An examination of two artists (Monique Motut-Firth & Amy J. Dyck) whose art practices utilize collage to create complex systems, both internal and external held at the ACT Gallery in Maple Ridge, Canada. Here, analogue images are digitized and injected into a stream of digital media and animation. Other ‘scrap-systems’ link together visual data into diagram-like compositions exploring motion.
Collage storyboard & Stop motion Animation. Installation view, ACT Gallery, Maple Ridge, January, 2023.
Photo credit: Byron Dauncey
A Simple Machine for Living is based off of the idea of merging different types of movement found in game play and physics with the concept of animating a Rube Goldberg Machine, a complicated sequence of actions that result in the solving of a simple problem. Motut-Firth used cut out images to create large a storyboard, approximately 30 x 3’ long in separate panels. The boards and paper cut outs where then scanned, joined and animated. Inspired by the American experimental animators Faith and John Hubley (Moonbird, 1959; Windy Day, 1968), Motut-Firth worked with her two children to create the soundtrack. A Simple Machine for Living explores the visual language of images and the concept of human life in constant motion.
Animation stills from a Simple Machine for Living, paper cut out animation short. A rolling object travels through a metaphor for life, changing shape, direction in unique situations guided by found print imagery.
Installation view, ACT Gallery
Photo Credit: Byron Dauncey
Monique Motut-Firth, working with paper cut outs, inkjet prints, stop motion animation, sound & collage
Monique Motut-Firth, A Simple Machine for Living, 2023, achromatic storyboard, Installation view, ACT Gallery
Photo Credit: Byron Dauncey
Amy J. Dyck & Monique Motut-Firth, Installation view, ACT Gallery
Photo Credit: Byron Dauncey
Monique Motut-Firth, On the Upside, 2023. 30 x 40” inkjet print from hand cut collage, dibond mount on aluminium.
Amy J. Dyck & Monique Motut-Firth. Installation view, ACT Gallery
Photo Credit: Byron Dauncey
Monique Motut-Firth, Star system, 2023. Vinyl wall mount from digital print of hand cut collage, 40 x 50”, Intricate Arrangements, ACT Gallery
Monique Motut-Firth, Data Flow, 2022. Inkjet print, 30 x 40” from analogue & digital collage. Installation view, ACT Gallery
Photo Credit: Byron Dauncey
Amy J. Dyck & Monique Motut-Firth, original mixed media collages and inkjet prints hand cut, mounted and framed. ACT Gallery
Photo Credit: Byron Dauncey
January- February, 2023 the ACT Gallery, Maple Ridge, BC
Photo Credit: Byron Dauncey
A graduate exhibit of the scrap-systems developed over the last two years. Like post-consumer relics these quasi-structures experiment with scale, from tiny toy-like fetish objects to large scale totem-like icons.
Monique Motut-Firth. EXTENSIONS Graduate Exhibition, 2015. Charles H. Scott Gallery. Vancouver, BC.
Photo credit: Amanda Arcuri
Monique Motut-Firth. Many multi-motion items probably safe unless downwind, 2015. 60 x 180". Installation view, Charles H. Scott. Inkjet print.
Photo credit: Amanda Arcuri
Monique Motut-Firth, Many multi-motion electronic items probably safe unless downwind (detail). Inkjet print. 2015.
Monique Motut-Firth, Many multi-motion electronic items probably safe unless downwind, (detail). Inkjet print. 2015.
Monique Motut-Firth. EXTENSIONS Graduate Exhibition Installation view, 2015. Charles H. Scott Gallery.
Monique Motut-Firth. 24 hour bake oven, 2015. Hand-cut and mounted inkjet print. 9 x 9" framed. Installation view.
Monique Motut-Firth. See detail B, 2015. Hand-cut and mounted inkjet print. 9 x 9" framed. Installation view.
Monique Motut-Firth. What's new in ABC, 2015. Hand-cut and mounted inkjet print. 9 x9" framed. Installation view.
An introductory video to the studio practice of Canadian artist Monique Motut-Firth.
Photo credit: Kirsten Aubrey
Paper catalogue cut outs, mixed media, tacks. Dimensions variable, 400 linear feet.
Mounted as a graph in this installation the work asks questions about the impact of images on shared cultural memory, representation and under-representation, the female figure, the role of women within the capitalist system and their impact on cultural assimilation.
Photo credit: Amanda Arcuri
consume her demand, 2015. Group show with artists Mary Coss (busts), Monique Motut-Firth (paper dolls) and Charlene Vickers (paper mocassins). Installation view, Surrey, BC.
Photo credit: Amanda Arcuri
Detail. Double sided collage cut outs of Canadian catalogues, double sided, mixed media, grommets and pins.
