Text: Lula Valetta
GlueHeads collage group exhibition. Celebrating the project GlueHeads and the life of its founder, the late Anelor Robin is now on view at Verbeke Foundation’s collage museum near Antwerp, Belgium. The rejects from Verbeke are currently on view at HOK in The Hague, The Netherlands, after which the exhibition will be on view back home in Berlin. The odyssey is an homage to my dear friend Anelor. Beside a warm friendship we collaborated on many fields, from organizing collage exhibitions and workshops to showcasing our zines together at art book fairs in Berlin. The GlueHeads project died along with Anelor’s untimely death in 2019 and is greatly missed. My goal with the odyssey was to introduce GlueHeads to a wider audience. Because of its short-lived existence I feel that the project hasn’t got the recognition it deserved. Also, I wanted to show the afterlife of GlueHeads, how we are still working together and keeping Anelor’s memory alive. For me Berlin is and always will be the collage capital in the world. GlueHeads was a great addition to Berlin’s rich history in collage. Anelor was the glue, our UHU, bringing us together, and a spider in the contemporary collage web that Berlin is. Anelor explained to me: “I want to create collages in collaboration with other artists and build a community. Diversity is a must. What I love about GlueHeads is that I make new friends, meet amazing artists, and do collaborations. The zine is my way to make the collages visible for the public, not just for us artists. The zine is not a catalogue; it’s an artistic collage publication. A collage of a collage of a collage…”
So, GlueHeads (2014-2019) was a contemporary collage project bringing together a group of collage loving artists, lots of magazines, scissors and glue and a hint of good spirit. And Berlin is the city where Anelor Robin started GlueHeads as a project in 2014. Little did she know that GlueHeads by 2023 would have grown beyond the project and become a group of friends, a Berliner collage collective, of which she was and will always remain the glue. Even though the project GlueHeads came to a halt four years ago, the GlueHeads are still very much active as a collective. A GlueHead you are for life… The exhibition showcases collages by Berliner GlueHeads and the GlueHeads zines.
The basic tenets of the GlueHeads project were as simple as they were powerful: One Day, One Exhibition, One Zine.
For each edition of the GlueHeads project, curator Anelor Robin brought together artists working with different collage techniques. To make every exhibition and accompanying zine unique and to keep the concept fresh, each GlueHeads session was always held in a different gallery with a whole new set of artists. In the gallery during the daytime, the artists created the collages that were shown to the audience at the end of the day and that eventually ended up in the next edition of the GlueHeads zine. All artists brought their own materials, although there was also an emphasis on sharing, collaboration, and creating a collective stew of raw and unexpected creative ingredients to draw from. The GlueHeads zine was put together by maycec and would consist exclusively of collages made on the day itself. The ambition of the zine was not only to document these ephemeral works, but in consideration of the zine medium, to also be a substantial and comprehensive work in itself: a collage of collages. Anelor organised GlueHeads editions 1-5 in Berlin, before travelling with the concept to Turkey, Morocco, Iran and Belgrade, Serbia. The GlueHeads artists community, that’s to say everyone who was ever included in or invited to join a GlueHeads session, spans 58 artists worldwide.
The exhibition is a dazzlingly colourful mix of collages. The artists on view here are just a section of longstanding Berliner GlueHeads. All sharing the GlueHead spirit and vital members of the contemporary collage community in Berlin. From analog collage to sound collage and video collage as well as objects from Anelor’s Wunderkammer collections, it’s all there.
Starting from Anelor’s personal archive, I did a ‘reverse GlueHeads tour’. I visited each of the exhibiting artists in their studio, home, or atelier, where I made a selection of collages, some older and some brand new, in the spirit of GlueHeads’ Odyssey into the unreal…
VERBEKE, BELGIUM
After I collected all the works in Berlin I embarked on a journey to Belgium, bringing along countless works by the selected GlueHeads artists. A field day for the connoisseur. In the end a stricter selection was made together with founder Geert Verbeke and curator Marie Verbove of the Verbeke Foundation. The Verbeke Foundation is a huge museum in the East Flemish municipality of Kemzeke that houses the private art collection of Flemish collector Geert Verbeke. Modern and contemporary art is exhibited. For many years the collector was an entrepreneur in the transport world until he sold his company to concentrate on art. Indoors and outdoors, a selection of some two thousand works is on view, and Verbeke boasts an unprecedented collection of collages and assemblages by Belgian and Dutch artists from the 20th and 21st centuries. Starting with Paul Joostens, Georges Herbiet, Henri Van Straten and others from the early 1920s, the collection provides an overview of a century of collage art and assemblages. There’s the Surrealists, like E.L.T. Mesens, Marcel Mariën, and Gilbert Senecaut, and from the heyday of collage art in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, with the Coll’Art movement founded by Marcel Louis Baugniet and Jean Milo, there are many artists like Camiel Van Breedam, Georges Collignon, Annie Debie, etc. And now, Berlin has come to Verbeke.
