GEORGINA COBURN ART
Collage and Myth
Georgina Coburn in conversation about her latest series of mixed media collages based on women in
Greek Mythology. Exhibited as part of 'Small Wall' - 10" x 12" at Kilmorack Gallery, November 2024

How did this series of mixed media collages evolve?
Although it isn’t a dark series, there is a lot of affirmation in them, this group of collages grew out of quite a dark space initially. I was feeling overwhelmed, personally and by what is happening in the wider world. The only way through was to make something! Collage is a very fluid way of working, you have to trust your instincts as part of the process and sometimes you’re not too sure where it’s going, which is freeing- not having a prescribed outcome. It is also a confrontation with what is bubbling away in your subconscious. You’re just exploring and making connections with all these fragments and materials- how they speak to you. Composing something out of chaos is restorative. I didn’t start with a theme, I just started cutting things out and arranging them, then building up layers and following whatever triggers presented themselves. I had done collage and mixed media on paper previously and experimented with collage and oils on canvas, but working on board with acrylics was completely new for me, and fortunately it worked. This series of women from Greek mythology emerged out of great uncertainty, but hopefully they stand up on their own. I definitely drew strength from the whole process.
What drew you to Greek myths and the stories of women in particular?
When I was studying Western Art History for my degree, some of the first things I read were classical mythology and the Bible, because so much commissioned imagery came from those sources. Many of these ancient stories and the way they have been depicted, primarily by male artists over thousands of years, become eerily familiar companions. Daphne was the first collage in the series, triggered by just the arms. I was drawn to the moment after she turns into a tree, escaping Apollo and a world of violence, safe in Nature’s embrace. The arms at the centre of the composition, hugging the tree, and herself as the tree, felt very poignant. There is a necessary withdrawal from the world, entering a different state of being and the idea of being held momentarily in a place where nothing can threaten you. Finding that space was such a relief! It struck me as a very contemporary story, of a woman being under attack and the need to find a place of solace and safety, in the outer world or within oneself. Many people find comfort in nature, art and music in difficult times, so for me the image of Daphne relates to that need for escape and confrontation with your sense of threat, felt and known in the body.
Is the threat from a male dominated world? Are these Feminist collages?
In many ways yes- these ancient stories are full of violence- abduction, rape, sacrifice and patriarchal power, in the telling and the visualisation. Idealised beauty is often a fatalistic catalyst for women in these myths and persists in a digital world too. So yes, there’s definitely a feminist thread- although I don’t see them as “women’s collages”, women’s stories and experiences are human too! When I look around the world today, women’s rights, which are human rights, are increasingly under attack and that impacts the whole of society. Sometimes the threat can come from within too. In Ariadne – she is the minotaur, the monster at the centre of the labyrinth, which is also the mirror she holds. However, she also holds a thread to find her way back out again. She isn’t just handing the thread to the hero, Theseus- she has agency in perception and action. We can’t change the status quo unless we imagine something different. She isn’t a footnote or a love interest, but sits in the centre of the composition, a swirling maze.
Of contradictions?
Yes, those kept cropping up making this series. But that’s one of the joys of collage- there are always contradictions and confrontations with what you believe. The history of the art form is bound up with that - its Dadaist roots during the Weimar period were political protest through freedom of expression. You are taking materials and images that naturally don’t go together and mashing them up, Frankenstein style, reforming or triggering new associations and new worlds- so naturally, it throws up a lot of questions. In collaging the figure, Psyche was a dilemma of representation. Traditionally she is a character famed for her beauty, often depicted with fragile, demure butterfly wings and I really struggled with that vision of her. What felt true was to cut off the wings and separate them, a fractured, contemporary soul in an uncertain world, and I deliberately made her faceless. To give her a face in the traditional sense would be to define what beautiful is, and I wanted to subvert that idea. How I felt about the base material, drawn from 19th Century engravings demanded it. She wears a mask- with masculine and feminine characteristics and just hovers there like a question mark, as unknowable as the human psyche. Is she a feminist collage? I’ll leave that up to the viewer to decide, but for me she is different ideas, a state of flux or becoming, something ambiguous, like the fragment of a caterpillar behind her back. There aren’t any absolutes.
How important is it to know the original stories when viewing these works?
