Gallery

Since the age of 14, Charles MacGregor had wished to be an artist. He enjoyed his art classes at school in Victoria, and found that he had a talent for design.

MacGregor’s first collage dates from 2016. He was walking along Fisgard Street and saw a jean jacket hanging over a hydrant. He became infatuated as to how the jacket, with newspapers and paint, would look on canvas. The result is ‘Street’. 

‘Canadian Flag’ (2018) developed from MacGregor’s characteristic working method of molding, stripping back and building up. He also, at one stage, removed the flag, cut it up, and reintroduced it as fragments. ‘This collage’, he says ‘is not a protest nor a nationalistic gesture’. It does evoke Canada but is perhaps more a formal statement on how red and white might interact with one another and relate to the accompanying shapes’. The work well represents his agenda with found everyday objects (newspapers, a measuring tape, a garment, etc.): to let them be used for new artistic expression, but also to recall their past and to invite a response from the viewer.

MacGregor is producing collages on a consistent basis, more particularly 3-D, i.e., relief or what Kurt Schwitters coined as ‘assemblage’. To each of MacGregor’s works there is coherence of design with usually one element standing out among others and accentuating the visual experience.

His materials variously include newspapers, jeans, leather garments, saw blades, measures, and so on. The shapes, which he achieves with the garment material, reflect its malleability.

These collages are in the tradition of such masters of the genre as Jean Arp and Kurt Schwitters.