Pride, N (2026) Typographic collages. An archaeology of the fugitive: retrievals from a disobedient archive. PhD thesis, Bath Spa University. doi: 10.17870/bathspa.00017928
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Abstract
This practice-based PhD submission consists of a series of artworks (typographic collages) I have constructed from artefacts selected from my own extensive disobedient archive: an unruly collection deliberately designed to embrace disorder, resist conventional taxonomy and alert us to the indistinct. Alongside the practical work is this thesis, which constitutes an analysis of the elusive qualities of things, in particular that which is occluded in an object - the chimeric. It proposes an attunement to dingewollen, or ‘thing-ness’, acknowledging the potential of objects to act as symbiotic participants in the creative process. Collected through a series of expeditions to potential sites of retrieval across many countries, cultures, and time periods, the archive focuses on printed ephemera produced during the lifespan of commercial letterpress printing, between approximately 1820 and 1960, focusing on single-use objects of little or no value: the detritus of past commercial transactions and the trajectories of personal lives. The research explores the idea of absence as a form of presence, inviting an entanglement with the unseen and a receptiveness to the consonance of materials and their disparate histories. This is both carried out and evidenced through ‘reconstituted artefacts’ (see: a lexicon, p.18), practical work that I have created using unconventional printmaking techniques, including the use of fugitive materials, such as heat-sensitive inks and light-reactive chemicals. The collages exist simultaneously as physical objects and imagined constructs, transcending their materiality to evoke a hauntedness, shaped as much by what is visible as what is imagined - by the traces, shadows, and after-images that linger in memory and perception. The fragmentary is investigated for its ability to signify more than the complete, particularly in the case of letterforms and words. The majority of work from the history of collage-making is composed of materials that were readily at hand. The series of typographic collages presented here is distinctly different, composed of material drawn from sources across the globe and subject to an acute forensic analysis of their contexts, meanings and histories, inviting a receptiveness to that which lies outside the margins of perception and comprehension.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | PhD by practice, collage, typography, archives, taxonomy, taxonomic methods, creative process, printed ephemera, 19th century, 20th century, letterpress printing, print-making techniques, written communication, single-use objects |
| Divisions: | School of Creative and Cultural Arts |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Sep 2026 17:18 |
| Last Modified: | 03 Sep 2026 17:28 |
| URN: | https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/17928 |
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