I often find myself wondering why collage is the form of art that I get the most out of. I started working as a cartoonist and designer in the 1980s. This was a fertile time in British culture.
The short sharp shock of punk in the late 1970s had given way to something a bit more considered. The Clash discovered Disco, the Pistols started an extended holiday in Brazil, Paul Weller discovered Jazz. Meanwhile on the streets, the dandy New Romantics started clubs nobody could get in to, and Two Tone started a movement everyone was allowed into. Somehow amongst all this noise, I managed to find the occasional job drawing angry pigs for music magazines.
From the West End to Dundee
It’s safe to say that my eventual career found me while I was busy looking for something else. Cartooning soon gave way to poetry which seamlessly turned into stand up comedy and the myriad opportunities that came along with it. But all the while when I was working on television or the radio or in West End musicals or films, at the back of my head there is still that voice going “I thought you wanted to be an artist?” That question never left me, so after moving to Scotland in 2017, I decided to find out what I had missed by not studying, and enrolled for a BA in art at The University of Dundee.
One sunny Tuesday in Foundation year, we were all told to wait quietly where we were as there was ‘a meeting of the faculty’ taking place. Half an hour later, ashen faced lecturers were running around the corridors and studios shouting “Stand up and leave everything where it is! Go back home. You will be contacted in due course!” It was like that moment in films where the FBI bursts into an office and takes all the computers away. Covid 19 was in the house!
Long story short, any chance of getting fully comprehensive art education in person was destroyed overnight by a virus. The year four students never got a final show, which is pretty much the entire point of doing the course. The parlous state of art education in the UK is possibly a chat for another time, but suffice to say, Coronavirus didn’t exactly help.
The plague hits us
The Covid-19 pandemic became the biggest national emergency of my lifetime. (Okay, there was the Cuban Missile Crisis but in my defence I was only four months old). The strange thing about it which hasn’t been fully examined is the fact that the majority of people were shut in at home. House arrest for over a year. Billions all in a very similar boat. Individuals reacted in many different ways. Banana bread, new pets, Zoom quizzes, binge watching, DIY, learning a new language, a musical instrument. Everyday life found a way…
It soon became apparent that this thing would not “All be over by Christmas” so it made sense to set up a work space where I could make art. (I say ‘work’ space, it was more somewhere that my wife could send me when the spectacle of my chain watching ‘Agents of Shield’ for twelve hours at a time became a bit too much). An old wallpapering table, and a truckload of Blu tack converted one corner of a bedroom into an avant garde wonderland. I used to collect photos, text and images from magazines and periodicals, and proceeded to make a kind of temporary collaged mural to provide inspiration, having done a similar thing during the collage module in foundation.
Of Lovely Eggs and Polaroids
A few months into lockdown Lancaster punk band The Lovely Eggs sent me a copy of their latest album ‘I Am Moron’. Just before texting ‘thank you’ I remembered that while clearing out the attic, I had stumbled across an old Polaroid camera. It struck me that it would be fun to take a picture brandishing the vinyl, which I duly did. Once the image slowly emerged I thought it looked a bit sparse, so up to the ad hoc studio and the mountain of scrap. I spent a glorious afternoon literally tearing through old music magazines, books and catalogues, hunting out bits to enhance the photo. Having enjoyed it so much, I tore downstairs and took another self-portrait to do the same for the artist Peter Liversidge. I was hooked.
The notion of dispatching these collage polaroids out to mates just as a sort of “Hello” took hold. I decided to send 100 of what I decided to call Collaroids to friends, not only in the UK, but all over the world. I had stacks and stacks of vintage magazines, comics, periodicals and books, providing raw materials for the project. I used glue sticks and PVA, as well as investing in some Swann Morton scalpels so as to be more precise with cutting.
Over the next three months, I made 100 collages which were sent to all four corners of the globe. Tokyo, Siberia, Cape Town, Sao Paolo, Sydney, Mumbai, Southend-on-Sea. The project became a real inspiration, taking me away from the telly and introspective navel gazing.
Making collages
Collage-making is a natural fit for the disordered mind. I began to realise that a lifetime of hoarding wasn’t merely about keeping things, as I was perfectly happy to cut them up. The love of image, line, colour and form, originally fostered by my mum, was now being put to practical use. Something which started out as a bit of a laugh shifted into a full time commitment. The more Collaroids I made the more sophisticated their construction became. By the time number 100 went to Los Angeles, I had made a global collage. A single piece of work in 100 fragments spaced all over the world. It seemed somehow fitting to respond to our global pandemic with a global artwork.
I’m delighted that Emma Howe at the Minories asked to show prints of all 100 of these images collected together for the first time. We have also tracked down sixteen originals to display. While studying at art school (a course which was sadly never completed) I was frequently asked to explain work. By ‘explain’ I actually think what they wanted us to do was justify or even defend what we made. When looking back over the lockdown project I get the sense that I have found a credible answer. Art for some, is the only response to the times in which we find ourselves.
There is a popular saying; “When the going gets tough, the tough get going!” Well, I truly hope that ‘The tough’ have a lovely time because I can assure you that it is equally true to say, “When the going gets tough, artists make art”.
What we did in the Plague: An International Covid-19 project by Phill Jupitus, runs from Saturday 4 July – Sunday 16 August 2026 at the Minories Gallery, 74 High Street, Colchester, CO1 1UE. Entry is free. Alongside the show, Phill will be running a series of collage workshops at the Minories on Sunday 5 July, and other events across the exhibition run will feature artists Peter Liversidge, Gee Vaucher and Cassetteboy. Tickets for the collage workshops available at the Minories website.
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