ARTIST NOTES
For Edition 01, artist Helena Palau Arvizu reinterprets Marc Shelly’s photographs through physical collage, bringing together image, paper and Strathberry leather.
Working with fragments, crops and layers, she shifts the landscape between image and texture, drawing connections between the natural surfaces of Scotland and the materials of Strathberry. The result is six tactile compositions that offer a more abstract, personal way of seeing place.
THE PROJECT
The combination of elements is what drew me in: photographs taken specifically for the project, and the brand's own leather to work with. That felt like a rare thing. Most of the time you work with images that already exist, so having something made for this particular purpose changes the relationship you have with the material.
And then there's the fact that it ends up printed. So much of what I make lives on a screen, so the idea of the work existing as an object you can hold was a big part of the appeal.
SEEING SCOTLAND
I've never been to Scotland, so the photographs were my only way in. And they gave me a lot. You could feel the wet in them, the temperature, the air of the place. The colours and the textures carried all of that.
That's what made me want to work with them the way I did. There was enough in the images themselves that I could put them in conversation with paper and colour without losing what they were.
AT THE TABLE
It starts with the photographs. I print them at different sizes, repeated, and spend time with them, looking at what's actually there, the colours, the textures, what each one is doing.
Then I go looking for material. There's a shop in Barcelona with an enormous selection of paper, and I go through it picking out anything that matches the atmosphere of the images. I also keep pages from old books specifically for projects like this one, so those come out too.
And then everything goes on a big table: the prints, the paper, the leather, and it's about trying things. Putting something next to something else, seeing what happens, taking it away.
Each combination is unique. I don't decide much in advance. I find the way as I go, and my intuition guides me while I try things out. I tend to look at colour first, then composition.
SIX NOTES ON POSTCARDS
01/06 I found the palette before I found the composition. The layout took longer, tearing through images until the tear itself became a road running alongside the fog. From there the connections kept showing up on their own: the red leather next to the red mug, the fence posts, the paper; small coincidences that end up feeling both alive and soft at the same time.
FROM PHOTOGRAPH TO COLLAGE
Marc Shelly’s photographs form the starting point for Helena Palau Arvizu’s physical collages. Here, three works reveal how an original image is fragmented, layered and reinterpreted through paper, leather, colour and hand-drawn intervention.
Postcard 03 - Marc Shelly's Photography, Helena Palau's Collage, Final Artwork
Postcard 04 - Marc Shelly's Photography, Helena Palau's Collage, Final Artwork
Postcard 05 - Marc Shelly's Photography, Helena Palau's Collage, Final Artwork
