After semi-retiring from a 45 year Advertising Industry career as a Creative Director, Fysh Rutherford now takes great pleasure in chopping up old advertising signs and reassembling them to make “art”.

These artworks are classified as assemblage. Assemblage is an art form that is made by assembling different elements, often everyday objects salvaged by the artist.

In 1914, Pablo Picasso created a still life using found objects in what is possibly the first assemblage. (Tate Collection)

In 1918 Dada artist Kurt Schwitters began to use scavenged scrap materials to create collages and assemblages – he called this technique ‘merz’.

Assemblage also became the basis for many surrealists objects. Inspired by psychologist Sigmund Freud’s writings about the unconscious and dreams, surrealist artists often combined unlikely combinations of found objects to create surprising and unsettling sculptures.

In Australia, assemblage was given credence by Rosalie Gascoigne. She utilised, among other things, roadwork signs and wooden Schweppes crates to create ground breaking works that now adorn galleries throughout the country and the world.

Inspired by Rosalie and with a love of woodworking, Fysh started exploring assemblage in 2001. The act of deconstruction and reconstruction combined with an element of recycling is what makes assemblage art relevant in today’s world of change.

Fysh's work explores negative and positive visual relationships as the eye and mind jump from the light to the dark shapes within their endless combinations.

Fysh has been a regular contributor to the Artback Art Camps. He has successfully sold works online, gifted works to benefit charity auctions and exhibited to his friends and associates.