An Encylopaedia of Great British Collage, Or How I Learnt To Stop Worrying And Love The Monarchy
An Encyclopaedia of Great British Collage (Or How I Learnt To Stop Worrying And Love The Monarchy) is a forthcoming exhibition of collage art by Orcadian artist Martin Laird. It will be on show at Northlight gallery in Stromness from the 19th of September to the 8th of October 2024, 10am to 5pm daily except Sundays.
The collages are constructed from antique journals, encyclopaedias and Royal souvenir memorabilia – primarily material concerning the 1897 Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, 1935 Silver Jubilee of King George V, 1936 abdication of Edward VIII, and 1936 coronation of George VI.
This exhibition represents countless hours spent poring over thousands of fragile pages looking for meaningful connections, and dozens of dulled scalpel blades. Through the alchemy of collage, the leaden heads of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha/Windsor dynasty are transmuted into the Golden Gods, Kings and Queens of Babylon.
The original collages will be for sale, as well as a small number of prints.
“Here Stewarts once in triumph reign’d,
And laws for Scotland’s weal ordain’d;
But now unroof’d their palace stands,
Their sceptre fallen to other hands;
Fallen, indeed, and to the earth,
Whence grovelling reptiles take their birth.
The injured Stewart line is gone,
A race outlandish fills their throne;
An idiot race, to honour lost –
Who know them best despise them most.”
Scratched on the window of an inn in Stirling by Robert Burns, 1787. From The Complete Works of Robert Burns, Alloway Publishing, 1986.
Ten years after the people of North Britain opted to reject their own sovereignty, An Encyclopaedia of Great British Collage is a celebration of the subsequent Decade of Dependence on “the Mother of Parliaments” and the 800+ unelected Peers and Monarchs who embody Great British “Democracy” and rule over Our Precious UnionTM, that Most Successful Partnership of Nations (which is now, as it always has been, entirely voluntary.*)
God Save The King.
* Despite contemporary evidence to the contrary from the 1700s, and there being no democratic means of escape.