For some time, Hammer voluntarily submitted its scripts to the British Board of Film Censors before beginning production. Regarding the script of X the Unknown, one reader/examiner (Audrey Field) commented on 24 November:

“Well, no one can say the customers won’t have had their money’s worth by now. In fact, someone will almost certainly have been sick. We must have a great deal more restraint, and much more done by onlookers’ reactions instead of by shots of ‘pulsating obscenity’, hideous scars, hideous sightless faces, etc, etc. It is keeping on and on in the same vein that makes this script so outrageous. They must take it away and prune. Before they take it away, however, I think the President [of the BBFC] should read it. I have a stronger stomach than the average (for viewing purposes) and perhaps I ought to be reacting more strongly.”

Of course, such reviews only served to whet the appetite of Hammer Horror fans worldwide. Such was Hammer’s success that the term ‘Hammer Horror‘ became synonymous with any horror film of the period made in a similar style, even when produced by rival companies!

Over the years Hammer have worked with an impressive roster of writers, directors and stars, including Vincent Price, Val Guest, Stephanie Beacham, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Terence Fisher, Oliver Reed, Ursula Andress, Raquel Welch, Bette Davis, Diana Dors and Vera Day, producing internationally acclaimed films including The Quatermass Xperiment, The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera, The Devil Rides Out and many, many more.

Join us as we delve into the Hammer Films archive, exploring the heritage of Britain’s most successful film company. Following the resounding success of its London premier, this spectacular exhibition is on tour to the North East for the first ever time, providing a truly exclusive opportunity to view this impressive selection of rare and original posters, prints and behind-the-scenes photos first, celebrating the horror, drama, suspense and glamour of the seminal films which propelled Hammer to cult status.

Accompanying the exhibition is a selection of official Hammer Horror mugs, as well as two books by author Marcus Hearn: Hammer Glamour and The Hammer Story, featuring rare and previously unpublished photographs and interviews from Hammer’s archive and private collections worldwide. Hammer Glamour celebrates Hammer’s female stars including Ingrid Pitt, Martine Beswicke, Caroline Munro, Barbara Shelley, Joanna Lumley, Nastassja Kinski, and Raquel Welch.

We are also thrilled to present ‘Vincent Price and Coral Browne‘, a black and white photograph of the iconic Hammer star himself, with his Australian actress wife, by perhaps the 20th Century’s most acclaimed photographer; Helmut Newton. The photograph is one of three given to the Prices by Newton, and is inscribed to them by him. It is accompanied by a letter of authenticity from Victoria Price, of the Vincent Price Estate.

Items in the exhibition range in price from just £8.99 for an Official Hammer mug – if you can face the Mummy on a Monday morning – up to just £25 for a nostalgic film poster, and from £75 – £125 for our excellent rare prints and behind-the-scenes photographs! And why not take advantage of our first-class conservation framing service, to display and preserve those gruesome images to their terrifying full-potential! Or if you can’t make it to the show, browse and buy these Hammer goodies and many more online at www.opus-art.com, where you can also see our excellent selection of contemporary art from a range of established and emerging contemporary artists!

Sputnik tells the story, later revealed to be an elaborate hoax, of the life of Ivan Istochnikov, a Russian cosmonaut who disappeared during the flight of Soyuz 2 in 1968 and was then removed from history by the Soviet bureaucracy. Photographs of Istochnikov were retouched to remove his likeness, his family was moved to Siberia, and his friends and colleagues were threatened. This fascinating book is extensively researched but entirely fabricated by Fontcuberta, whose best-known works examine the truthfulness of photography.

Sputnik – The Odyssey of the Soyuz II comprises:

Cloth-bound portfolio and aluminium slipcase, measuring 24 x 19 x 3.5 inches

Book measuring 6.6 x 9.1 inches

12 mounts, each measuring 20 x 16 inches containing 19 photographs and two reproductions of drawings.

-         Four photographs measuring 16 x 12 inches

-         Eight photographs measuring 8 x 9.5 inches

-         One photograph measuring 7.25 x 12 inches

-         One photograph measuring 5.5 x 8.5 inches

-         Two photographs measuring 6 x 4 inches

-         Two reproductions of drawings measuring 8 x 9 inches

In addition, the portfolio also includes a fake medal, real fragment of meteorite and signed colophon.

