Much like Phee's surrealist creative process, whereby she would almost unconsciously put together whatever first came to mind, artist Jo Hudson featured here practises an art form which perhaps epitomises the very essence of the surrealist genre itself - collage.
If you read the likes of Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel or Michael Palin’s new book, Great-Uncle Harry, you will quickly realise that the First World War created a rather surreal experience for soldiers. One-minute bombs were falling around them and the next they were playing cards and overhearing the songs of enemy troops, who may have only been a few metres away from them, in the opposite trench. It was from such absurdity that the surrealist art movement was born, where rational and irrational concepts were merged through the use of painting and collage. What makes Jo’s collaging so interesting and unique however, is that she not only morphs absurdity with reason but the old styles with the new. As we will uncover, Jo, for instance, infuses the works of the original surrealists, such as that of René Magritte, and the likes of vintage photographs with modern themes and attitudes. Though, why does Jo seek to create in such a way? Indeed, why art in the first place?
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