Banter Project: A collaboration between Tim van Laar and Barbara Kendrick

This project,Banter, has grown out of a number of collaborative projects and exhibitions that we have done over the years. It shares, with these past projects, a concern with the multiple uses of images and the uncertainties that this multiplicity generates. Since collage, with its semiotic slippages and recontextualizations, is central to both of our art practices, we began to discuss collage more deeply and systematically, and that ongoing discussion has culminated in this project

As much as we are interested in the making of the collages, we are also interested in the questions raised by the act of collaboration: How does collage, itself a model of uncertainty, offer a means of examining collaborative uncertainty? How does collaborating amplify the uncertainties? What benefit would this amplification have? Is the collaborative collage model analogous to other processes of communication? How does the act of collaboration affect the certainties/uncertainties of representation itself?


We have formulated a procedure for this collaboration, thinking of it as a kind of visual conversation in which we send work back and forth. But this is not necessarily a polite conversation, given our differences both philosophically and in our material practices. It will result in lively argument. Decisions will be open to question. We will be surprised, annoyed, disturbed, and exhilarated. This will all serve to reveal assumptions about our own practices.

We have three goals for the presentation of our work. We plan to exhibit the collages, produce an artist’s book and collaborate on an essay describing the process and our conclusions.

Tim van Laar and Barbara F Kendrick

In 2009, at a residency at the Virginia Center for Contemporary Arts, we tested out the above procedure. A selection of these collaborative collages can be found under Banter, in the Artwork section.