Melbourne Collage Assembly

Melbourne, Australia

HISTORY

The Melbourne Collage Assembly were founded in late 2018. In a stroke of serendipity, founders Kieran Madden and Simone Esterhuizen first met at a used book stall at a flea market. Kieran had just moved back to Melbourne after living in New York and was previously a member of the Brooklyn Collage Collective. Guessing that Simone was a collage artist they got talking, exchanged details and both spoke about wanting to start a group to meet other collage artists in Melbourne.

It took off slowly from there as Kieran and Simone connected with other artists in Melbourne, eventually “launching” in May 2019.

MISSION

The Melbourne Collage Assembly was formed as a way to network with other artists working with collage in Melbourne, and use the common ground of collage and combined resources to exhibit collage based group shows. The focus of the MCA is to use its artists collective resources to exhibit and bounce knowledge and ideas off each other.

ASSOCIATION

The MCA are made up of 9 artists who all work with collage in their art practice and all live or have connections to Melbourne. One of the group’s artists recently relocated to Spain. Some of the artists are established artists who have exhibited and been published internationally, others are emerging artists and the common ground is working with collage techniques or including them in their works.

Melbourne Collage Assembly is limited to 9 core artists which include Kieran Madden, Simone Esterhuizen, Aylsa McHugh, Lee McKenna, Morgan Campbell, Max Malone, Nicola Hardy, Mel Lineham, and Aaron Ashwood.

The artists all feel like friends who each work with collage in their art practice so the group doesn’t take “new members” as such.

That said, the Melbourne art scene is diverse and the MCA always enjoys meeting others who work with collage techniques. In the future MCA would like to hold an exhibition centered around collage that includes other Melbourne based artists.

KEY ACTIVITIES

Artists all work independently and predominantly use our group to share resources. Individual members occasionally hold workshops although the focus of the group is to predominantly exhibit together. The groups most recent exhibition “MELBOURNE COLLAGE NOW,” at Off The Kerb Gallery in Melbourne, was unfortunately impacted by COVID-19 closures, however, was able to occur in June 2020 as the gallery reopened. It’s catalogue is viewable online via the MCA website.

The group held a launch exhibition in 2019 and participated in a smaller regional group show soon after. Each artist within the group has also exhibited in either solo or group shows in this time.

CONTACT

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