MEDIA ARTIST

Colby Richardson is a media artist and experimental filmmaker currently based in Toronto ON, Canada. Driven by a fascination with underused media technologies and by the way we interact with and value the technology at our disposal, Richardson’s work examines the artistic capabilities of tools and devices often unconsidered and dismissed.



→ COLBY RICHARDSON     MEDIA ARTIST





PHOMOHOBES

Phomohobes are Jason Cawood and Colby Richardson, collaborating primarily in the medium of paper collage since 2012.

PHOMOHOBES.COM


INSTAGRAM

Phomohobes draw from a collected archive of found, cut-up images to create works that exist within, while still remaining at odds with, the history and practice of traditional collage. The images they re-assemble are predominantly drawn from pre-1990 commercial sources and have thus outlived their utility in consumer culture. This chronological distance creates space for the images to be read in quotations, as “ideas” of images, sufficiently removed from their initial function as face-value representation of desirable objects or aspiration ideals. When combined together as collages, the cut-out images present an ambiguous, cryptic agenda, but they do so assertively. The collages often take shape as garish, ornate and perverse juxtapositions of mid-20th century interiors, ancient Egypt, astronomy, dated glamour, beauty products, decontextualized body parts, and hypermasculinity. These recurring themes, when viewed as a whole, create an insular world of weird tableaux which are ambiguous enough to invite a variety of interpretations, but are nonetheless part of coherent vision adhering to a visual language that is uniquely Phomohobes.





© 2022 - Colby Richardson