To celebrate the end of its 365 Days of Collage, Manchester studio DR.ME shares with us the highs and lows of the project, as well as contributing an exclusive mix as part of our new musical series.
As creatives I imagine you lead busy lives, how do you make time every day to collage?
Mark Edwards and Ryan Doyle: Honestly, it feels a lot like play to both of us and actually creates a good release from some of the more client-based work that we do. There’s no real brief so our minds and hands are free to do weird things and experiment in ways that then feed into our professional work.
Where do you get the images? Where do you get the ideas?
ME+RD: It varies from old copies of National Geographic, photo albums from thrift stores in the US, Life magazine, porn magazines, and postcards. The ideas normally start from seeing an image and then experimenting with where we can it. We both enjoy subverting images – taking something that the viewer might initially feel familiar with and creating something unexpected that’s maybe uncomfortable or confusing. Humour also finds its way in, if our work can make someone smile then that’s half the battle.
A year’s a long stretch. Did you ever get tired?
ME+RD: It really helps that there is two of us, there’s always a natural sense of competition there. Rather than getting stuck in a rut alone, there’s someone there to talk to and look to, which will get you fired up again. It is important that we don’t just rely on each other – we want to constantly be visiting new places, seeing new things, learning new techniques, talking to different people.
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To celebrate the end of such a feat, Doyle and Edwards have created a special mix of some of the top tunes that powered them through the project, which you can listen to below. The accompanying artwork is by Steve Hockett.