Roger Hudson Creates

Among the goodies on my stall in the Drogheda Christmas Country Market on Saturday 11-4 at St Peters Church of Ireland, what better Christmas present than my artist's book TAKING THE SCISSORS TO SOCIETY with its glorious techniciolour images of most of my photomontages and the secrets of how I made them. Not enough? Who knows? Might even be a few highly frameable prints as rewards for the first purchasers Catch a preview in the book's website at www.takingthescissors.com

Taking the Scissors to Society | The Photomontages of Roger Hudson A selected retrospective of Roger Hudson’s work over four decades exploring the very modern art genre of Photomontage.

Facebook reminds me that it is a year - only a year! - since my Consumer City was up on a billboard in Belfast, Didn't she look grand towering it above speeding mortals? Plans for projections on movie screens seem not to have matured yet.
Alternatively, if you're in the Drogheda area, you can take a look and even buy a copy at the Christmas Cottage Market on December 15th at St. Peter's Church of Ireland in Peter St. from 11am to 4pm. A chance to snap up a copy of any of my poetry books you may have missed too, or CD or maybe a DVD and maybe even a highly presentable print of a photomontage or just a few greetings cards. Wait a minute, how am I going to get all that onto one little table? I shall have to think about that.
www.takingthescissors.com

Delighted that my artist's book "Taking the Scissors to Society" has been accepted for display at the Dublin Art Book Fair 2018 at the Temple Bar Gallery November 22nd to 29th, Ireland's only art book fair. One among a whole host of amazing books. Come along and see.

All That Glisters

In a piece from 1985, the shapes of things we tend to fear like blowflies, spiders and beetles become greedy developers and financiers as a giant traffic serpent and construction monster rampage. Among other pieces, this was part of my exhibition entitled 'In the Jungle of The Cities' at the Stoneleaf gallery in Stoneybatter, Dublin

Watching Waiting

One of my cold war pictures from 1983 intercutting a man in heavy protective gear, looking up, intercut with a fighter bomber, the two photos very similar in colour (clearly military) and tone and with hard white lines of background paper dividing them in an abstract pattern demanding careful analysis by the viewer but with a strong sense of menace.

Consumer City

Consumer products, electronic and hi fi equipment, foodstuffs, soft furnishings are all assembled in a crowded cityscape as a comment on our consumer dominated society.

Story of the world, No Less - Past, Present, Future

One of my leftover faces from Only the Famous have Wrinkles was , I think an Italian Football coach whose face became a template for this piece, rather pretentiously titled Story of the World, No Less -Past, Present, Future? A journey through time and history into a possible post apocalyptic future. It is part of the Droichead Arts Centre's collection and can be seen in Barlow House at the moment.

Only the Famous Have Wrinkles
My first ever photomontage. Strange title? Yes, it came out of an art class exercise cut-and-pasting images of skin. Loads of layers to get that solid. Then I noticed that it was only the film stars, sports stars and politicians whose faces revealed wrinkles, everyone else was airbrushed smooth. Hence the title. That was the days before Botox..

Poverty is Relative - I was surprised myself at how easily this work created itself. I tried freehand cutting the photo of starving Indian children into a tree shape and placed
it over the photo of New York tenements and it immediately made this effective and subtle statement.

Paradise Lost - this is a Cold War work. The triangular images of death and destruction and plants animals associated with them or night and sleep found their best arrangement topsy-turvey as though thrown into the air by a mighty explosion.

Adrift in a Ocean of Memories - Another of my experiments with freehand cutting and the organic and surreal shapes it creates. the association of the strong colour of the water
image that was prominent in an advertisements in many magazines at the time and the famous movie actresses of the past suggested the title.

Ancient Ireland really came alive yesterday at the Red Door Project when we read my assemblage of really old but amazingly alive poems from the fantastic vernacular tradition, first oral then written down by monks and scribes in distant centuries from Amergin onwards. Brian Quinn, Bob Shakeshaft, Dawn Staudt, Dermot O'Neill and I took it in turns to conjure up the joys and sorrows of long dead warriors, peasants farmers, aging and grieving court ladies and more aided by ballads sung by Larry Staudt. The audience from far and wide lapped it up and asked for more which they received in poems from more recent times and today's members. Final session tomorrow 2-4pm in the Garden of Remembrance at the Augustinian Church, Shop Street. See you there.

A very nice piece in this week's Drogheda Independent about the exhibition running in Millmount Tower this week BELOW THE SURFACE curated by Gina Petrea. It's subtitled 'Response to the Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann 2018' and it's just another example of the amazing creative work being done by artists of every stripe in the town.

Here's curator Gina Petrea opening the exhibition BELOW THE SURFACE in the Martello Tower on Millmount in Drogheda on Saturday.
And there's my photomontage "The Subtle Power Politics of Everyday Life" peaking out behind her. A great achievement to get together exciting works by 21 innovative artists from the area, many of whom were present.
The show is sub-titled "Response to the Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann 2018" and it's well worth a look.
And my other photomontage "Man of Authority" on the far right. The exhibition runs till the 21st. August so pop up if you get a chance and enjoy the artwork and a smashing view over Drogheda and a glimpse of some of the other types of creativity we have on display during Fleadh Cheoil.

