Artist Statement

I grew up in the metropolis of Los Angeles when suburban living was altering the American popular culture. The neighborhoods were arranged with alleys running behind the houses to service the trash pickups. This afforded me opportunity to explore. My wanderings took place as I walked the alleys studying the cast offs and picking up discards.

Later on as an adult my indulgences with found objects turned me into a flea market “junkie”. It was these finds that I used to combine and create assemblage art, which has now been transposed into my current collage work.

My amalgamation of images comes from an untidy place in my subconscious. On the surface it appears that I pick images at random but in fact they interrelate on many levels in many places, and then not at all in others. My interest in surrealism allows this loose association to be acceptable and even desirable to my working process. My interests in science, astronomy, world religions, and alchemy also play a part in how things fall together. I use images as visual embodiments of cultural “ clichés” in combinations or odd juxtapositions with the ambition of reinventing a setting and setting up an invention.

Michael Mew 2007