STREET LIFE

As longstanding champions of the Street Art genre, Maddox Gallery is proud to present Street Life , a dynamic exhibition dedicated to mapping the roots of this pivotal movement.

People have been communicating through mark-making since the dawn of time. From describing their hunts to tracking their family trees, mankind has been compelled throughout history to leave its mark. Permission was never granted to use a wall in a cave, or the side of a building. These marks simply say, “I was here. This is me.”

Street art, by definition, is unsanctioned. Yet it still seeks to educate, to inspire and to provoke. The artists involved do not obsess over what the viewer thinks for they have total and utter freedom of expression. It’s not just a message to a rival, it’s a message to the world, and nothing is off-limits. It is self-expression in its truest form.

Street art brings together neighbourhoods in the same city, state or country, and artists from across the globe. It is one language – that of challenging those above you, of questioning existence and culture. At its core, it is ephemeral – here today and gone tomorrow.

With Street Life , Maddox Gallery explores the expressive and emotive language of the genre’s greatest mark-makers, from Basquiat to Banksy, Keith Haring to Invader. “When art history looks back on the ‘Banksy effect’, and the rise of street art, it will be recognised as one of the most significant movements in the contemporary art market of the time,” says Maeve Doyle, Artistic Director of Maddox. “Through these anonymous tags marking the world, street art gives us tools to better understand each other – tools of empathy, awareness and connection – and draws us into conversations with the creation of something shared, for everyone to see.”

BA N K S Y

BRITISH B.1974

“People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish. But that’s only if it’s done properly.”

Banksy first started creating street art in the early 1990’s under the pseudonym ‘Robin Banx’. Quickly dropping this alias in favour of the shorter and more memorable moniker, ‘Banksy’, the artist began his career close to home in Bristol, England.

Immersing himself in graffiti culture, he started spray-painting walls across the Southwest of England. With graffiti being considered vandalism as opposed to art at the time, Banksy was soon subject to close encounters with the law and at the age of 18, was nearly apprehended by police whilst spray-painting a train in Bristol. To avoid being caught in the future, Banksy knew that he had to devise a quicker method of creating his art. Stencilling presented a practical solution for creating and replicating his work quickly, and soon his bold and iconic stencils defined his practice. On the topic of his method, Banksy reportedly said: “As soon as I cut my first stencil I could feel the power there. I also like the political edge. All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They’ve been used to start revolutions and to stop wars.”

By 1999, Banksy had moved to London and was beginning to garner national attention. The unknown street artist was making waves, and comparisons to the graffiti greats Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring soon began to circulate.

In 2001, Banksy had his first ‘exhibition’ in Rivington Street, where he and a few fellow artists created a makeshift gallery space in a convened tunnel. However, it was not until July 2003 that Banksy truly had his breakout show. Titled ‘Turf-War’ and hosted in a former warehouse in Hackney, the show was the first of many to astonish the London art scene. Over time, Banksy’s continued success led to the re-positioning of street art as a widely accepted form of contemporary art.

Since then, Banksy has continued to astound and amaze with a plethora of public stunts that have intrigued people globally. From sneaking art inside the Tate Gallery (2003) to shredding an artwork live at auction (2018), Banksy is arguably one of the most provocative and renowned street artists in the world. He has created iconic works that have been replicated all over the world such as Girl with Balloon or Flower Thrower

With many iconic works being replicated in locations across the globe, the market for Banksy’s work continues to thrive, with his international success being widely reflected in his impressive auction results. In March 2021, Banksy made global headlines when Game Changer went under the hammer for over £16.7 million at a Sotheby’s auction, with all proceeds going to charity. Most recently, in October 2021, Banksy marked his latest milestone by breaking his existing auction record when Love Is In The Bin returned to auction, fetching a staggering £18.6 million.

