In the last two years Antony Micallef has become one of the most lauded artists represented by Lazarides. In Autumn 2008 he is due to take part in the contemporary programme at the Royal Academy of Art. 2007 saw sell-out shows in London and Los Angeles.
At once colourfully beautiful and deeply troubling, Antony's work examines our dichotomous relationship with consumerism, examining how we can maintain to despise multi-national brands yet still allow ourselves to be seduced by them. "The trouble with pop imagery is that it doesn't really go deeper than the surface" he comments. "You have to drag it down and challenge it to make it interesting, marry contrasting emotions and motifs. The union of two opposites make an intriguing and strange chemistry." Described as 'Caravaggio meets Manga' and 'Bacon in Disneyland' this potent cocktail has seen Antony become enormously popular with collectors.
Despite the popularity of his comparatively spartan "tortured head" series, and being runner-up in the National Portrait Gallery's BP/Amaco Portrait of the Year prize in 2000, Antony has always turned down commissions insisting not only that he's a figurative painter, but that he could never see himself "inflicting such brutal emotions on somebody I didn't know." He has recently branched into sculpture.
The day before our opening preview, we found Kelsey “Jesus with a tan” Brookes, wandering the streets by the river looking for tramps to have beard-offs with. Nothing unusual about that of course, just that Kelsey doesn't live in Newcastle, he lives in San Diego and had decided to pop over for the opening of our spanking new gallery, as you do when you're only 6,000 miles round the corner. Quite how Antony Micallef, Jonathan Yeo, Zevs, Ben Turnbull and Miranda Donovan found their own way from London to Newcastle is anyone's guess, we don't even titter at questions like “which tube line stops there?” anymore. But find it they did, a great venue in a great city. Find it for yourself, it's obviously not difficult.
Thanks to Tiger beer for understanding “it's Newcastle, we'll need twice as much beer as they do in London”.