I am pleased to have one of my photomontages selected for inclusion in an exhibition of local artists entitled BELOW THE SURFACE: IN RESPONSE TO THE FLEADH, curated by Gina Petrea. The exhibition will be mounted in Millmount Tower during Fleadh Cheoil Drogheda - do pop up and see it if you can.

Here's another of my collage-sculptures called BOYS TOYS and an accompanying poem. The sculpture combines different sorts of toys of violence. I'm not sure if it's finished, so maybe regard it as work in progress.

toys for boys

boy fun with toy gun
toy guns in toy hands
toy fingers on toy triggers
toy hate in toy heads
boy hate in boy heads
man hate in man heads
man fingers on man triggers
man power in man guns
in man bombs in man armies
man destruction in man rivalry
in man conflicts in man domination
in man power power power
pow, pow, pow
boom, boom, boom
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM

Looking back, this photomontage called Lure of the Bright Lights was probably a pivotal work for me. It's the first time I made the animal-shape templates work as visual metaphors and combined them with others in a composition as another overall metaphor (the jungle). In that sense, maybe my most 'poetic' artwork.
That and the magic of the eyes. Incidentally and unintentionally, I love the reverse shapes of the dark fir tree shape cutouts.

Another of my collage-sculptures, making use of the stickers kids stick on their bedroom walls and other things. Not quite finished - it needs passengers looking out of the windows but, if you were to look inside the cockpit, you'd see a highjacker in there so not as innocent as it looks. I reckon look better hanging from a string as though in flight.. It's called FLIGHT OF FANCY.

Here's one of my photomontages called Hero Worship.
Star shapes connect to movie industry star system especially when centrepiece is Al Pacino's toothy smile but the frozen graveyard and the Buddhist worship suggest the excesses of the Bosnian/Serbian conflict so the title became Hero Worship separating images from their original contexts.

Collage sculpture attempts to do something similar to my photo montages only in three dimensions. I've been experimenting with several pieces and here's one that was buzzing around in my head for a long time before I finally got it made.
It tries to capture the reality of our relationship with the animals we breed to eat. It's called ALL YOU CAN EAT and there is a poem to accompany it.

You breed me
You feed me
You fatten me
You kill me
You butcher me
You cook me
You eat me
You love me
You love my flavour, my texture, my savour
You love me, you love me, you love me
You raise me to kill me, to eat me, to love me

I eat
I fart
I burp
I overheat your air
I overheat your planet
I melt your icecaps
I raise your seas
I drown you
I kill you
I kill your children
Gradually, slowly I get my own back
By serving your needs, your ever-growing need

The best way to get an idea of my photomontage work is to have a look at the website for my artist's book TAKING THE SCISSORS TO SOCIETY.
Here's the link: http://www.takingthescissors.com/the-book.html
By hovering you can see enlargements and there's even a selection of images in the gallery.
Of course, to get a better idea and read my thinking on the individual pieces and their creation, you could consider buying a copy...

Taking the Scissors to Society | The Photomontages of Roger Hudson

This is one of my earlier photomontages called SHATTERED. I thought it might be interesting as a wee illustration of the powers of daylight ultra violet in deteriorating pictures. You can see how the printing inks have faded...David Bowie there has faded some but the guys to left of him have nearly disappeared. And, on the right, the paper of some of the monochrome pictures has browned considerably. I have some tear-sheets from magazines of the time, so hoping a bit of restoration may bring it back to life.
Or maybe the different stages of light damage changes the piece into a new one.
Let me know what you think and please share if you are inclined.
Visual Artists Ireland Sean Hillen Artist

Sometimes there's crossover between my different personae - writer and artist.
For instance, I read a couple of books last year about the Impressionists and found them such a fascinating and amazing group of people that I was inspired to write a whole series of poems about them. Here's one of the first -

IMPRESSIONISTS

Colour is light
Light, colour
So they said
Inspired by prismatic rainbows
As they slashed bright colour brushstrokes
alongside one another
To blend in the eye.

Don’t believe you, don’t believe you
Said the others,
The established, the traditionalists.
Reject, reject, reject
But gradually
Eyes adjusted
Colours blended
Light conquered all.

Their paintings sell for millions
And they are dead.

If you're discovering this page for the first time, welcome!
This is the page dedicated to my artwork, photo-montages and thoughts on visual art in general. You can find updates about my writing at the companion page Roger Hudson Writes.

It's been a little neglected, but I'm hoping to begin posting here regularly with news about my art, both what I'm working on and to give a new lease of life to older work that people may not have seen, and to generally talk about art.

To kick off, here's a link to a video of my photo-montages created by James Coogan and featuring music from Claire Fitch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pQtVr3KTMI&feature=youtu.be

Photomontages of Roger Hudson A selection of photomontages by Roger Hudson treated with rostrum camera to create motion on the images. Music by Claire Fitch. Video effects & edit by James...

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