Cheryl Nelson Costumes

Learning new skills is rarely a graceful process. For me, it usually involves a great deal of swearing and the occasional gnashing of teeth. Everyone in the Extended BA heard me repeatedly declare just how much I hated this module.

Nothing seemed to make sense. I arranged my pieces, but they simply refused to work. The requirement to leave 40% of the composition as empty space irritated me beyond belief, and the whole experience slowly drove me mad.

Then, quite unexpectedly, I had an epiphany. Helen had always said, “If you don’t like it, change it. Rip it up. Destroy it!” So that’s exactly what I did. I gathered the collage I had come to hate, along with all the discarded papers and offcuts that surrounded it, and built a small fire.

The joy I felt as the paper disappeared into the flames genuinely surprised me. As I filmed it burning, I realised I wasn’t feeling loss—I was feeling relief.

The resulting video wasn’t my strongest piece. After all, you can’t rewind time and burn something for the first time twice. Ironically, I think I learned more about making video during this project than I ever did about collage. Even now, whenever I watch the film, I feel a quiet sense of satisfaction, knowing that the physical collage no longer exists, while the moment of its destruction has become the artwork I actually wanted to keep.