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Make graceful and lasting change

Beach Blanket Celebrity Squares: National Geographic Beach


Cindy Tonkin - November 24, 2014

This work was donated to the Australia Street Infants School for an art auction in 2014.

This collage is part of my Cabinet of Curiosities series from 2010 and 2011.
As I worked on pieces that put objects into boxes I got into boxes that were objects.
This set of boxes contain chunks of an aerial view of a beach somewhere in the US in the 1980s. It’s a photograph from National Geographic.
In 2003, I did a collage series called Epistories. It used pictures of rocks from National Geographic. It was the first “magic formula” I found for making works that I loved. My first solo exhibition (Patchwork and Stories) in 2004 exhibited the Epistories.
Because of that exhibition, people gave me their old National Geographic magazine. I have boxes and boxes them.
So this beach piece uses some of those donated magazines.
I love this work because while I know that there are people on a beach the subtle browns and greens and white highlights form abstract shapes in my “cabinet” boxes.

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