Jake

Kennedy

Jake Kennedy

Jake Kennedy is a mixed media artist based in Hove, UK, who has been cutting and recomposing printed matter since the mid-1990s. Working from a compact spare-room studio and an archive of postwar ephemera, he moves between the historical grain of paper and a more painterly abstraction where scratches, tears, and tiny scalpel-cut fragments steer the image. Since 2017 he has posted a new collage daily on Instagram, treating the practice as a disciplined rhythm, a private meditation, and a stubborn insistence on making the next work.

In the Words of the Artist

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Collage is a really, really abstract thing in my life when everything else has to be so binary and fully formed, and I love that. While I love using collage to engage with the past through materials and textures, I also love that it’s an excuse to look for old things in flea markets, bins, and charity shops. It’s a meditative process for me, too of course.

Because it’s so quick and accessible, collage to me is also a great leveler. Anyone can do it - or their own version of it - and by the same token, even the best collage artists can make absolute stinkers. You can try as hard as possible or not very hard at all, and the results very rarely correlate with the effort you put in, for me at least.  

In terms of getting ready to work, as I live in a small flat and the studio I had before got turned into flats, so at the moment I work from my spare room. This means everything is close to hand, though, and the constraints are quite useful (although I’d like to work in a bigger format more often).

As for strategy, all I can say is that any ideas I get usually come to me as I’m drifting off to sleep, and then I convert half memories into something like my original idea the next day. And destruction, up to a point. If something’s getting destroyed, something is going right. With collage, I’ve never experienced an inability to create or a ‘block’.

I began collaging in the mid-90s and have been doing it pretty much ever since, although I took a few years out to try linocut - which I didn’t enjoy anywhere near as much because it was, ironically, too messy. I try to collage every day, and if I don’t, I get grumpy.

I’m happiest when I’m in my spare room making a collage with no other thoughts. I retain very limited interest in anything I’ve created, save for a handful - I really just want to make the next one.

Since 2017, I’ve been posting a new collage every day on Instagram, but I’ll most likely stop once I reach a decade. Instagram is about as useful as one shoe these days, but it’s still a really good way of keeping track of the pieces I make, and reference, and for finding great pages like Colle too.

I spent many, many years collating a sort of archive of magazines, posters, newspapers, and any other printed matter I could get my hands on, usually from the 1950s-70s. This is all stored, and I’ll get a new folder out every few months to keep things fresh.

You move from standard magazines to vintage Nat Geo magazines, to 50s film books, and onto bits of typography, old posters, portraits, and then you sort of feel like you’ve seen all that. So I think I moved more into texture and type before arriving where I am today, which is a more fluid approach.

As time’s gone by, my methods have veered more towards abstraction; the paper I’m using becomes less and less important. Nowadays, I’m more pleased if I get a scratch mark in the right place rather than worrying if a piece of fruit fits perfectly onto a businessman’s head or whatever.

I think it helps to take a painterly approach, almost, and recently I’ve been working with increasingly smaller elements (maybe 2 or 3mm, head of the scalpel type bits) to build up the right mix of colour, so the process is getting more and more gradual.

Something about working more abstractly allows you to be more considered I think. There is less predetermination - the destiny of pieces is more open. As for when something is ‘finished’, recently, there’s just been a feeling. That’s all I can say about it. There’s a definite ‘overworked’ feel that creeps in, and you have to fight that.

But nothing’s ever finished I guess. All I can say is it’s a battle, and you’re just trying to make sure the right forces win.

The images that I’ve kept over the years have all been either humorous, sort of graphic, or more textural (older papers, mould, pen marks, faded colours), so it’s usually quite obvious what the ‘special powers’ of a particular piece of source material are.

But you’re right in pointing out that there is this tricky balance you have to find, and of course, it doesn’t always work. There’s an element of sacrifice to collage, which I really like, and so many times you just waste something - due to a mismatch, or working something too hard, or general ineptitude with glue or a tear that can’t be reversed or whatever. But these are all really just waves I’ve taken it upon myself to surf. And ultimately, that’s the fun of it, what draws you back, and what makes the small wins feel bigger.

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About the Artist

Jake Kennedy is a collage and mixed media artist based in the UK who has been making collage since 1993. His work has appeared on record, book, and magazine covers and has also been on UK TV. He has exhibited in Brighton, Kyiv, Greece, and more over the years, as well as delivering talks on the nature of collage.

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