Almost all the participating GlueHeads collage artists travelled for the exhibition to Verbeke and resided some days at one of the many art accommodations that Verbeke offers. Some stayed in the blob, the container-collage by Ted van Lieshout, some at the AIR container by André Smit. The day before the opening was spent making collages together, in true GlueHeads spirit. Those collages were hung on the wall and formed part of the exhibition just for the opening only. The GlueHeads exposition itself has some hundred Berlin works on display, including vintage GlueHeads zines, 2D and 3D collages, video collages and sound collages.
HOK, THE HAGUE
The GlueHead ‘rejects’ not included in the Verbeke expo I took back to my current home-base in The Hague, The Netherlands, and went along and hung them in HOK, an underground art space that I run together with my parents. These are the works that did not finally make it into Verbeke, the never-before exhibited, the rarities, the not-to-be-accepted, in short: the collector’s items.
To make this exposition possible, I have, as HOK’s artist in permanent residence, dug up my own roots from a seven years’ stay in Berlin, home of the homeless and cradle of the disruptive, if not to say destructive art called collage. And where my roots are, there are HOK’s roots as well. The master of chaos among galleries. An above ground Underground platform with a slightly different twist. With a DIY mentality and that exhibits everything that HOK itself finds beautiful. Which includes collages, a lot of collages. HOK likes to work with artists from the punk and rock’n’roll, film, and comic book worlds. HOK has a zine distro and an art shop with editions and ephemera and is the place for zine-lovers. GlueHeads’ Verbeke rejects completely take over the entire space. A Petersburger hanging chaos of works by almost all the Verbeke GlueHeads. Beside the exhibition there is an ongoing collage installation where visitors can create their own collages. These are hung among the works of the GlueHeads, making this a never-ending, ever-expanding exhibition. There will also be a collage workshop.
NEUROTITAN GALLERY, BERLIN
After the summer, when the summer exhibition at Verbeke is over, and the exhibition at HOK is long gone and packed up… my odyssey will continue by bringing all the works back home to Berlin. Home of the GlueHeads. And maybe the GlueHeads’ final resting place? An even more dynamic exhibition is planned in neurotitan artshop & gallery at Haus Schwarzenberg, involving the participating GlueHeads collagists in the process, a party downstairs in its bar Eschloraque, a collage film night hosted by GlueHead Aline Helmcke and a workshop. Also, a new issue of Prophit, my own collage zine will be presented sometime during the exhibition. Featuring works by some of the GlueHeads, this issue of Prophit,titled Margarine, is a hommage to GlueHead mother Anelor Robin, who’s desire it was to change her name into Margarine…
Neurotitan gallery is the vital epicentre of an international artist network that spans avant-garde, subculture, and established art. Neurotitan’s diverse gallery program ranges from street art, comics, illustration, and it now has to put up with a bunch of uncontrollable GlueHeads.
This series of exhibitions celebrating the project GlueHeads and the contemporary collage scene in Berlin is lovingly dedicated to Anelor’s memory.
Participants:
Anelor Robin †, maycec, Jorge Chamorro, Caro Mantke, Lula Valletta, Natascha Frioud, D.M. Nagu, Lydia Mojzis, Niels Kalk, Isabel Reitemeyer, Aline Helmcke, Cédric Mantel, Maike Zimmermann, Clémentine Rettig and Rinus van Alebeek
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Verbeke Foundation, Westakker 1, 9190 Stekene, Belgium
On view till 5 November 2023
https://verbekefoundation.com/en/
HOK, Westeinde 61, The Hague, Netherlands
On view till 19 August 2023
https://www.hokgallery.com/
Neurotitan artshop & gallery at Haus Schwarzenberg, Rosenthaler Straße 39, Berlin, Germany
On view 18 November – 9 December 2023
https://neurotitan.de/