The Story

According to Joan Fontcuberta, this extensively researched book details the life of Ivan Istochnikov, a Russian cosmonaut who disappeared during the flight of Soyuz 2 in 1968 and was then removed from history by the Soviet bureaucracy. Photographs of Istochnikov were retouched to remove his likeness, his family was moved to Siberia, and his friends and colleagues were threatened.

On October 25, 1968 the Soyuz 2 was launched from the Baikonur aeronautics center with the cosmonaut-pilot Colonel Ivan Istochnikov on board. The spacecraft was to be the target of a space manoeuvre carried out by the Soyuz 3 which, piloted by the Lieutenant Colonel Giorgi Beregovoi, was going to attempt an orbital docking of the two capsules. In those days, the United States and the USSR were racing against the clock to be the first to reach the Moon. Political pressure prevailed over technical considerations and the space race had already claimed some victims. For example, the flight of the Soyuz 1. Starting off badly, it eventually ended in tragedy when the cosmonaut Komarov crashed on his return due to a malfunction of the parachute. For the next mission, precautions were carried out to the extreme and all signs pointed to a satisfactory result. But it was not to be.

After a failed attempt at space docking, the Soyuz 2 and the Soyuz 3 drifted apart and lost contact with each other. When they found each other the next day, Istochnikov had disappeared and his module showed signs of having been hit by a meteorite. In truth, what had really happened was never known for certain and the enigma inspired a series of conjectures. However, the Soviet authorities were determined not to admit to an another failure. They came up with a solution appropriate to their style by declaring that the Soyuz 2 had been an unmanned flight. Officially, Ivan Istochnikov had never existed and to prevent anyone from contradicting this version, they confined his family, blackmailed his colleagues, manipulated files and retouched photographs. Reality had surpassed the most fantastic science fiction plot. However when fear ended, so did the pact of silence. With Perestroika, the secret documents were declassified and investigators could reconstruct the course of events. With the information currently available, the Sputnik Foundation asked the academic Piotr Muraveinik to curate a touring exhibition which would tell the story of this thrilling and tragic episode in the history of cosmonautics.

The Reality

The story of the Soyuz II is an elaborate hoax, entirely fabricated by Joan Foncuberta. The photographs accompanying this book show the original photographs of Ivan Istochnikov with family and colleagues, and then the apparently retouched versions where Istochnikov has been removed. In fact, the photographs without Istochnikov are the original photographs, in the retouched images Fontcuberta has actually added his own image, as the heroic cosmanaut Istochnikov, to the photograph.

Several lines of evidence available since the first exhibition of Sputnik in 1997 in Madrid suggested that the story and artifacts form an elaborate hoax:

• 
• The name ‘Ivan Istochnikov’ is a Russian translation of Joan Fontcuberta’s name; in specific, ‘Joan’ and ‘Ivan’ both translate to ‘John’ and Fontcuberta and Istochnikov both mean ‘hidden fountain’.
• The photographs of Istochnikov show Fontcuberta’s face.
• The official website for the Sputnik exhibition in Madrid in 1997 relates the story of Ivan Istochnikov and the Soyuz II but has the words ‘PURE FICTION’ in light red on a dark red background at the bottom of the webpage.
• The front and back pages of the catalogue accompanying the Madrid exhibition have the words ‘it’s all fiction in Russian and Spanish printed on them using glow-in-the-dark ink.
• The Spanish newspaper El Mundo devoted three pages on its website to the Madrid exhibition in 1997. The third page states ‘the report which we published on the previous pages is a product of his [Fontcuberta's] imagination.’

People have been taken in by the story. Martin Parr refers to Istochnikov in his The Photobook: A History Volume II as ‘Sputnik’s hero… an attempt was clearly made by the Soviet authorities to write the hero Istochnikov out of history’. The Spanish journalist Iker Jimenez spoke about Istochnikov on the television show Cuarto Milenio on 11 June 2006; ‘the question is why [he was deleted from history], what he had done, why he annoyed [the Soviet government].’ Fontcuberta was quoted as saying Jiménez’s mistake was ‘all very funny’^. The next week, Jiménez issued a correction, saying that the story was a ‘cosmic urban legend.’

