Assemblage

Applied loosely, the term 'assemblage' can cover a broad range of art making, particularly where found material is used: from photomontage to installation art. Collage and assemblage are often regarded as synonymous or meaning essentially the same thing. While these are terms for closely related techniques in so far as both involve assembling material, found or otherwise, to make something, it's useful to provisionally distinguish collage and assemblage on the basis of dimensionality, with the proviso that there might be hybrid works that are three dimensional collages, or two dimensional assemblages. Just as collage is not restricted to assembling and then pasting paper or cardboard to a flat surface, assemblage per se is not limited to the making of three dimensional objects. Such hybrid works seem to occupy an intersection between collage and assemblage, or vice-versa.