Nel Burke

Nel Burke
London, England, United Kingdom

STATEMENT

I was born in London and have lived here all my life. My teenage years were the seventies, and I absorbed the music, fashion, and politics of those years. I’m a product of the pub and DIY culture of the late seventies, the “rip it up and start again” ethic, the postwar years of peace and the welfare state, free education and the NHS, but with a strong awareness of my parents’ experiences of war, poverty, and years of rationing and shortages. My generation has lived through enormous technological changes – from everything analogue to everything digital.

Collage is endlessly interesting and challenging; unexpected things happen. You don’t need to buy anything except maybe cartridge paper and glue, but mostly you use what is already in the world – old books, papers, stuff out of the wastepaper basket – collage is recycling. It’s surreal, and it’s cheap. Collage is like poetry – you can bring all kinds of elements together and the art is to make them speak to each other.

Over the course of a year (2018–19), I made 201 collaged “identity cards”. They began as jokey things but quickly abandoned their numbers and designations and became almost little stories from the lives of “persons unknown”. I enjoy working in series – often working on top of a preexisting image rather than a blank piece of paper. I’m currently working with cassettes: taking them apart and putting collages inside.

BIO

Nel Burke is a collage artist living and working in south London, England. She has been collaging since 1989 as a student at Central St Martins.

“I always liked cutting out and cutting up. As a child, my mum made our clothes – I was familiar with and drawn to scissors! After art school, I slowly realised that collage was my main technique for art making. The ‘analogue’ is important; I want to see cuts, textures, mistakes: the process. Some of my obsession with the textured, tactile, physical thing might be a reaction against the digital world. Over the years, I’ve collected an archive of materials: books, magazines, leaflets, tickets, old photographs. I enjoy working in series – often working on top of a pre-existing image rather than a blank piece of paper.”

Burke has been in many group exhibitions and is featured in several books on collage. She has had two solo shows, both showing work in a specific series. In the first, “ID Required,” was a display of over one hundred credit card size collages. The second, “Vulva,” an exhibition about sexuality and being female with collages constructed from images of Baroque paintings.

Burke has lived with her partner Lesley for over forty years. They have a dog called Minnie, an allotment, and are active members of Brixton Housing Co-op.

ARTIST CONTACT

EMAIL | WEBSITE

IMAGES