A new exhibition featuring collage and mixed media works by two Lower Mainland artists opens September 1, 2021 at The Gallery at The Cultch (online only due to Covid-19) and will be on display at thecultch.com/gallery until September 30. The artists will be available for questions about their work during a live artist talk on Sunday, September 12 at 2 p.m. Link to join the talk is available at thecultch.com/gallery.

Ginger Sedlarova - I consider myself both a collage artist and a storyteller. Sometimes my work is a short story, sometimes it’s a novel. But it’s always surreal, a love affair with the combination of knife, paper and glue that allows me to construct scenes of absurdity and drama. My practice grew from my love of making photo collages in my former newspaper career as a graphic artist, only now I do this by hand. It’s cathartic to strip images down to their simplest forms and then build them back up again. I love to play and indulge in the unexpected — life is a collage of events, and my work is how I see the world when I close my eyes.

Seema Shah - Although I didn’t set out with the intention of becoming a collage artist, my work almost always includes an element of collage. I’m innately drawn to the piecing together of disparate elements to form a new meaning and aesthetic – trying to create something of value from scraps that would otherwise be discarded. The process itself is a metaphor for many aspects of my life and self. Tapping into my subconscious and working intuitively, my collages are layered emotional narratives reflecting my inner landscape. Patterns have emerged in my work over time, including the appearance of recurrent themes, metaphors, and imagery. Though my pieces in this exhibition were created independently of one another, a stream of water and darkness runs through them.