Peter Blake Collages

Peter Blake is a very prolific artist, which is very different from those I've researched with folk art in mind, however I recently saw some of his 'USA Series' collage pieces and I thought that they could bear some relevance to the things I've looking at.

Despite being created in the last few years, they definitely have an older aesthetic to them. I really enjoy them as an assemblage of items and ephemera which gives a certain feel or a sense of place.

The use of found objects and imagery creates this authentic feel, even though they aren't personal to Blake or based on his own life. They didn't belong to him, but they belonged to someone which gives that context and backstory (even if it is fictional, or left up to the viewer's own interpretation).

James Dean

Boxer

Excelsior

In some ways, instead of imposing his own personal narrative within these images, Blake has sort of manufactured a narrative by curating all of these secondhand belongings.

When I see these, I think who did they belong to? Where did these things come from?

Although nowadays with the internet, images are widely distributed and used by people from all over the place. However, many years ago collage would have had a level of individuality as the person would have to root through their own belongings and collected materials to create images.

Maybe I could look into this as a technique, but restrict myself to using images from only one place, or source location?