Sputnik has been exhibited internationally, and Fontcuberta ’s work is   held in the collections of many museums, including Art Institute of Chicago; George Eastman House, Rochester; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée National d’Art Moderne / Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Click here to view Sputnik by Joan Fontcuberta, or contact us by email or by calling +44 (0) 191 213 0295 for more information and pricing.

Dennis Stock: James Dean

Dennis Stock,Magnum photographer, is probably best known for the iconic 1955 portrait of James Dean walking through New York’s Times Square in the rain, cigarette dangling from his mouth.

Stock’s black and white photograph immortalised the Hollywood star, who would soon die in a car accident.

It also immortalised the work of Dennis Stock, and revealed his talent for catching Hollywood actors off guard, in reflective, ambivalent portraits.

This image of James Dean appeared in Life magazine, alongside images of Audrey Hepburn, who he described as having an ‘attitude of childlike discovery in an adult world’, Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart and others.

Dennis Stock was born in 1928 in New York’s Bronx to an English mother and a Swiss father. Living in near poverty during the Depression, the family moved several times and, after his father’s death, he joined the US Navy, aged 17, towards the end of the Second World War.

In 1947 he became an apprentice to the Life photographer Gjon Milli in New York. His break came in 1951 when his shots of East German immigrants arriving at New York Harbour won a competition. Stock was invited to join the Magnum agency and became its Holywood representative.

During 1957-60 Stock photographed jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong,

Billie Holiday, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. His simple black and white images were made special by Stock’s capturing of the light shining on them in bars and clubs amid plumes of cigarette smoke.

In the Sixties, Stock travelled through the US with motorcycle gangs and then took photos of hippy concerts such as Woodstock. One of his best-known images was of the back of a loosely robed, sun-kissed dancer with swinging hair facing a vast audience at the Venice Beach Rock Festival in California in 1968.

Stock is survived by his wife, Susan, and three children.

Dennis Stock, photographer, was born on July 24, 1928. He died on January 11, 2010, aged 81.

Click here to view work by Dennis Stock on our website.

During his travels he collected the ephemera of popular culture he is so well known for, matchboxes, advertisements, newspapers, sweet wrappers, and the cigarette packets used in his popular and much-loved Fag Packets series.

Interestingly, he also picked up a Levi’s denim jacket in the South of France on the same trip, that he can be seen wearing in the 1961 painting and exclusive Opus Art screenprint Self Portrait With Badges.

Peter Blake - Self Portrait With Badges

These cigarette packets lay unused in a box in Sir Peter Blake’s studio until a new print release was discussed in 2004. And so, combining iconic 20th Century design and branding, La Ronde, Boule, Fifth Avenue, VISA, Belga and Gauloise were released as screenprints with silver leaf and a UV glaze. Printed at Coriander Studio on Somerset satin paper, each print in the series is from an edition of 95, and has been numbered, titled and signed by the artist.

Peter Blake - Fifth Avenue

Peter Blake - VI

Now nearing the end of the edition, these gorgeous screenprints are usually priced at £2,230 (£2,620.25 including VAT), but we’re offering a limited number of each for just £1,500 (£1,762.50 including VAT) until Friday, 22 January.

Peter Blake - Gauloise

Peter Blake - Belga

Click here to buy and for more information, or contact a member of our sales team on +44 (0) 191 213 0295.

Photorealist painters recreate photographs as accurately as possible, even removing certain details which, though present in the original photograph, appear anomalous and would make a painting seem less realistic – those elements in real life which confuse our perception and hence appear unusual in photographs. Hyperrealist painters, however, do not focus on making their paintings look perfectly realistic, but emphasise and add elements in order to inspire a certain reaction in a viewer. Whilst photorealists intentionally omit narrative elements, human emotion and socio-political commentary, focusing instead on accuracy and minute detail to create extremely precise and realistic works, hyperrealists use their own formidable skill to add to their images rather than subtracting, loading them with new meaning.Whilst photorealist painters represent reality, hyperrealists express meaning.

