DOWNTIME w/ Ben Owers

1) Location? London, United Kingdom 🇬🇧

2) Years collaging? I used to practice a lot of Sculpture and then went through a dry spell and turned my hand to Collage around two years ago and haven’t looked back since.

3) What do you love and hate about collage? It’s hard to think of something I hate about collage, there are physical restraints such as the space the content materials take up, but it’s nice to be surrounded by so many beautiful publications. On the flip side there are hundreds of things I love about collage, one of the things I like most is the restrictions a physical image holds and having to make personal decisions on how to manipulate it to build a piece.

4) Biggest influences?  I listen to a lot of music when I collage, mainly hip hop but some older stuff too. In collage terms Brooklyn Collage Collective have been a big influence on me especially Mike DeSutter, Jay Riggio and Lizzie Gill. Meeting The Human Wreckage was pretty cool and seeing a large show of his work in London was great too. Fred Free is an amazing collage artists I've seen through instagram and his work is a constant influence. One other great collage artist is B.D. Graft and his Add Yellow project, definitely worth checking out.

5) Analog Vs Digital? My work is currently all analog, but I would not dismiss ever using digital techniques I just prefer to restrict myself to the one medium as I enjoy the physical aspect of cutting and pasting, and the restrictions allow me to create more coherent work.

6) How do you spend your downtime?  I like to spend a lot of time outdoors in my downtime, so a lot of walking and cycling along local rivers, I also kind of call collaging my downtime from my normal daytime work and then I also work as a picture framer for part of my week so that is down time from collage and from my normal job.

7) Three tips for someone starting out in collage? 

• Keep making things whether you feel its going well or not, it’s all good practice of technique.
• Spend time practicing composition, this translates to any medium.
• Document as much of your work as possible as its always useful

8) Up and coming shows or projects we should know about? Starting some works soon to go alongside a novel a good friend is writing, which is a project I'm very excited about, no upcoming shows but hoping to have some in the pipeline soon.

Links:

Web: http://www.benowersart.com/
Insta: @benowersart
Twitter: @benowersart

Artworks (top to bottom)
'The Growth Of Herself' Handcut and pasted collage on cold pressed paper
'Fine Cut' Handcut and pasted collage on cold pressed paper
'High School. continued. 2' Handcut and pasted collage on cold pressed paper
'High School. continued' Handcut and pasted collage on cold pressed paper
'Oliver Bonas SS16 ' Handcut and pasted collage on cold pressed paper
'Hidden Amongst Us Was Two' Handcut and pasted collage on cold pressed paper