I work with a variety of found photographic materials including 35mm slides, 16mm film and photograph collections. The contingent nature of the source material allows me to re-use and re-invent. I have an interest in everyday or anonymous subjects, the effect of juxtaposition and the re-used photograph as trace removed from its context.
I construct an archive of sources that were once specific but become representative. These ‘ tiny, linked moments [that evidence] how we mark time on this earth’[1] present both a challenge and fascination to me. I seek to create works that have one foot in the imagination and one foot in the source imagery.
My influences include photomontage artists from Hannah Hoch to John Stezaker. I use juxtaposition, cuts and tears and am interested in what Ranciere identifies as the dual nature of the aesthetic image, the possibility to simultaneously be a ‘cipher of history and interruption to it’.
Recent work has concentrated on a series entitled Newspaper Heads which takes a daily newspapers’ images as the starting point for creating a new work. This work evolves and shifts over time as Tulloch adds more collages to the series.
Recent exhibitions include Tulloch’s first solo show in the US at the Bonnafont gallery San Francisco, the exhibition ran alongside the US launch of Object Image Tulloch’s first artists’ book published by Daylight books.
Object Image is currently part of the exhibition Artificial Things at the ARB, Cambridge University.
Newspaper Heads also appeared in new animated forms as part of the group show Category Error with artists Katy Cole and Annie O’Donnell at Platform A gallery, Middlesborough.
Category Error was part I of an on-going project among the artists Katy Cole, Annie O’Donnell and Sarah Tulloch who all make forms of collage and found-object/image based work. Part II entitled Indicator opens on the 8th December at NewBridge Projects, Gateshead.
Sarah lives and works in Newcastle.
[1] Arne Svenson, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/photography-blog/2013/aug/19/art-peeping-photography-privacy-arne-svenson/print