LAB RAT, 2000

Spraypaint and Acrylic on Marine Ply and Integral Painted Metal Frame 220 x 240 cm

BANKSY

BANKSY

PLASTER HEART, 2012

Spraypaint on Board 97 x 86 cm

SILVER FLAGS ON FORMICA, 2007

Screenprint on Formica 50 x 70 cm Edition of 20

BANKSY

CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON (SOFT YELLOW), 2010

E A N R T

AMERICAN B.1979

Marquis Lewis was born in 1979 in Los Angeles with a blended cultural heritage, being of African American, El Salvadorian, Spaniard, Pipil and Cherokee descent. Choosing the moniker RETNA from the lyrics to a Wu-Tang Clan song, Lewis joined the buzzing graffiti scene of the city as a teenager, developing his now signature calligraphic style that features a keen attention to detail and skilful layering. The incorporation of text into his later artworks is a direct result of his background in graffiti art. The artist uses a paintbrush in addition to a spray can in order to paint intricate lines and give the finished work an intuitive and dynamic, yet precisely composed effect. Since emerging on the scene, he has been renowned for many publicly and privately commissioned murals in New York, Miami, Mexico City and Los Angeles, as well as for numerous collaborations with famous brands such as Louis Vuitton, Nike and VistaJet. His gradual transition into the contemporary art world was marked by the group exhibition ‘Art in the Streets’, hosted by the LA Museum of Contemporary Art in 2011. This was followed by an invitation by the same museum in 2013 for the artist to create an installation for the show ‘RETNA: Para mi gente’.

Another notable exhibition was ‘The Future of the Past: Mummies and Medicine’ (2016) at the San Francisco Legion of Honor, showcasing a large-scale installation of RETNA’s calligraphic paintings, contextualized within ancient Egyptian culture and spirituality. His artwork was featured as the album cover of Justin Bieber’s Purpose, released in 2015. In 2016 and 2017, he was the artistic designer for the reimagined production of the famous opera Aida at the San Francisco and Washington National Opera houses.

Among his eclectic range of influences for his contemporary text-based works, RETNA cites Renaissance imagery, medieval manuscripts, Art Nouveau and 20th century urban artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. With a practice rooted in varied typographic forms, RETNA works from a hybrid alphabet consisting of Egyptian hieroglyphs, Arabic calligraphy and Blackletter, making the content of his artworks indecipherable and enigmatic. He creates unique pictographic landscapes that celebrates the idea of multiculturalism and interconnection, while exploring the possibilities of conceptual meaning within the image, revealing new ways of understanding and perceiving visual codes.

RETNA continues to be amongst the most prolific and successful graffiti artists working today, as well as one of the most coveted. His artworks continue to fetch high prices at international auction houses. His early works such as Shadows of Light (2012) and Sad to See (2012), both featuring his signature calligraphic lines, are amongst his highest-selling works. Notable exhibitions include his solo exhibition at Maddox Gallery in London entitled ‘MARGRAVES (2017), LA Art Machine’ in Los Angeles and Don Gallery in Milan among others. Works such as Margraves (2017), Shit’s all fucked up (2017) and This one’s been untitled (2017) fuse more abstract expressionist tropes into RETNA’s usual geometric style, layering his enigmatic calligraphy with more fluid, colourful lines and textures.

RETNA

WHEN YOU SEE ME WALK INTO A ROOM MARK, 2016

Acrylics on Canvas

213 x 183 cm

RETNA

EYE CAN’T LIVE WITH YOU EYE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT YOU, 2016

Acrylics on Canvas

213 x 183 cm

A

I N V D E R

FRENCH B.1969

“What I do and create is more important than who exactly I am.”

Due to the anonymous nature of Invader, little is known about the French street artist’s upbringing or education. The unidentified artist was first brought to the public’s attention in the late 1990’s, when mosaic Space Invaders started to appear on the streets of Paris. Inspired by the 1978 Atari game, Invader’s miniature alien mosaics soon evolved into a whole cast of 8-bit characters that began materialising across the city. Although Invader has always prioritised working in the public space, by the new millennium, the French artist had started exhibiting in both group and solo exhibitions.

His first ever solo exhibition, entitled ‘New Player Insert Coins’, took place in 1999 at Jean Charles de Castelbajac CS, in Paris, France. This was closely followed by ‘Same Player Shoot Again’, which was held the following year at Galerie Almine Rech in Paris. Invader’s reach soon became international as he came to feature in his very first group exhibition outside of Europe, at The Almine Rech Gallery in New York. Since then, Invader has been involved in 15 group exhibitions and the subject of 19 solo exhibitions.

