Anne Collier is a visual artist who works primarily with found and appropriated photographs. I was pleasantly surprised when a friend of mine recommended me her work, as I immediately found interest in her presentation style and use of appropriated imagery and texts.

Collier's works explore cultural values and how meaning is found through imagery. "Re-occurring themes in her work include pop culture and psychology, consumerism, feminism, gender politics, clichés & tropes, and conventions of commercial photography, autobiography, and the act of looking or seeing."-wiki

Collier's work consists of found photos, posters, paper texts and various printed ephemera. An example of one of these works is titled 'Questions (Supposition)' from 2011 and consists of a photograph of some seemingly found printed material with the heading 'Supposition' and three questions: ~ What If...? ~Could things be otherwise? ~ What if there are or were alternatives?

The found material looks as if it has come from some kind of workplace environment or group exercise. The text is conceptual in that the questions may be interpreted individually by the viewer due to the lack of context. Supposition : 'a belief held without proof or certain knowledge; an assumption or hypothesis.'

I want to create something similar within my own work and I have long been interested in found texts and the interpretation of language.

I experienced Cauleen Smith's work for the first time at Collective in Edinburgh, where her short film 'H-E-L-L-O' is currently showing on a loop in one of the gallery spaces. I was immersed in the atmospheric sound coming from the range of brass instruments featured in the film as well as transfixed with the anticipatory and slow-shots of the moving image.

Smith is a film-maker and multi-media contemporary artist who's work is primarily focused on her exploration of African-American identity and feminism.

I watched 'Drylongso', Smith's first feature film made in 1998 which follows a main protagonist named Pica - an out-spoken photography student who traces the lives of young black men through a polaroid and navigates various inter-personal relationships, illness and violence. I found the film very easy to watch and almost meditative and I loved how gracefully the film explored race, gender, domesticity, the arts etc.

After watching Drylongso and doing some more research into Smith and her work I was able to re-reflect on the short film of Smith's I seen a few weeks ago, titled 'H-E-L-L-O'.