In If it Keeps on Raining the Levee's Gonna Break (2017), Paul Sloan presents collages constructed out of images taken from found art, architecture, music and design magazines.
During an artist-in-residency at HIAP in Helsinki, he established a daily ritual of making collages from magazines and local found materials. Since completing the residency program in 2014, he has continued this daily practice. The resulting works play into a rich field of practice that was established in the twentieth century.
From the seminal Modernist collages of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso (which brought sculptural elements directly onto the surface plane of the painting), to the political collage and photomontage works of Dada artist Hannah Hoch (which used images and text appropriated from mass media to attack the ideals popularised by Weimar Germany’s media), through to the photomontages and composite images of Pop Art artists such as Richard Hamilton, the processes of collage and photomontage can be seen as inherently disruptive and non-linear.
The artist is able to shatter the prison cells of space and time, creating new possibilities, surreal juxtapositions and dissident commentaries. Sloan exploits these potentials of collage while traversing back into the realms of painting and printmaking.
The importance of music in Sloan’s practice cannot be underestimated. In this body of work, musical references are wide-ranging and tightly interconnected to art-historical references. Lee Scratch Perry’s band lends its name to The Upsetter (2014) – a work that features a helmet worn in a controversial Dada performance. And in Ascension (2017), John Coltrane’s watershed free jazz album lends its name to a work that references Manet’s equally revolutionary work, Luncheon on the Grass (1863).
The Inflated Tear. 2016. Archival UV print on canvas.
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If it Keeps on Raining the Levee’s Gonna Break. 2017. Archival UV print on canvas.
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Fernet Branca. 2017. Archival UV print on canvas.
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Solar Eclipse. 2017. Archival UV print on canvas.
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Ascension. 2017. Archival UV print on canvas.
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Perspective, Proportion and Space. 2017. Archival UV print on canvas.
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Arts, Lifestyle, Culture. 2017. Archival UV print on canvas.
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The Upsetter. 2017. Archival UV print on canvas.
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Installation shot, If it Keeps on Raining the Levee's Gonna Break. Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide. 2017.
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Installation shot, If it Keeps on Raining the Levee's Gonna Break. Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide. 2017.
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Installation shot, If it Keeps on Raining the Levee's Gonna Break. Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide. 2017.
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Installation shot, If it Keeps on Raining the Levee's Gonna Break. Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide. 2017.
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Installation shot, If it Keeps on Raining the Levee's Gonna Break. Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide. 2017.
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Studio shot, Galactic Impact. 2017. Adelaide, South Australia.
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Studio shot, If it Keeps on Raining the Levee's Gonna Break. 2017. Adelaide, South Australia.
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