Zander Raymond’s improvised collages are made from daily debris and things you might find in the bin

In artist and designer Zander Raymond’s studio, a lot of things are left lying around. Found materials, tools, images, stickers and paper waste all amass into a large pile of daily debris that has become one of the creatives most precious resources for his pursuits in collage. Drawing from this archive of commonplace things: lined notebook pages, tags envelopes and other clippings of colour and form, the artist sees each new composition as a way to submerge himself in this paper wreckage and “improvise with what’s at hand”, he tells us. “Through gentle nudges, notices, and gestures, I coax the work into existence – paying careful attention to the pre-existing character embedded in the material,” he says.

As instinctive and visceral as these exquisite compositions feel, their components can often “spend several months rubbing up against various other materials before they find a spot in the work”, Zander says. Only when things feel just right does a new piece come to life – the artist is interested in even the more discreet details of character that these found pieces of ephemera hold, like “the subtle character that emerges through various forms of compression and transfer such as lamination or relief printmaking, where the material enacts its own agency and chance determines the final image”, he says.

Working with the nature of things as they are, Zander enjoys when an image or a material’s “assigned role is deactivated”, how the removal of things from their original context (whether that’s crushed paper planes or paint colour swatches) allows us to imagine them anew in this visual act of re-gathering. The forms of each of Zander’s pieces “tend to retain the essence of their source, while simultaneously fostering the unpredictable marks of chance”, he ends. “I am equally interested in how utilising the detritus that surrounds me could indicate an autobiography or say something about experience.”