I hope people feel free to imagine their own narratives, whether they are familiar with Greek mythology or not. I think collage is not so much about communicating fixed meaning but freedom of expression and association- in the process of making and in the imagination of the viewer. I don’t feel like I am literally illustrating a set text but drawing upon ancient stories and the history of Art, which are always in a state of reappraisal. The titles are a clue that people can investigate if they want to, to find out how the collage differs from the myth, how the female protagonist might be reinterpreted or how it may reflect an aspect of themselves if they really want a deeper dive down some rabbit holes! There is also, I hope, the possibility of a more direct, emotive response to these figures. The image of Demeter for example with her attendant animals is standing in the centre of the composition-looking right at the viewer. Whether you know her backstory or not-even on this scale, it’s an intense human stare and the colours- over-ripe and autumnal declare a season of associations. Staring is a confrontation, and I think there are different lines of enquiry in what Demeter might represent during a climate emergency. She is a goddess of harvest and the fertile earth- so we may well ask ourselves what we are currently seeding and harvesting. That is what I was thinking when I collaged her head onto her body, under a red, semi-apocalyptic sky. The flowers, wheat sheaves and animals are equally present with hope- Demeter is all about renewal. If viewers don’t know her story, then perhaps the core of it might be felt, if I have done my job well.
Many historical images frame these mythic women in a particular way, did you set out to challenge this?
Not consciously, although what emerged was perhaps a ‘what if?’ scenario for some of them. It’s only when they’re done, and I stand back from them that I consciously start making connections and question what they might mean in a wider sense. Andromeda for example is usually pictured naked and chained to a rock as a sacrifice. Ingres, Delacroix, Rubens and Rembrandt’s paintings spring to mind- although Rembrandt to his credit gave her a less passive expression. Andromeda’s a ‘princess and the dragon’ fairytale trope, waiting for the hero Perseus to come and save her. In my collage, there aren’t any chains, and I put a sword in her hand- poised like Joan of Arc or a Samurai suffragette, in readiness against whatever hell comes out of the water. It’s a playful image- I enjoyed making it, at the same time it’s serious too, a protagonist facing deep unease. She is growing out of seaweed, elevated by Nature. It’s part of her strength- she just doesn’t know it yet.
Artemis (also known by her Roman name Diana) is a challenge of sorts too. She is usually depicted voyeuristically ‘surprised’ in her bath by Actaeon, a very popular subject for male artists including Titian, and their patrons. My Artemis is striding through the woods as goddess of the hunt and wild animals- accompanied by predator and prey species. She’s more like Cernunnos the horned God of Proto-Celtic mythology in energy and isn’t entirely revealed, the opposite of many Western paintings from the Renaissance, 18th and 19th Centuries. The moment I cut and pasted horns on her head, she became something more powerful and a lot less vulnerable than a naked female body being spied upon. With Persephone, who was abducted by Hades and brought to the underworld, I’ve given her a throne as queen of that domain and a double face of youth and maturity. She’s not a victim and it’s Hades who’s crying. The pose reminded me of The High Priestess in a Tarot deck which relates to the subconscious, a different kind of underworld, and Persephone is the portal. I’ve tried to suggest warmth and potential growth in the palette, rather than a monochrome, deathly world. She’s a mysterious figure which hopefully provokes questions and self-reflection.
What have you learned delving into these myths?
That the word ‘myth’ really does have two faces- it can be a traditional story used to explain phenomena and the status quo, or a widely held false idea, perpetuated over time. In terms of women depicted in popular culture, it is often both. Making images involves grappling with this, how it relates to each of these stories and their protagonists. My starting point was uncertainty and fear- but what I’ve found disappearing down the rabbit hole of these narrative triggers, in fragments of paper and paint, are endless possibilities. I feel like it’s an exciting beginning and for me marks a turning point. Storytelling and imagination are hugely important in difficult times, to shift perception, opening up new ways of seeing and being in the world. That’s what this series of women from Greek mythology and the collage process has taught me.
22 November 2024
Georgina Coburn 'Daphne' 2024 collage and mixed media
Georgina Coburn 'Artemis' 2024 collage and mixed media
Georgina Coburn 'Psyche' 2024 collage and mixed media
Georgina Coburn 'Demeter' 2024 collage and mixed media
Georgina Coburn 'Persephone' 2024 collage and mixed media
Georgina Coburn 'Ariadne' 2024 collage and mixed media
Georgina Coburn 'Athena' 2024 collage and mixed media
Georgina Coburn 'Eurydice' 2024 collage and mixed media
Georgina Coburn 'Andromeda' 2024 collage and mixed media
Georgina Coburn 'Atalanta' 2024 collage and mixed media