FRINGE WORLD 2022 | GET PASTED EXHIBITION | 5 STARS ☆☆☆☆☆

Marite Norris’ most recent work Get Pasted, is a vibrant large-scale collage exhibition that reflects on the deconstruction and reconstruction of life. It brings joyful relief from the ever-changing world around us.

Marite is the visionary founder, owner, and artistic director of the Art Space Collective – an innovative community arts hub fittingly located in the walls of a 1940s building in Scarborough that fosters collaborative creation and connection with the community.

A prolific visual storyteller, her artwork reflects her passions of people, place, cultural diversity, eclectic images, and all things kitsch and theatrical. Years spent living in London, Hong Kong and Amsterdam have influenced Marite’s photographic interests and deepened her appreciation of textiles and artefacts, which are combined in her latest large-scale exhibition for Fringe World.

Get Pasted responds to the Art Space Collective’s deco-inspired architecture with collages anchored onto traditional paper and canvas, and large-scale fragments directly pasted onto the gallery walls.

An eclectic soundtrack of layered music by Chris Tonkin (UWA Conservatorium) energises your senses as you wander through a matrix of layered pop-culture imagery and the merry chaos of kitsch collage.

Pop art themes bring an instant cool vibe, and it is not difficult to catch visual echoes and to identify a clear narrative through the hallways and rooms covered in collage and colour.

Expressive textures and symbolic collage elements appear to break the rules of visual logic, imposing their own versions of order and perspective. Unrelated items look spontaneously pasted yet are a careful selection and stylised attachment of images, torn photographs, wallpaper, tinsel, and other media that have been decisively cut, dissected, disassembled and reassembled.

The bright use of colour, bold patterns, movement, and abandonment of convention invoke feelings of playfulness. It feels lighthearted. But if you look a little deeper, through the multiple layers and fragmentation, you are drawn in to Marite’s profound intended emotions.

Her collages reveal a unique perspective on all the little scattered moments that make up life. It reminds us that the simple act of picking and choosing, cutting and sticking back together is an expression of choice and preference. Of finding extraordinary ways to keep moving forward through uncertain times.

“The selection, assembling and rearrangement of things as a collage artist is a kind of restructuring. I’m no stranger to rebuilding and it is something we’re all called upon to do in some way as we navigate our way through boosters, mandates, divided opinion, misinformation and general gloom,” says Marite.

Against insurmountable odds, the Art Space Collective and Marite’s artistic ventures have been integral in providing her a semblance of healing after the irrevocable loss of Mo, Evie and Otis Maslin, her three eldest children in 2014. All her art, held closely in her heart, is dedicated to her children, honouring their enormous capacity for fun and inclusiveness.

From her exhibitions like Get Pasted, to the bringing together of community through initiatives at the Art Space Collective, and everything in between, Marite is helping to cultivate the contemporary arts scene we know and love.

You can catch Get Pasted until 12th February 2022. FREE EVENT
10am – 2pm | Jan 31st – Feb 12th | The Art Space Collective

And to experience the world of collage after hours, check out Get Pasted: Tunes on the Terrace for an immersive evening of visual art spectacular, performance, and live music set in the intimate gallery that is the Art Space Collective. TICKETS