Both photorealist and hyperrealist painters work from photographs of a scene, although whereas the former do so in order to create the most exact representation, the latter utilise many photographs of the same scene, taken at different times, in order to better infuse their artworks with meaning. Chris Acheson’s works are exceptional examples of this, as he  returns to the same place on a number of occasions over a fortnight or so, taking multiple photographs which capture different people, lighting effects and moods. Whilst photorealist paintings imitate the analog photography of the 20th century; producing an extremely accurate representation of a scene, hyperrealist paintings bear a similar relation to digital photography and the processes surrounding it; manipulating images, and hence the reality they represent, to express more than a perfect representation ever could. Acheson’s artworks are composites of the various photographs he takes but with characters added, shadows exaggerated and colour enhanced or even removed in order to tell a story and invoke an emotional response.

Like photorealism which evolved out of Pop Art, hyperrealism depicts the mundane. The difference, however, lies in the fact that hyperrealists depict the mundane in a way which animates it, rendering it at times magical, beautiful, thoughtful and melancholy; but never boring and never flat. Though they depict everyday scenes, they are loaded with meaning, attempting not to accurately depict a scene but to tell a story or express a sentiment. Compare Acheson’s intensely passionate pieces, including ‘Cornbrook Road‘ (pictured below), with two of Richard Estes’ soberly representational artworks:

Hyperrealism has its roots in the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard, as ‘the simulation of something which never really existed.’ Because, according to Baudrillard, it is impossible to ever have a complete, accurate view of the whole of reality, because nothing is meaningful in itself but only in reference to other things, the quest of the photorealist for perfect representation is inherently misguided. Hyperrealism, on the other hand, does not attempt to represent definitively what is real, but depicts one particular reality out of many; one that is partial, subjective, emotional, and hence hugely meaningful and valuable. Whilst photorealist artists may remove real though apparently anomalous elements to produce a seemingly more realistic reality, hyperrealists employ such anomalies, including technical limitations such as depth of field, perspective and range of focus, to emphasise certain elements and themes to intense emotive effect, whilst simultaneously referencing their digital origins. Where photorealism’s focus on the literal causes it to underestimate the value of symbolic and emotive elements operating outside of its economy of meaning, these elements are central to the hyperrealist artist for exactly this reason.

So, in ‘Past, Present, Future?‘, we are not presented with an everyday scene encompassing people, buildings, machinery and vehicles, but enter a world of frustration and change which, though perhaps uncertain, is not devoid of hope. The lady is not simply a figure, but a character with a story; a disgruntled employee of the nearby chip shop, having a final cigarette before returning to the drudgery of her job. The cranes in the background are not simply a neutral, mechanical presence, but loom on the horizon, signaling change and the coming of an unknown future; hastening the end of the mundane present, to be replaced with… who knows what?

Two of Chris Acheson’s exceptional contemporary paintings are on show in the Opus Christmas Exhibition; come along for a closer look! Alternatively, why not take a look at our great selection of art by Chris Acheson, priced from £2000, and a wealth of other contemporary artists online at Opus-Art.

The ‘Correspondence‘ series combines found objects – postcards – with new photographic work, to highlight changes in our physical and, most importantly, cultural landscape. Greenleaf revisits the sites depicted in old holiday postcards and re-photographs the view from the same spot as the original; thus charting the passage of time and the changing values of our contemporary society. Each new photograph is exhibited and sold alongside the original postcard, still displaying its happy message.

The ‘Do Not Feed the Birds‘ series is a study of London’s feral pigeons comically presented as studio-style portraits. The birds were digitally removed from their surroundings and physically returned as photographs in a project which, using a combination of Twitter, a blog and the streets around Shoreditch, explored ways to exhibit and interact with photography and examined the ability of photography to add value and importance to a subject.

To browse and buy these beautiful and quirky contemporary artworks by Paul Greenleaf, visit us at Opus Art, and keep checking back for further information about this exceptional artist, as well as a wide range of contemporary art by other artists including Sir Peter Blake, Tracy Emin and Hector de Gregorio, to name only a few.

]]> http://blog.opus-art.com/2010/01/04/beautiful-works-by-brand-new-opus-artist-paul-greenleaf-online-now/feed/ 0 http://blog.opus-art.com/2009/12/21/josie-mccoys-ethereal-beauties-in-our-christmas-exhibition/ http://blog.opus-art.com/2009/12/21/josie-mccoys-ethereal-beauties-in-our-christmas-exhibition/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:00:30 +0000 Antonia http://blog.opus-art.com/?p=1030 British artist Josie McCoy graduated from Central St Martins with a Masters degree in Fine Art in 1999, and since then has exhibited prolifically across the globe, with solo shows in London, Newcastle, Milan and Santiago de Compostela, as well as numerous group shows internationally.

