Women Sell

The images used for this collage were cut from a mix of 1950’s women's magazines and “Blighty” a man's pin up magazine. Images of pin ups have been cut out and placed as if promoting everyday products such as cereal, margarine, drinking chocolate etc. Although the collage is created from 1950’s images, women are still used to sell today despite the banning of the Wonder Bra advert and the Formula 1 girls. The overt positioning of women against everyday products is intended to provoke the viewer into questioning their own tolerance of sexism in advertising. The process to achieve the final pieces is a long journey from the original idea searching through 1950's magazines to find the source material to build a collage of words and images. The collages are then hand painted with wash and paint pens to add colour and detail imitating the original feel of printed magazines. The finished collages are scanned, enlarged and produced as digital Giclée prints on fine art paper in editions of only 10. The final but most labour intensive of the process is adding the thousands of crystals, gold and silver leaf, lacquer and metallic paint. The resulting art pieces are colourful, textural and vibrant with a strong message.