Transmitter/Receiver: Collage at The Lightbox

Associated media

 A new innovative touring exhibition, Transmitter/Receiver: The Persistence of Collage from the Arts Council Collection is to go on show at The Lightbox gallery and museum in Woking, Surrey, 18 January – 25 March 2012, admission free. Transmitter/Receiver explores the uses of collage in British Art, bringing together over 50 works drawn from the Arts Council Collection, featuring traditional works using collage on paper, to more experimental applications in sculpture and film, from artists including Ben Nicholson, Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, Patrick Caulfield, Chris Ofili and Grayson Perry.

Collage as a medium has existed and been used  for centuries, from the assembly of materials to make artworks, to the gathering of memorabilia or objects to form a scrapbook. This exhibition will explore the lure of collage to artists, examining its popularity as a medium and how it is now commonplace for artists to mix and match different materials. The exhibition title Transmitter/Receiver comes from the words of French critic Nicolas Bourriaud, ‘we are no longer either passive receivers or authoritative cultural transmitters, but potentially both simultaneously’.

Transmitter/Receiver demonstrates how collage has been used to try and break down barriers of high art and critique the commercial world, such as in the work of Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi. Feminist artists such as Linder, have used collage as a way to rebel against the advertising industry’s use of the female image and John Stezaker has used the medium as a way of questioning society’s acceptance of the large amounts of visual material we are subjected to on a daily basis. This exhibition arrives at The Lightbox after premiering at mima, Middlesbrough, and will be touring to the New Art Gallery, Walsall (4 May – 1 July 2012); Usher Art Gallery, Lincoln (August – October 2012) and Tullie House, Carlisle (16 March – 12 May 2013).

The Arts Council

The Arts Council Collection is one of Britain’s foremost national collections of post-war British Art. As a collection 'without walls', it has no permanent gallery; it can be seen on long term loan to various public sector and charitable organisations and in touring exhibitions such as Transmitter/Receiver. The collection, run by Southbank Centre on behalf of Arts Council England is the most widely circulated and easily accessible collection of its kind, with nearly 8000 works available for loan.