Joe Webb (1976) uses vintage magazines and printed ephemera that he has collected to create simple but elegant hand-made collages.
After many years of working on computers as a graphic artist, Joe turned his back on technology and started making ‘analogue’ collages. Since then Joe has published many popular silkscreen prints, sold his work in the Saatchi Gallery, is collected by many celebrities and had his work featured on album covers. Webb's work is also an internet sensation with hundreds of thousands of people sharing his images online.
"I started making collages as a sort of luddite reaction to working on computers for years . I like the limitations of it...using found imagery and a pair of scissors, there's no googling for material and no Photoshop to resize, adjust or undo. There's an element of serendipity in finding images that work together that can't be replicated in the digital world.
I wanted to get back to basics so set myself a simple rule of working from just two images, it's interesting to find what narratives appear when two conflicting ideas are juxtaposed. Some of the ideas reflect o the state of world today, like a 1950's idea of the future that went wrong...while others are more optimistic and surreal.
I'm fairly anti-technology although I promote my art on websites, own an iPhone and use Facebook...which is confusing. I wish I had been born 100 years ago".
Joe Webb
“Joe navigates a rich landscape with grace and humour. He plays visual elements against each other in a way that puts different eras in dialogue, allowing characters to travel from their 50’s Home Gardening Magazine roots to the far cosmos. He flirts with themes of nostalgia and loss but ultimately composes light-hearted images that are in dialogue with today’s sampling culture, collapsing and hacking together sources from across the universe in fun and rudely jacked up colour schemes.” - Wangechi Mutu, internationally acclaimed artist.
