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Surrealist Collages Probe Materialism, History, and Home Furnishings

Ben Branagan’s collages are like a home furniture catalog designed by Magritte.
A collage from the Possible Disasters series. All images courtesy of the artist

A catalog photo of a wooden table is splattered with a forrest of green. Two white reclining chairs are obscured by a blotch of textured red clay. These nonsensical images are products of Ben Branagan’s Possible Disasters project, an ongoing collage series exploring material culture and imagined futures.

The artist, designer, and associate lecturer at London’s University of the Arts is using collage as a form of drawing or sketching, making quick and casual connections and dissonances between images. His working method for this series is faster and more relaxed than that of his other projects, like pots made of pulped old books, or this Safe, Flexible, Hygienic, and Clean headdress of sausages. His captivating collages are a visual treat, but Branagan’s interests lie both in the aesthetic and beyond.

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“A lot of the motivations for the images are formal; certain shapes and contours suggest themselves, then repeat, lurking and moving through to subsequent images. But there is also a certain sense of cataclysm or entropy I’m interested in, with the final pieces becoming surreal scenes from a possible future,” Branagan tells The Creators Project.

Although collage factors into his practice often, this series takes a different approach than his previous collages, which are more restrainedand monochromatic—than those of Possible Disasters.

“Whereas previously I might have separated out a certain type of image or ones sourced from a particular place, with this series I want to collect a more chaotic or fragmentary view of the world, a heap of parts that overlap and intermingle, drawn from a wide range of sources; contemporary magazines, old books, things I’ve found, things I’ve photographed myself,“ he explains.

Branagan is also interested in material culture, evident by his use of images of household furniture.

“Our relationship with objects goes back longer than any other cultural form and in a lot of the work I make, both collages and objects, I’m interested in the role artefacts play in informing the narratives we construct about ourselves. Tools and objects formed to manipulate and reflect the world around us become, in time, stores of history; sites of speculation and conjecture about both the past and what might come. Long after we have gone our objects will remain, mute witnesses to our lives.“

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See more of Branagan’s work on his Instagram and website. His work will be featured in a group show at London’s Chopping Block Gallery from March 31st through April 7th. For more information, click here.

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