The Entire Theatre of the World, finding the plot
Updated: Dec 28, 2021
Making the collages that comprise the series started as a resumption of vaguely humorous collage work that I done since I was a teenager. Now I find that various types are emerging:
A structure that uses the frame of the stamp as one or more layers of theatrical framing, both as proscenium arch and scenery flats.
2. A structure that tells a story, deconstructing the usually nationalistic or colonial, but almost always, pompous narrative of stamps.
3.
Breaking up the unity by going forward from the main frame. As the surface plane
begins to break up it is no longer about a single stamp as the main frame of the work.
4. layers with apertures, showing a set of planes with their own narratives.
Other motifs emerge: deconstructing the colonial (thanks to Ilona Biswas King for pointing this out); visual humour; the delight in the very small, which draws the eye in close, making it feel very big; a sense that stamps are theatre, very small, and can reflect theatre design.