Alongside Invader’s exhibited work, the artist has launched the Space Invaders Project, which endeavours to liberate art from its usual context of museums and institutions. Instead, the artist creates public artwork all around the globe, with the aim of creating at least 20 to 50 works in one city alone. Like the video games from which the characters originate, each creature is awarded a score based on location, intricacy and how difficult it was to install. Invader currently has 4,114 murals across 83 cities. By creating murals all across the world, the earth itself becomes an exhibition and each unique piece a fragment of a tentacular installation.

In 2021, the artist enjoyed an incredibly successful year, with collectors and critics across the globe taking note of his work. According to ArtPrice, Invader’s index doubled from 2020 to 2021, with the median price achieved by his artwork at auction twice that of the previous year. The artist also ‘invaded’ more cities, including Manchester and Marseille, creating new artworks and reasserting his influence on the street art scene.

A K W S

“I guess my goal has been just to figure out how to get through life making stuff.”

There is a clear vein of Pop Culture in KAWS’ art, most noticeably in his cast of cartoonish characters and motifs, including his best-known characters with crossed out eyes. Some characters are his own creation, while others are re-imagined versions of pop characters such as the Michelin Man, The Simpsons and Mickey Mouse. Brian Donnelly, known professionally as KAWS, is a celebrated artist and designer known for his signature limitededition toys, paintings, sculptures and prints using a variety of media.

Born in New Jersey in 1974, where he continues to live and work today, Donnelly graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York with a BFA. He became interested in graffiti at an early age, honing his skills in the 1990s by graffiti-bombing trains, walls and billboards in Lower Manhattan before moving on to subverting images on billboards, bus stops and phone booths with his characters such as ‘The Companion’, ‘Bendy’ and ‘The Accomplice’. As he gained street accreditation, these graffiti advertisements became increasingly sought after by the public, and he travelled extensively to work in Paris, London, Germany and Japan. He went on to work as a freelance artist for Disney, creating animated backgrounds.

In the late 1990s, KAWS began to design and produce limited-edition vinyl toys which were an immediate hit internationally, particularly in Japan. He has also designed clothing for popular brands such as Vans, Uniqlo and Nike, as well as Supreme, Comme des Gar ç ons and Hennessyeverything from skateboards to perfume bottles, applying his distinctive signature style. He also contributed to Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak album cover, redesigned MTV’s Moon Man statue for the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards and provided the inspiration for a balloon displayed in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

KAWS has evolved from graffiti and mass-produced commercial items to creating unique sculptures, installations and paintings for some of the most prestigious galleries, public institutions and museums in the world. He has had solo exhibitions in the US, the UK and Japan, and his travelling exhibition ‘Beautiful Losers’ toured throughout Europe and the US. Not only is his work hugely popular with art lovers and collectors, it is also highly sought after by art investors.

Despite being around since the 1990s, in 2021, both the volume of his artworks offered and sold at auction increased in comparison to the previous three years. In terms of sales, KAWS was the most sold contemporary artist in the last year, selling over 1,682 lots between October 2020 and October 2021, ahead of both Murakami and Banksy.

AMERICAN B.1974

FOUR FOOT COMPANION (BROWN), 2009

Painted Cast Vinyl

B.1960 D.1988

“I don’t think about art when I’m working. I try to think about life.”

Born in 1960 and of Haitian and Puerto-Rican descent, Jean-Michel Basquiat grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He was exposed to art by his mother from a young age and was encouraged by his teachers at school to draw. After dropping out of high school and leaving home in 1976, he would never go on to receive any formal art education.

For many years, Basquiat barely made a living wage, selling T-shirts and postcards during the day and covering Brooklyn in his bold designs by night. Slowly, working under the moniker SAMO (Same Old Shit) in tandem with his friend Al Diaz, started to attract attention.

By the 1980s, New York had entered a period of thriving artistic freedom and consequently, Basquiat started to paint and draw with more focused effort, befriending other artists around him. In 1981, he met Andy Warhol, and they instantly formed a close friendship. The duo would go on to collaborate on several artworks during the mid-1980s, remaining friends until Basquiat’s death.

The artist first publicly exhibited in a group show in a vacant Times Square building in June 1980. His works were featured alongside other artistic geniuses of the period such as Keith Haring, Kiki Smith and Jenny Holzer. This group exhibition marked a turning point for Basquiat and led to his first solo show in 1982.