McCoy works from photographs and film stills, and is always on the look out for new images; a fact which infuriates anyone who joins her to watch a film, as she constantly pauses and backtracks to capture that perfect image! Though she paints in oils, her method is more reminiscent of watercolour painting, involving the application of multiple layers of diluted paint to achieve the stunning depth of tone instantly recognisable in any of her works.

Creating the skin of the her paintings’ subjects can often take upto 20 layers of paint, with each subsequent layer applied only when the preceding one has dried, in a painstakingly arduous and detailed process, whilst the eyes; often smouldering and always possessed of an exquisite depth and intensity, can take upto 50 layers of paint! As a result, Josie regularly works on 3 paintings simultaneously, adding layers to each as others are allowed to dry. Reminiscent of traditional painting techniques where green was used as under-painting to give luminosity to the surface colour, McCoy uses green and blue hues to add depth to her paintings, lending them an ethereal glow like that of a television or cinema screen flickering in a darkened room.

By working from film stills Josie isolates fleeting moments, capturing the slightest detail in an expression which may simply have glanced unintentionally across a face, only to disappear in a split second. As extreme close-ups, taken out of the context which the rest of the film provides, and mimicking the eerie glow of a television screen, McCoy is able to present these well-known faces; the subjects of collective cultural experiences and discourses, in a strikingly vulnerable and unfamiliar light which cannot fail to impact on the viewer by removing the cues by which we usually interpret them.

McCoy has painted numerous characters and celebrities including Leeloo, of The Fifth Element, and Jane Smith, of Mr and Mrs Smith, as well as creating studies of the cast of Desperate Housewives. Increasingly acclaimed, the BBC commissioned a picture of Cindy Beale which featured as a major plot device in a Friday night episode of EastEnders, having bought the pictures from Josie’s MA Exhibition which depicted characters from the show. Her paintings are also held in other private and public collections including the Collection of The University of Wales, The Centre of Attention Permanent Collection, the Jeremy Mogford Collection and the Borchard Collection of British Self-Portraits in the 20th Century.

McCoy’s work has been selected for numerous competitions and awards including the Castellon Painting Prize 2005 at Municipal Art Centre of Alcorcon, Madrid, the BP Portrait Award 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003, the International Painting Prize of Castellon County Council in 2006 and the Lexmark European Art Prize in 2003, and was commended at the Royal West of England Academy Open Painting Exhibition. In 2001 she won the prestigious Centre of Attention Painting Prize, and was awarded a Woo Charitable Foundation Arts Bursary in 2002.

Browse and buy Josie’s work here, at Opus-Art, where prices start at just £295, or come in and see it for yourself in our Christmas Exhibition, where you can appreciate the intense depth and detail of her paintings first-hand. Alternatively, as Josie is also available for commissions, why not enquire here about your very own custom-made piece.

Simonsen is fascinated by what he calls ‘the directness of the mark making process’. For him, the importance is in the simple yet striking way that a single, primary mark made on canvas sparks an irreversible process of alteration; evolving first into another line, then an abstract shape or figure, before the canvas is eventually transformed from a clean and neutral tabula rasa into the bearer of myriad forms and representations . And all of this magic begins with a single line.

It is for this reason that Simonsen works in an organic way with his pieces, always drawing freehand and avoiding projectors even when repeating elements, in order to maintain the spontaneity and strength of the line. Henrik never wholly erases past marks as, for him, the ‘history of the piece’ is of utmost importance. The trace of past, reworked drawings haunts Simonsen’s finished works, adding depth to the images on the canvas whilst carving out a space for them in time by granting their private histories visibility, so that the viewer can follow the works’ journeys from blank slates to finished pieces, rather than simply facing a polished and ‘impenetrable’ surface.

This organic approach to his artwork is especially appropriate when we consider Simonsen’s enduring, typically Scandinavian theme and influence; nature.Though he recognises that this has become a somewhat cliched theme, especially with the recent rise in popularity of Scandinavian design, his works couldn’t be further from the ordinary. For Henrik, it is nature’s ability to inexhaustibly vary and repeat simple forms to speak metaphorically of life, passion, and the brevity of existence that holds its appeal; themes visible throughout his Rococo-influenced work.