Detail, consume her demand, agent C projects, Surrey, BC
consume her demand, agent C gallery, 2015. Surrey, BC
Photo credit: Amanda Arcuri
A group show featuring artists Monique Motut-Firth, Janet Wang and Carlyn Yandle at the CityScape Community Art Space in North Vancouver, BC. The show aims to disrupt the domestic sphere by re-framing the familiar. The Polly’s Paper Doll Project excerpt provides a visual link to the idealization of the feminine within the domestic sphere.
Photo credit: Amanda Arcuri
Domestic Interventions, CityScape Community Art Space, North Vancouver, BC. 2014. A clothesline of domestic confessions.
Photo credit: Amanda Arcuri
Paper dolls, the first segments of the Polly’s paper doll project. Domestic Interventions, CityScape Community ArtSpace, North Vancouver, BC.
Photo credit: Amanda Arcuri
Paper doll chain, CityScape Community Art Space, North Vancouver BC, 2014. 8 x 372".
Photo credit: Amanda Arcuri
Installation view, Domestic Interventions, CityScape Community ArtSpace, North Vancouver.
Photo credit: Amanda Arcuri
Mixed papers and mediums. Approx. 11 x 24".1 panel of 200. Handcut analogue collage of images cut from vintage Canadian catalogues.
Mixed papers and mediums. Approx. 11 x 24". 1 panel of 200. Analogue collage of images torn from vintage Canadian catalogues.
The making of the Polly’s Paper Dolls Project. A short video describing the process and inspiration for the Polly’s paper doll project.
Courtesy of Carbon Life Media.
A glance at some analogue (water colour, oil, mixed media) and digital drawings and paintings.
From inspiration to paper to digital paint
Paint, ink, water colour and pixels, exploring insect forms
Messing around with pencil, paint, ink and water based markers, alcohol markers and digital drawing.
From still life in pencil, to pixel to textile design
A creative landscape inspired by textile design
Exploring sketching, acrylic paint, ink and gouache layering in landscape creation
Recreating juicy textures in digital paint
Seascapes based on the unknown, potentially AI generated imagery or deep sea photography as source material. The unknown, remains unknown.
Oil on canvas, 30 x 36”
Oil on canvas, 30 x 36”
Oil on canvas, 32 x 40”
Oil on canvas, 24 x 30”
Oil on canvas, approx 24 x 36”
New digital technologies have created both obstacles and opportunities for artists to work together, these animation shorts explore new ways of collaborating within a digital world. Paper cutouts are scanned and animated in a style similar to stop-motion. Although many of the themes are serious in nature; including, the pandemic, global warming and pollution, the animations emphasize movement, exploration and playfulness.
The scale is small and the videos are short acknowledging the of the role of social media and mobile devices in disseminating the videos as we remain restricted in large gallery and theatre spaces.
Experimental & lo-fi animation shorts
The tiniest peepshow in town. Small File Films screening at the East Van Vodville Cinema. Small file experimental directors showing May 3rd to the 10th, 2025, including my sexy paper animation short, Don’t Forget the Cream, 2024.
The tiniest peepshow in town. Small File Films screening at the East Van Vodville Cinema. Small file experimental directors showing May 3rd to the 10th, 2025.
An animated short playfully recreating and critiquing human evolution. This animation merges visual artist Monique Motut-Firth’s hand cut collage imagery with multi-disciplinary artist prOphecy sun’s soundscape.
Official large scale screening of A Simple Machine for Living at the Inaugural Vanimation Festival @ the iconic Rio Theatre in Vancouver.
Considering the confusion of our shared moment and the new ways in which human bodies are directed to move in public spaces. The short ‘Directives’ takes it’s cue from the complexity of this place/space in history.
An animated short built using paper cut outs, is inspired by media artist Nam June Paik and the punk band Black Flag 'TV Party' and filmmaker Jan Švankmajer, it explores the idea of electric portals and the current politics of viewing. Sound by prOphecy sun
First screening of animation short, Data Dreaming, 2022 at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts for the 3rd Annual Small File Media Festival.
What does DATA look like?
This animation short was made using found paper cut outs and overlapped sound.
Inspired, in part, from last year’s amazing Small File Festival and Hito Steyerl’s 2017 book, Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War and with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts Explore and Create grant; this animation attempts to visualize human ideas of energy and data sets.
Visual representations include, paper cuts of diagrams, artist sketches, patterns ,water currents, light waves, footage from Marcel Duchamp's Anémic cinema.
The soundscape is a collection low frequency radio waves, amplifier buzz, static, sonar recordings, appropriated music riffs (ZZ Top/ John Lee Hooker), electric currents, open source music (NIN), sounds of the sun and space (NASA) ad local radio waves, complied in a 3 min data crunch.
Skyline expresses frustration as local artists look for affordable creative studio spaces in the ever-expanding city of Vancouver and the impact of urbanization on the environment.
Through the Looking Glass, based on an album by Siouxsie and the Banshees sees our peacock protagonist searching for truths in the mirror/pond/portal. Animation short built from cut paper, sound by artist prOphecy sun.
In the face of climate change and pollution, what if there were a Planet B? This is a cut paper stop-motion animation short that explores an imaginary vision of a Planet B as a creative escape.
An animation short experimenting with animism, robots, sound, collage and the idea of widespread system malfunction inspired by COVID-19 restrictions.
An exploratory collection of small file/ lofi animated shorts made of found images and sound that attempt to frame the complexity of our environmental moment. Pocket Theatre was intended to be viewed on cell phones during the pandemic shutdowns of galleries and communal spaces in 2020.
We seek out new solutions to reduce our carbon impact through sustainable approaches to media including using outdated technology and images, low-fi sound collection and small files.
DRONE life 1.0 is a collaborative art installation between Vancouver artist Monique Motut-Firth and animator Jayson Woolvett. It involves a one-minute digital loop projection that experiments with animating a machine-like paper collage. These mechanical structures return the gaze of capitalist image consumption towards the audience and survey the social space; the viewer is now the one being observed.
A collection of figure drawing samples in both, analogue and digital formats used for teaching life drawing.
Figure drawing examples in analogue and digital mediums.
Gesture sketches are quick drawings 30sec- 1min meant to capture the motion and the expression of the figure in action.
Foreshortening is the effect of perspective on the figure in space.
Quick sketches of hands by various models highlighting expression over structure.
A quick walk through of my teaching techniques for Drawing and Life Drawing. I have been professionally instructing drawing and life drawing classes online and in person for over 15 years in Vancouver, Canada.
Oil on canvas, 48 x 48"
The Sentries (detail), 2013
Oil on canvas, 4 x 4"
Oil on canvas, 4 x 4"
Oil on canvas, 20 x 24”
Oil on canvas, 20 x 24”
Following the formal potentials of organic forms and colour, these scrap-systems link disparate images together to make new compositions and structures. Colours slip through the images as liquids and formally bind different families of images and eras together. Compositions topple and sway referencing impossible structural qualities.
Installation view, Authentic Self: A New Equilibrium, Headline Gallery; South Granville, Vancouver BC
Photo credit, Verne Lindquist
A group show featuring artists: Adriele Au, Camilla G. Cerna, Desirée Patterson, Gracelee Lawrence, Kaitlyn Herlehy, Lyssa Kayra, Monique Motut-Firth, Nicole Johnston, Olivia Solodko, Shamona Stokes, Tristesse Seeliger. Headline Gallery, Vancouver BC, 2021.
Photo Credit, Verne Lindquist
An organic composition using a diverse range of sources challenging the conventional European Still Life Tradition considering our ecological moment.
24 x 30” analogue collage scanned and printed as archival Inkjet print.
A composition based on the imaginative proposition that this city is floating underwater animating Ernst Haeckel’s jellyfish in a labyrinth of arches, jewelry and pillars.
24 x 30” analogue collage scanned and printed as archival Inkjet print
A large scale organic composition reconsidering our ecological moment made by weaving imagery from textbooks, Salvador Dali, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Wayne Thiebaud and Andrea Zittel.
40 x 60” Large scale analogue collage scanned and printed as archival Inkjet print
A custom piece celebrating 80’s skate culture as cut from a vast array of pop culture materials including Rolling Stone and Mad magazines.
24 x 30” custom order analogue collage printed as archival Inkjet print
A celebration of all things pink, playing with Art Nouveau designs, Toronto’s CN tower also including a nod to Judy Chicago’s work.
30 x 40” analogue collage scanned and printed as inkjet print
The first in a series of organic compositions using organic components from textbooks, photographers, gardening magazines, comic books, take out food menus and Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak to playfully imitate a sense of natural growth.
Inkjet print, dibond mount, 2016.
A perfectly balanced composition in reds, with rolling Sunkist oranges, lemons and everything delicious.
Inkjet print dibond mount 20 x 30”.
An early handcut large scale inkjet print from an analogue collage, based on the concept of machines motion and using some imagery from mechanical manuals and Popular Science magazines.
Inkjet print, mixed paper, paint. Installation view, Mitchell Press Gallery, Vancouver BC.
Organic compositions exploring the act of balancing our precarious ecological moment. Canfor Gallery, Prince George, BC, 2021.
Photo courtesy of Two Rivers Gallery
These large scale collaged rhizomatic compositions have been ripped and carefully cut from thousands of different sources. The shear pervasiveness of printed source material is inexhaustible, suffocating. These scrap-systems running from one image to the next, one colour or line into another have no centre, beginning or end. They unfold, unravel mirroring the international pace of information flow and center-less internet scrolling.
Layering cut paper and looking for unique patterns and actions present in the imagery.
A complex web of reintegrated imagery or scrap-system echoing other moments, places and vocabularies of product sales, design, architecture, historical and contemporary paintings and diagrams all broken apart and reformatted as a reflection of clunky movement and confusion; beauty in chaos.
Analogue collage scanned and printed as archival Inkjet print. Sizes variable.
Monique Motut-Firth, Star system, 2023. Vinyl wall mount from digital print of hand cut collage, 40 x 50”, Intricate Arrangements, ACT Gallery
Monique Motut-Firth, Star system, 2023. Detail of a digital print of hand cut collage.
Using Canadian landscape painter Franklin Carmichael’s painted hills as inspiration hundreds of images were cut from found magazines and grouped together based on advertising eras. Tiny black and white images from older Canadian magazines are overlapped by rusty red images from the 60’s and 70’s; large glossy saturated images from contemporary magazines tumble in to dominate the composition. Questioning the implication of consumer images in global consumption and its power to change the geography of our natural landscapes.
30 x 40” Large scale analogue collage scanned and printed as archival Inkjet print
What might the landscapes of the future look like? New Territories builds mountains from machine imagery. A lamp, an air filter, engine parts, heating systems and door handles stack to create a new achromatic vista.
20 x 30” analogue collage scanned and printed as archival Inkjet print
Vintage construction manuals, diagrams, paintings and advertisements are reconstructed in a house-like composition, small screws and nails appear to keep it together. All colours are original.
Analogue collage scanned and printed as archival Inkjet print.
Select installations in which mechanical scrap-systems were exhibited, including a solo show at the Fields Gallery and Exploratory Space in Vancouver BC and a large scale projection of an animation for Nuit Blanche in Saskatoon Canada.
Machine-like imagery was cut and collected from paper sources and then re-configured into new imaginative contraptions. Gravity, fluids, steam, and machine movement where considered in their compositions.
A collaboration with Vancouver 2D animator Jayson Woolvett brought one of the paper drones to life in a one-minute animation.
Free cut ink jet print, mounted with mixed media, approximately 24 x 36”, installation view, Machinations, Vancouver, BC.
Photo credit: Verne Lindquist
Paper inkjet cutouts based on analogue collages mounted on wood, free-hand wall paint.
Photo credit: Verne Lindquist
Gallery installation view. Free floating drones and plinth containing cut paper from the collage making process. Fields Gallery, Vancouver, BC.
Photo credit: Verne Lindquist
Machinations, 2018. Installation view. Vancouver, BC
Photo credit: Verne Lindquist
Installation includes 1 min digital loop animation, a collaboration between artist Monique Motut-Firth and animator Jayson Woolvett. Machinations, 2018. Installation, The Fields Gallery, Vancouver BC.
Photo credit: Verne Lindquist
DRONE life 1.0 is a collaborative art installation between Vancouver artist Monique Motut-Firth and animator Jayson Woolvett. It involves a one-minute digital loop projection that experiments with animating a machine-like paper collage installed as a large scale outdoor projection for Nuit Blanche 2018 in Saskatoon, Canada.
Photo credit: artist
Wheat pasted images of drone-like machines around Saskatoon city centre as part of DRONE Life 2.0, Nuit Blanche, 2018. These mechanical structures return the gaze of capitalist image consumption towards the audience and survey the social space; the viewer is now the one being observed.
Using machine-like imagery from diverse sources and eras inventive contraptions take shape. The visual representation of machine motion, gravity, fluids and momentum playfully re-construct the working potential of the machine. Experimenting with the 3D language of photography they are at once plausible and yet unbelievable, their purpose imagined and unexplainable. Other works explore the development of line and the relationship between systems of authority and the diagram as a directive.
As though swimming underwater, this machine is made of glassware, door handles, dish ware, jewellery, camera lens and other images.
24 x 30” analogue collage scanned and printed as archival Inkjet print
A blue ribbon machine made from images of collected from cigarette adverts (blue ribbon), and mechanical magazines including tires, satellites, pipes, and motors.
Inkjet print dibond mount, 30 x 40”.
An imaginary machine baed around movement and transportation built from images of cars, motors, jewellery, levers, dials, faucets, a fishing reel and 1950’s Popular Science magazines.
Inkjet print dibond mount, 30 x 40”
An early map of visual similarities between a wide selection of popular imagery.
Inkjet print, mixed paper. Installation view, Mitchell Press Gallery, Vancouver BC.
Place one-way check valve on leading edge option (detail)
Early explorations using machine imagery in insect form.
Inkjet print. Sizes variable.
