Andy Burgess’s elegant assemblages of found textiles and paper ephemera recall deeply personal architectures: the receding horizons of imaginative cityscapes, the parallel and bisecting lines of books standing vertically in a shelf, or the intricate repeating unit of a quilt square. Burgess explores space and pattern with references to the modernist movement and “the place of collage within that history, exploring the aesthetic legacy of Cubism, Bauhaus, Dada, and Constructivism.” Yet within these compositional strategies, Burgess values the touch and texture of his materials above all, selecting his compositions from a vast tactile catalog of found materials documenting human lives and the materials we use and discard:
“I make art from the most humble and lo-fi materials…found ephemera, discarded papers and card, and recycled offcuts from previous works. The more dejected and rejected, dog-eared and forlorn are my materials, the greater the possibility that a careful repurposing and delicate arrangement of elements can turn the abject into something beautiful and poetic… By making humble and small-scale works from repurposed materials that are full of imperfections; uneven and worn surfaces, tears, fissures, cracks, and fractures, I hope to make a small statement about the continued vitality and significance of the hand-made art object.”