PEPITO COLLAGE

The exhibition at Worthing Museum and Art Gallery will be in the Studio Gallery - FREE Admission. The gallery is closed on Sundays and Mondays.

There will be 80+ collages in the show. This will be the first public showing of the majority of PEPITO artworks.

PEPITO collages are the result of a collaboration (started in 1997) between two artists who had worked together between 1979 and 1986. Since 1987, the two artist friends have lived more than 200 miles apart - one in West Sussex, the other in Somerset.

A PEPITO artwork is started by one of the artist friends, who then posts the initial work onto the other artist, who receives and interacts with it. The evolving artwork is then sent back and forth in the post between the two artists who incrementally add and/or subtract material from the piece until a time when one or the other artist retains the work.... and the process stops.

Apart from an agreement to work on A4 sized card (easy to source, handle, post and store), there were no other conditions set as to the frequency of exchanges, quantity of works to be worked on or any technical or stylistic parameters as to how works might evolve. The process was a kind of visual correspondence that had no ‘end game’ ambitions - it was simply an interesting way of keeping in touch.

PEPITO artworks often reference the imagery of other cultures, art, artists, the media and music etc. The character of PEPITO work suggests pathos, humour and enigma.

The PEPITO Name
The very first artwork included collaged elements from a French biscuit wrapper picturing a Mexican character called ‘Pepito’. Sometime later it was agreed that ‘Pepito’ had given birth to what was becoming quite a collection of visual correspondence and the work took its Pepito name – PEPITO is the artist.