Basquiat immediately rose to fame, with critics extolling the artist. Basking in the limelight, he continued to create works for his ever-expanding throng of enthusiasts, and only halted by his untimely passing in 1988, aged just 27.

Although the life of this exceptional artist was cut tragically short, his works can be found in museum collections around the world. From The Broad in Los Angeles to the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, people across the globe continue to admire and revere his work.

In 2017, a Basquiat artwork named Untitled was sold at Sotheby’s New York for US$110.5 million, setting a new record at the time for the most expensive artwork created by an American artist to be sold at auction.

In 2021, Basquiat broke another auction record when his painting, Warrior (1982) sold for HKD 323,600,000 at Christie’s Hong Kong, making it the most expensive Western artwork to sell at auction in Asia.

AMERICAN

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT SUPER HERO PORTFOLIO OF FOUR, 1982-87/2022

Screenprint 102 x 102 cm each Edition of 85

A I N kE t h h r I g

AMERICAN B.1958 D.1990

“Art should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further”

Born in 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania, Keith Haring was surrounded by a rich visual culture from a young age. Fascinated by popular cartoons created by Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss, Haring learned basic drawing skills from his father who worked as an amateur cartoonist. As he got older, Haring decided to pursue a career in graphic art. He studied briefly at the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh before dropping out and realising that he had little interest in becoming a commercial artist.

Instead, Haring enrolled in the School of Visual Arts in New York and on moving to the East Village in the city’s bustling centre, he discovered a burgeoning artistic community developing outside established gallery and museum spaces. He soon immersed himself in the city’s graffiti culture, befriending artists such as Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. These relationships, particularly that with Andy Warhol, proved to be a significant factor in his future success.

Following Haring’s graduation from the School of Visual Arts in 1980, the artist began participating in numerous group and solo exhibitions, garnering international attention. In 1982, Haring exhibited at the seventh edition of the esteemed ‘Documenta’ exhibition in Kassel, alongside other prominent artists such as Marina Abramovich and Carl Andre. By 1983, his international reach saw no bounds with Haring’s work featuring at both the S ã o Paulo Biennial and the Whitney Biennial. Until his death in 1990, Haring would continue to exhibit across the globe.

In April 1986, Haring opened the Pop Shop, a retail store in New York that sold toys, posters and other commercial items bearing his designs. Considering the shop as an extension of his work, he believed that art should be accessible to everyone, and wanted his work to be readily available at affordable prices. To offer even greater accessibility to his art, from 1982 to 1989, Haring also created over 50 public artworks, ranging from murals to paintings and present in capitals around the world.

In 1988, Haring was sadly diagnosed with AIDS and for the remainder of his life, dedicated himself and his artwork to generating awareness of the illness. He established the Keith Haring Foundation as a result, which continues to provide funding and imagery to both AIDS organisations and children’s education, to this day. Haring passed in 1990, at the tender age of 31. Since his death, Haring’s legacy has continued to prosper, with collections all over the world continuing to celebrate and exhibit his art.

E F H E R L T Y E T UT O

“If anything, street art is like a pop-up ad and that’s what I love about it.”

Born Franco Campanella in Chicago in 1991, Lefty Out There became increasingly interested in art during his teenage years, when he visited museums, posted stickers across his hometown, and drew and sketched constantly in the classroom. He soon became involved in the city’s burgeoning street art scene, starting to develop his now iconic patterns by using the urban landscape as his canvas. The interlocking “squiggles”, rendered both in colour and in monochrome, appear as hypnotic and almost spiritual as they reproduce and multiply endlessly across every surface.

Lefty Out There taps into the synergy between repetition and the divine, depicting the world as a constantly evolving network of interconnections. His public murals can now be spotted across the cities of the USA, Asia and Europe. Incorporating new technologies such as lasers, LED boxes and computers into his process of creation, his artworks have since grown into large scale installations for prestigious locations like Nobu, club E11EVEN, Chotto Matte and the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago. His growing recognition has also led him to work on major fashion campaigns for NYFW and Nike.

