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GORAN TOMIC is a Collisionist Autodidactic Artist from Sydney Australia who has exhibited his Collages, Video Installations and Performance art over the past 25 years. Raised on Rauschenberg and born posthumously he flaneur’s the urban decay searching for his Wilderness Robe.
Goran, your collages are often conceived and developed in transit—cafes, pubs, libraries, and even public transport. Can you walk us through your creative process in these dynamic environments and how they influence the energy and direction of your work?
Firstly, I work upside down like a camera obscura or early box cameras, it all makes perfect sense, and everything looks better upside down. I usually work best, and my happy place is when there is physical, audible and intellectual chaos moving around me. I see myself as the eye of the Hurricane where it is quiet, still and the sanest and work my way out into the madness that surrounds me, the craziness increases the further I delve outward. This has a large impact on the energy of the completed work. So, when in public spaces I’m collaborating with the sounds and movements of the streets with the vibes of my immediate environment and interacting with people and technology incorporating the mayhem of information. Some of this is absorbed into the art, others used as mere stimulants. It’s also the excitement of taking risks, forcing myself to work quickly, impulsively and haphazardly to see how my thinking process deals and digests this pressure and anxiety. I can tell exactly where and what my mental state was and location at that particular moment when I look back at the collage.
You mentioned that the shift from a spacious house with a large workshop to apartment living significantly impacted your approach to art. How has downsizing your workspace and adapting to smaller materials like cardboard and book covers influenced the evolution of your 'Mapping Approximation' series?
It seemed to be a hindrance at first but actually opened many avenues for further exploration. Initially I left a lot of open space of pure colour or actual blank spaces to compensate not having space in my physical life, open space for the mind to walk and wander through. It was minimalist which is the opposite of my usual self. It made me treasure and appreciate every centimetre I had, it was a learning process of adjustment and compromise. As I climatised physically and psychologically I used up all available space which is where I am now with the series “Mapping Approximation”. The voyage has kind of been like a longterm jet lag, which is your soul trying to catch up with the body. Your body travels and passes through other timelines and dimensions too quickly and you’re waiting for your soul to catch up, it’s disorientating and nauseating and this is represented in the collages.
Your 'Mapping Approximation' series delves into the consciousness of the 'Modern Inferno' we inhabit, touching on themes like technology, AI, climate change, and disposable culture. How do you convey these complex ideas through your collages, and what messages are you hoping to communicate to your audience?
I convey them by using images of our exploitation and failings as a society, for example the fast construction and profit based Modern Building companies, by appropriating Historical art contexts, by hidden political, social and musical references. Also, by using a sense of Absurdity and replacement, the images I incorporate symbolise lost souls waiting for a new purpose, they are power puzzles and Mind games, expressions of personality and behavior of Alienation. Actually, the images choose me! They choose me whether I want them to or not, signifying the present state of my understanding of the world, similar to a tarot card reading. My message is primarily about Individuation, Intuition and Experimentation. What I want to communicate is the importance of finding Individuation in this confusing over saturated existence through your passion whatever that may be, or as Jung put it “the transformation of the collective unconscious brought into consciousness by means of dreams assimilated into the whole True Self”.
Raised on Rauschenberg and driven by a flâneur’s perspective of urban decay, how have these influences shaped your artistic vision? Can you discuss how the concept of 'Collisionism' informs your work and how you navigate the chaotic mayhem of modern life in a big city through your art?
They have shaped my vision by allowing me to never be afraid to blur beyond the boundaries and distinctions of mediums and realities, to never stop exploring the investigations into finding my true self with pure expression and intellect. The sauntering of a Flaneur is generally a purposeless walk through the city simply to experience the psychogeographic activity, by observing, consuming and shaping everything all at once at the same time, this has been beneficial to my vision. The overall idea or intention of “Collisionism” is to create superimpositions of stories and emotions like in Video or Film, or sampling sounds by colliding them into eachother, where you can place two or endless different scenarios against or on top of each other like two mirrors making infinity. The possibilities are endless and beginningless. I see all the different images in one collage as different faders on a 24 or 48-track studio console. Each channel has its own volume, intensity, energy, sharpness, and significance, and I play around with the faders, bringing this one to the fore or dropping that one to a backing track, a form of selective seeing or living to steer against the tide of big city entitlement and consumption.
Your latest series draws inspiration from Dante's Inferno, yet you choose to depict these themes in a subtle, underlying way rather than through obvious imagery of blood or war. What drew you to this classic work, and how do you interpret and incorporate its themes into your modern, urban-focused collages?
I was drawn to it because I see it everywhere in everyday life. Being overindulged with images of wars and violence and personal hellish scenes of sickness and suffering, there’s no need to present the obvious, it's been done to death. What intrigues me is how each person deals or drives their way through with their corresponding level of living in hell or purgatory. For example, using a Nursing Home situation as a microcosm. The themes incorporated of the lustful, the gluttonous, the hoarders and wasters are relevent now more than ever as there is so much more of it, the rejection of spiritual values for materialistic narcissictic ones. The fraud and malice against fellow humans are all concepts personified today especially in urban environments, its universal, and I can’t not be influenced by its magnitude. For me it’s a self-purification exercise incorporating Dante’s themes into this series, also purification of objects and places like the city as well. It’s an extremely large endless topic.
More info:
Lintree: https://linktr.ee/undererasure1
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