Pasteups
Response to the city
A collection of some of the smaller scale site-specific work I carried out between May and July 2017, in Italy and Croatia. Some pieces were done spontaneously in response to the surroundings, aided by little online research into the history of the place. Most pieces were created and pasted in one night. All works were handdrawn and pasted using double sided tape – I was traveling and making my own wheatpaste would have been difficult.
Grandovac, Croatia
Rapid Reading
Opportunistic glue-free pasteup at Grandovac beach, Vis. During WWII, a crate of Armed Services Edition paperbacks was dropped by parachute on the island of Vis - the books were read aloud to partisans by English-speaking soldiers. Some books were abridged and included the slogan "Slightly condensed for rapid reading."
Zagreb, Croatia
Ode To Ida
A pasteup I put up in the center of Zagreb, in honour of Zagreb-born Ida Biard, one of the early critics of the gallery system, and a proponent of non-commercial, ethic-over-aesthetic, publicly accessible art. In line with her anti-spectacle approach, it's nearly impossible to find photos of her - this pasteup is based on a photo of artist Balint Szombathy, who wore an eyepatch with her name as part of their 1973 collaboration.
Venice, Italy
Venice
Someone had torn out the shiny square from this Biennale poster (an intact version shown later in the stack), presumably so they could take it home as a souvenir. I pasted this guy over the top to reflect the shame I felt as an unwilling member of a group of people who are inadvertently destroying Venice - tourists.
Ravenna, Italy
Three Beasts
A trio of pasteups upped in Ravenna, the resting place of Dante. At the start of the Divine Comedy, 3 beasts menace Dante back into the forest (aka spiritual mid-life crisis), setting him off on his spiritual quest through the Inferno. In my experience, even the most frightening confrontation tends to lead to positive outcome - monstrosity tends to vanish in hindsight. I wanted to make these three beasts as unmenacing as possible, to reflect my love for things that frighten me, not least because of their potential to instigate great and lasting change.
Bologna, Italy
Ink
A trio of drawings I upped one early morn in Bologna, May of this year. The flow of words on the walls of the city, like ink on paper, and the hands that put them there, were my inspiration. I made the drawings using marker on the three paper placemats that our dinner had been served on the night before. Miss you Italia...can't wait to get back.