While the overarching leitmotif of his iconic “squiggles” remains prevalent throughout his newer works, it is blended into experimentations with different materials and geometric abstraction. His works often reference minimalist Masters, for example Mondrian (2019) with its interlocking hooks against a block colour backdrop, painted in acrylic on wood. There are also nods to the psychedelic aesthetic of Op Art in his series of black-and-white works on wood.

Represented by Maddox Gallery, his works have been exhibited in commercial galleries and pop-ups in Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Mexico City.

AMERICAN B.1991

LEFTY OUT THERE

PATINA, 2023

Corten Steel, Acrylic, Maple 117 x 117 x 4 cm

LEFTY OUT THERE

COUNTERBALANCE, 2023

Acrylic, Birch, Poplar 119 x 119 x 5 cm

“I painted the town black. They could represent watchmen or danger or the shadows of a human body after a nuclear holocaust or even my own shadow.”

Born in 1952 in Vancouver, Richard Hambleton studied at the Vancouver School of Art before creating his first significant series, the Image Mass Murder works in 1976. These powerful graffiti paintings imitated the chalk outlines of victims’ bodies drawn by police during investigations and gained Hambleton the recognition both of the mainstream press and the art world.

He travelled to New York in 1979, where he met pioneers like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. His famous Shadowman works started popping up across the streets of New York, in the shape of an all-black human silhouette as a reminder of the rising crime rates in the city. These quickly spread onto the pages of local and international newspapers, putting Hambleton on the map as one of the leading voices of street art. He continued his Shadowman series across European cities such as Venice, Berlin and Paris, including 17 black silhouettes painted onto the Berlin Wall.

Alongside his public works, he also started producing paintings in the studio and showing more commercially. A new variation of the iconic character depicted on his canvases was the Marlboro Man , a similar shadowy figure on a horse. Hambleton’s commercial success was marked by fashion collaborations with the likes of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, who used his signature imagery in their collections.

The artist gradually withdrew himself from the public eye and the art world alike around the 1990s, shaken by the death of his peers, Haring and Basquiat, as well as struggling with drug addiction. He emerged with a new set of works called Beautiful Paintings (2007), which used bright colours and abstract painterly brushstrokes. Their reception by the New York art scene was rather negative and led him to sink into obscurity. In 2009, a notable Richard Hambleton exhibition in New York, in collaboration with Giorgio Armani, spanned his entire career. Including his Shadowman and Marlboro Man works, it went on to tour internationally. Other exhibitions include ‘Art in the Streets’ at MoCA, Los Angeles (2011), ‘Richard Hambleton: I Only Have Eyes For You’ at Woodward Gallery in New York, and ‘Richard Hambleton | Shadowman’ at Chase Contemporary in New York.

Hambleton’s oeuvre received renewed attention after his death in 2017 through the documentary Shadowman , which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in the same year. This saw a critical rise in his market prices and the curatorial interest in his work, causing his pieces to claim record auction results within months. His paintings are included in the collections of prominent institutions such as the Andy Warhol Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and Queens Museum in the United States, and the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin. As ‘The ‘Godfather of Street Art’, Hambleton’s lasting influence on the world of street art, as well as the power of his symbolic imagery and activism, resonate with a newfound force today.

CANADIAN B.1952 D.2017

RICHARD HAMBLETON PURPLE AND BLACK SHADOW HEAD PORTRAIT (BASQUIAT), 1996

RICHARD HAMBLETON PRIVATE PROPERTY SIGN, 1995

Acrylic on Wood 136 x 93 cm

RICHARD HAMBLETON

HORSE & RIDER - WHITE, 2018

Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm

154 x 66 cm

Edition of 75

Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm

136 x 92 cm

Edition of 75

RICHARD HAMBLETON HORSE & RIDER - BUCKING RED, 2018

I ST K

BRITISH B.1979

Born in 1979 in the United Kingdom, little is known about STIK. The artist remains anonymous, revealing extremely little about his upbringing and personal life. Of the little information that is publicly available, the graffiti artist has only acknowledged his lack of artistic training and his experience of homelessness in his early 20s.

It was during STIK’s time living in homeless shelters that he began painting on the streets of London. Creating graffiti first in the Hackney area, STIK learned from his contemporaries, developing his distinct style and honing his craft. With the support of his friends and the wider Hackney community, STIK managed to access independent housing and continue his journey towards becoming a full-time artist. Feeling indebted to those who assisted him, STIK reportedly stated that ‘street art was [his] way of giving back’. Each of his works, therefore, are created with the community in mind, as a gift to the public who rallied to help him.