The ‘Rococo’ style was born originally from mid-eighteenth century French decorative art and interior design, and takes its name from the contraction of ‘rocaille’, meaning stone, and ‘coquilles’, meaning shell,  reflecting the frequent use of these shapes in Rococo works, visible in the examples below (Fragonarde’s The Swing, and the basilica at Ottobeuren Abbey). Rococo too gained inspiration from nature, celebrating the sinuous, the organic and the sensuous in works typified by asymmetrical, curving forms. It is Rococo’s lack of structure and hierarchy as well as the playful, fairytale world it presents which interests Simonsen, though his own paintings  – often dark, intense and abstract – add a depth to this typically light, decorative style.

Recreating the eclectic and fun-filled nature of Rococo works, as well as the spontaneity and adaptability of nature, Simonsen’s works evolve unpredictably, according to no predetermined process. As well as drawing and painting intermittently, Henrik pours and washes paint onto his canvases, building multi-layered pieces through his highly flexible approach. For him, the interaction of inescapably faint and delicate hand-drawn lines with the bold colour and textures achievable only with paint creates a contrast which has become an increasingly significant aspect of his work.

Henrik Simonsen’s newest works are on show in our Christmas Exhibition, which you can see in our Newcastle gallery from Monday to Saturday, 10am-6pm, until January 31st, 2010, whilst his other works are available to browse and buy online here, at www.opus-art.com, priced from just £600.

Whilst seventeenth century vanitas works from the Netherlands often offset their strictly representational style with symbolic content, Chris Kettle is more subtle than to include such blatant motifs as skulls and rotten fruit, typical of traditional still life, but instead appropriates the often dark and brooding old vanitas style only to reinvent it. Kettle purposely softens the edges of his technically perfect paintings, incorporating an element of imperfection and transience into the fabric of the works themselves, for example by using turpentine or water to blur the edges of his exquisitely executed and vibrant flowers. In this way Kettle enacts the symbolic concerns which the Dutch Masters might instead have represented through a more simple motif of wilted flowers alone (visible in Willem van Aelst’s Bloementuil, pictured below), by incorporating them into the very fabric of his works.

This subversion and measured destruction of the representational ideal of traditional still life works brilliantly to reflect the concerns of a contemporary audience. Whilst the past masters were able to represent what was for them a more simple dichotomy between the transience of material existence and the certainty of higher, religious ideals through presenting a contrast between representational perfection and highly symbolic subject matter, Kettle’s works are more modern. In a time whose concern is perhaps not the contrast between an insubstantial worldly existence and some permanent and reliable heavenly ideal, but rather a much deeper questioning of the human condition prompted by life in an increasingly fragmented and transient world – inherently lacking in the type of religious or spiritual certainties on which the Dutch Masters could depend – Kettle’s works provide a mirror by which to question ourselves as modern subjects.

For the best possible experience of these intense and imposing works, come along to the gallery where My Counterpoint II, Antibaroque, and To Borrow the World are available to browse and buy, or alternatively visit www.opusart.com to view an even wider selection of works by Chris Kettle, with prints and original works available from as little as just £430.

Liverpool born Jones is well-known for his collaborations with fellow Opus artist Jamie Reid, whose anarchist works – famously appropraited by the Sex Pistols for everything from album covers to promotional posters- have won him international acclaim. Moving on from these beginnings, Jones is now well-known and respected in his own right, producing prints which blend this anarchist influence with his own individual style. In this example, Jones incorporates artistic icon Andy Warhol, who he has exhibited alongside, into the image, referencing Warhol not only in this new take on the Pop style, but also in the use of screen-printing; Warhol’s signature medium.

Through his diverse influences from all areas of modern life, in particular politics and celebrity, as well as his playful nods to past masters and historical events, Brian Jones has himself become a sought-after cultural commodity, whose pieces are held in numerous collections including the V&A as well as The House of Commons, creating a dialogue around his work which only adds to its mutli-layered, topical nature.

Browse and buy his works online at www.opus-art.com, where he is once again presented alongside his influences as well as his subjects. Why not also take a look at these pieces by Warhol, or Jones‘ early collaborator and influence; Jamie Reid.