bettina kaiser
bettina kaiser
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Getting to know the artists in The Social Glue of Sydney exhibition
May 9-24, Chrissie Cotter gallery
Getting to know the artists in The Social Glue of Sydney exhibition
May 9-24, Chrissie Cotter gallery
Bettina Kaiser is a multidisciplinary artist and designer who becomes preoccupied by the overlooked, the discarded and the absurd. She uses collage as a creative tool, an ideas generator, and frequently for book cover design and illustration – but also simply to make herself laugh
What materials are you drawn to?
I love vintage magazines, books. Yellowed paper, tinted paper, glassine, nice textures but nothing too fancy. And on the other hand of that spectrum I like the everyday, the mundane and the omnipresent, and that starts with those supermarket letterbox catalogs.
Where do you find your materials?
In my letterbox, in street libraries, op shops, gifted by kind neighbours that know me too well.
Do you have some books you've bought for collage that you haven't yet been able to cut up?
Yes, I have two 1960s cook books from Germany that I am for some reason resistant to cut into. They have weird or cool illustrations and terrible recipes.
Do you begin to make materials first or ideas first?
Materials. 90% of the time it is materials that I find exciting. This can be their texture or it can be based on what they depict, or maybe how they depict something.
Do you have a library of cuttings, and if so, how big is that library and how do you store them?
No I do not really, I have a clear folder with unused, unglued cuttings since I attend the Social Glue and since I collage on a more regular basis.
come the raw prawn
come the raw prawn
I got big brains
I got big brains
collage table
collage table
aloha
aloha
Do you lay out lots of bits on a work surface and let relationships emerge from accidental arrangements, or do you go looking for particular elements to cut?
I let relationships emerge. Sometimes I have a half finished arrangement. I then go and look for a cutting, a shape, a colour or an element to complete it or more often than not surprise myself or make me laugh.
Are there cuttings you've made that are years old that you've never found a home for?
I have sketch and idea books with cuttings that are 35 years old, but I guess that does not count as they are sort of glued in there.
Do you glue your cuttings, or put them into arrangements and photograph them and put them back into your cuttings stash?
I have used collages for half a dozen book cover designs in the past years. Some of them were arranged and photographed but never glued. Because collage is not my main medium, I really use it a lot to amuse myself, relax over a bit of creative relief and for ideas finding. As is evident in the Social Glue exhibition, my collage work has never been outcome based, or even meant to be shown publicly (other than the odd Instagram post).
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