Ever since STIK’s iconic murals continued to appear across the United Kingdom. In 2010 following the attempted Islamic Extremist attack on Lars Vilks - a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the Prophet Muhammed as a dog - STIK created A Couple Hold Hands in the Street ; a work which has now become one of his best-known pieces. Depicting a Muslim woman holding hands with one of STIK’s traditional figures, the mural was immediately embraced by the Muslim community and in 2017, it was voted the UK’s 17th favourite artwork in a Guardian poll.

By 2011, STIK had become an established artist, with his collectors including celebrity musicians Brian May and Bono. That same year, the graffiti artist had his first solo show at Imitate Modern Gallery in London’s West End.

In 2012, STIK collaborated with Dulwich Picture Gallery, recreating Old Master paintings in his own style, and establishing himself as a household name. Now successful enough to turn towards charitable efforts, in 2013, STIK ran an initiative with The Big Issue, creating a bespoke poster to be sold with the magazine to raise money. This is just one of the many initiatives the artist has joined in aid of supporting the fight against homelessness.

The next year, STIK painted his monumental mural, Big Mother , in the Charles Hocking Estate in Acton, London. Painted on the side of a social housing block that was due to be demolished, STIK depicted a mother and child solemnly gazing down at the houses below. The mural became a symbol of protest against the destruction of social housing and through the building’s subsequent demolition, the message of the piece was reinforced in the minds of the local community.

Eight years later, STIK continues to anonymously paint, produce prints and create murals all around the globe. Celebrating the love and community that helped him flourish both personally and professionally, the artist remains dedicated to philanthropy, raising money for causes close to his heart.

GRILLE - YELLOW, 2011

Spraypaint on Metal Grille 50 x 26 cm

STIK

FU T U R A

“Graffiti was a way for me to exist. I wanted to world to know my name. I wanted to be somebody.”

Born in Manhattan, New York, in 1955, FUTURA, the pseudonym of Lenny McGurr, is an American graffiti artist who learned his craft in the same way as many of his peers: by painting on the exterior of subway cars as a teenager in the early 1970s. Considered one of the progenitors of graffiti art, he was one of 70s New York’s graffiti all-stars who crossed over into the 1980s New York art scene with his otherworldly works, which fused graffiti with Abstract Expressionism.

In the early years, McGurr was associated with a series of infamous graffiti crews, including 3YB, CIA, FBI, Interpol and KGB. He signed his abstract works with the handle FUTURA2000, inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alvin Toffler’s book Future Shock .

In 1981, McGurr began to experiment with working on canvas, which led him to exhibit alongside fellow street artists Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf. The following year, he organised his first solo show at the Fun Gallery in Manhattan’s East Village, which led to a succession of national and international exhibitions.

It was during this time that McGurr struck up a friendship with the British punk rock band The Clash. He accepted their invitation to join them on stage and paint graffiti backdrops as the band played, eventually joining them on tour. He designed the sleeve for the band’s This is Radio Clash single and, in 1982, painstakingly handwrote the sleeve notes and lyrics sheet for the 1982 album Combat Rock.

The artist’s Pointman series of works are among his most recognisable. Featuring an alien-like character which he began conceptualising in the 70s and 80s, the figure became famous when the record label MOWAX commissioned FUTURA to create the sleeve image for Unkle’s 1998 debut album, Psyence Fiction . Pointman has since made countless other appearances in McGurr’s work.

In the decades that followed, McGurr preferred to work just outside of the art world, as a graphic designer, album-art aficionado, fashion collaborator – with Nike, Louis Vuitton and Comme des Gar ç ons, among others – and creating his own brand, Futura Laboratories. Living and working in New York today, it is only recently that he has returned to the limelight, with two exhibitions in New York that have seen him embraced by the art world once again. His first shows in his hometown for more than 30 years, ‘Futura 2020’ at the Eric Firestone Gallery in New York was quickly followed by ‘Tarperstries’ at the gallery’s East Hampton outpost in 2022.

AMERICAN, B.1955