Only Super Human

6 layer stencil on cradled MDF board
122 x 170cm

Our hands are the main tools we use to create with, they can be tools used to create objects of beauty and they can also be tools of destruction, they are the main source of our power. As a stencil artist, gloves are a part of the ‘outfit’ I wear when I create my work, similar to how super hero’s ‘wear an outfit’; both work to conceal who we really are. The reveal of what’s behind the glove is similar to the unveiling of the person behind the facade of our bravado. When we lose this power to create, for whatever reason, it’s like losing our super power. This work symbolises the acceptance of our weaknesses.

Several months after creating this piece I had my first ever case of RSI in my hand from stencilling. I had limited use of it for over 2 months, which was quite crippling for me. It definitely drove the meaning of this piece home even more so. I tried to capture what it feels like to lose something you rely on so heavily and I think this will always be one of my favourite pieces because of that.

Cannibal

6 layer stencil on cradled MDF board
120 x 90cm

This work is about feeding off your own weaknesses and feeling like a ‘chicken’. As well as dealing with those feelings of cowardice, it plays on the idea that we eat our feelings in an act of self pity. I wanted the work I created to be confronting, disgusting and off putting, the way our self doubt and weakness feels when we wrestle with it on a day-to-day basis.

It examines the meaning of the insult of being called a ‘chicken’; what is it about chickens that make them the poster animal for cowardice. It symbolises the ‘hunter’ and the ‘hunted’, sometimes we can be our own worst enemies and sometimes it’s other people who demean us or make us feel lower than our real worth. It’s that power struggle we have within ourselves and that we allow perfect strangers to lord over us. However, as much as it is about self pity, the eating of the chicken, or ‘cannibalism’ as I’ve called it, visualises the taking back of that power and devouring it. As much as people can find it ‘sickening’ its empowering to just own it.

Ratsak

6 layer stencil on cradled MDF board
82 x 121cm

The culture of street art is always changing. Sometimes it seems like there aren’t a lot of artists left who haven’t put their work on the streets at some stage or another.

Two of the worlds most notorious stencil artists; Banksy and Blek Le Rat have created single layer black silhouette stencils of rats that have become famous, worldwide. Not only are Blek and Banksy notorious for creating these rats, but they’re a commonly tackled ‘theme’, especially among stencil artists. I don’t just want to paint rats, I think the medium of stencil art is more than that, or at least that it can be more than that and although Blek and Banksy are the fore-fathers of this medium I think it’s time we raised that level that is expected from stencil art. I don’t want to create another single layer rat stencil, I want to create ratsak and put the old ways to rest. There are many artists who have followed in their footsteps and there always will be. But there should be stencil artists that change the medium also and this is my response to that notion; Ratsak, ‘kills rats, dead’.

Twix Towers

6 layer stencil on cradled MDF board
169 x 53cm

This work has two different meanings; It’s about the effect of obesity on some of the worlds greatest nations and it’s also about the media sugar coating, framing or censoring news.

I wanted the work I created on this issue to be powerful, and passionate because it’s how I feel about these two topics, which are largely overlooked.

Boys in Blue/Just Following Orders

5 layer stencil on cradled MDF board, hand embellished editions of 5
60 x 120cm

The two sides to the law. The one that is enforced and the one we take into our own hands. This is a bit of a chaos vs. order piece that I came up with when I first heard about the ‘broken glass theory’ that social scientists, James Q Wilson and George Kelling came up with in 1982, using broken windows as a metaphor for factors that contributed to the urban disorder and vandalism of certain neighbourhoods.

“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.”

The theory is actually quite fascinating and changed the way the laws were being governed at the time. Where police used to focus more on ‘serious crimes’ like murder, rape and robberies, the concept put about by Wilson and Kelling suggested that it’s really more of a linear effect; that small crimes are what lead to larger crimes, so being harder on people would make for a lower threshold for law braking. ‘Disorder causes crime, and crime causes further disorder and crime.’ The presence of graffiti was intensively targeted, and the subway system in NYC was cleaned in a special effort from 1984 -1990.

Top of the Rock

5 layer stencils on cradled MDF board, edition of 5
151 x 92cm

I’m on top of the world and I’d rather take a selfie with it in the background than look around and enjoy it. This is my take on evaluating success and how everybody deals with it differently. Is it more important to seem like you’re at the top of the world than to actually be there?

“I don’t keep a travel diary. I did keep a travel diary once and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down. Everything else slipped away, as though my mind felt jilted by my reliance on pen and paper. For exactly the same reason I don’t travel with a camera. My holiday becomes the snapshots and anything I forget to record is lost.”

- Alex Garland, “The Beach”

A Hand in all of the Pies

6 layer stencil on cradled MDF board
121 x 121cm

I guess this piece is fairly straight forward. Life very rarely hands you what you want, sometimes you’ve got to go out and take it.

50 Layer Piece of Shit (but I did it in 6)

6 layer stencil on cradled MDF board
82 x 120cm

There is often a stigma behind stencil art; being a stencil artist is not something I’m always proud to say that I do. When I try to explain my work I feel like I’m describing how to make a potato stamp to someone. In saying that though, I feel like art has that stigma in general, the idea that you’re trying to sell someone something they don’t ‘need’. Being a stencil artist, I’ve heard people trying to justify the art-form in ways by saying that an artwork is 50 or 80 or 100 layers. I feel like these things are said in an attempt to separate artist and buyer, to make the artist sound like some kind of magician who created something otherworldly.

I want to break that mould. I don’t think any art form or amount of layers should be the yardstick for artistic merit. At the end of the day, I would make the work I do regardless. I think it’s that mentality and my wanting to have fun with that idea that made me want to make this stencil, because you’ve got to be able to hang shit on yourself sometimes so you remember not to always take yourself so seriously. It may be 50 layers, but it’s still just a stencil, so it’s still just a piece of shit. And by the way...I did it in 6. Not that that matters.