Postcards: Sharon Elphick

Wish You Were Here by Sharon Elphick

Years ago Sharon Elphick's photographic montages of high-rise buildings, trees, numbers, and graffiti caught my eye. Lately she has turned to creating collages of found images, like the hexagons of vintage postcards that make up Wish You Were Here. Sharon has a handle on using old materials in a modern way-- no sappy, nostalgic collages here! What draws me to her work is how she pieces together multiple images into a structure of hexagons, grids, or circles.


In 2009 I stumbled across her shop on Columbia Road in London, UK. She was sitting in front of her closed shop, but she graciously offered to let me in for a look around and I came away with the above postcard and this card-- it was all I could fit in my carry-on luggage. Heathrow airport loses the most luggage in the world and I wasn't about to become another statistic by checking my bags. One day I'd love to own some of her larger work but for now, this postcard does the trick.