another piece of art making them unavailable for this one. But they weren’t. I could have made a mistake when I was cutting them up and sliced or ripped right through each fragment, rendering it unusable, or at least unable to be used in the same way.
But finally it all comes together. All of these bits of paper from all over the world, conceived and produced by countless individuals, all with their own complicated journeys through time and space, arriving at a single point, for me to parse, disassemble and reconstitute into a single entity.
And I sign my name on the back.
It feels weird to be taking any credit whatsoever for combining the bits into a collage when, considering all that has had
to take place before I get my grubby little paws on them, I have played such a tiny role in their collective histories.
Pumping on the Stereo
Black Lung - Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars (1994)
We’ve just bought a new CD player, so we are pulling out a whole bunch of old discs that haven’t seen the light of day for quite some time. This was one of them. Experimental electronic soundscapes, if that is your cup of tea…
The Bug (& Earth) - Concrete Desert (2017)
Nicole brought this CD home from the library based on absolutely nothing but the cover art. And it is really, really, good. Droning dark ambient. Two thumbs up!
Spike Hellis - s/t (2022)
A handy little countdown on Spotify tells me that it is 66 days until the release of a new Spike Hellis album. In anticipation, I gave this one another spin. Electronic Body Music. Right up my alley.
Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts V: Together (2020)
Ooh, it must be all of two weeks since I’ve listened to a Nine Inch Nails album. This is one of the pandemic “Ghosts” albums. Ambient and lovely.
SINE - La Mordre (2026)
I haven’t actually listened to this album yet, but I know I am going to like it so I’ll link it here anyway. New album from SINE released a week ago.
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I accidentally discovered Together by NIN and it's just so beautiful! Need to listen to the rest of that album.
Also love the thoughts about everything it takes for a collage to wind up being what it is by the time it's finished!