Zagreb Bookshop Mural
Shmek One & Myself painted this mural on the sidewall of Preston’s (Melbourne) Zagreb Croation bookshop in June 2016. Another wall with complete creative freedom given (the best kind of brief!) so again I got to play with some of the personal imagery I’ve been developing over the past few years.
Shmek and I worked on a design where our very different work is interlocking in the middle. Shmek’s work is heavily warped and disguised funky graffiti lettering that is at times obfuscated into completely abstract shapes. We felt the disparate elements of real rendered forms, surreal illustration, lettering and abstraction came together to form an interesting formation of complimentary opposites.
As far as my own work goes I draw on a collection of organic and mechanical three dimensional reference material that I’ve built up over the years (skulls, shells, old tools etc) to create assemblages that spark my interest – a formation that is something other than the sum of it’s parts. A balance between accurate still-life rendering and my own synthetic invented forms that echo the ‘real’ objects shape and form. By using unusual pairings of objects and stripping them of their normal function or setting I’m aiming to breathe new life into these objects and create surreal and fantastical imagery – Strange and evocative stories of a mythical place and time.
Here’s the finished mural followed by shots of the mural in progress and lots of detail images:
