Paying tribute to the TROPICALIA movement, combining the popular and the avant-garde, a well as a fusion of traditional and grafitti-derived decorative forms, this short exhibition showcases the work of Spanish artists Ana Pallares and Carla Delgado, along with contributions from Hackney based multi-media artist Mervyn Diese, and incorporates influences from traditional punk aesthetics and the new international tropical punk movement.
Born in 1993 in Barcelona, Ana Pallares was fifteen when she discovered graffiti and continued exploring different artistic practices such as painting, illustration and poetry. Her work reflects on pain, death and other intangible realities which too often occur with little, or incomprehensible, reason. She strives to find and attach new meanings to these realities hoping to present them in a healthier more manageable way: ‘ultimately aiming to turn destructive feelings into constructive action‘ Interested in ambiguity as it plays with the surprise effect, she finds great joy painting the deformed and weird faces of her works with rainbow colours. ‘People feel lost while watching them whereas I feel I could not have expressed the tragicomedy of life in a better way‘.
Carla Delgado, (b. Barcelona 1989), is an artist with a great belief in the use of the arts as a tool for transformation and social inclusion.
Her interest in art began when, as a teenager, the music of different movements such as Punk, Grunge, Electronica and the wide spread impact of the Graffiti as an insurgent (political-social) art, induced her to take the spray cans and paint his own logo Amanito all over the walls of Barcelona by the guidance of her close friend, the well known street artist El Xupet Negre.
One of her most significant projects in relation to art and social work, is her long term collaboration with the artist Ana Pallares. Currently Carla is developing a body of work charged with a more personal symbology and chromatic palette in her increasingly popular TROPICAL PUNK series, combining pastels, acrylics, markers and collage as a technique. Her work aims to reflect on different psychic and consciousness states while seeking to expand her understanding of herself, the world around and the social impact that the power of art has.
Mervyn Diese is a London born artist working with photography, film, painting and performance. His work reflects his passionate interest in politics and social issues such as homelessness, racism and betterment of the “lower classes”. His involvement with couterculture activities extends back to the 1980`s, when he combined a career as a commercial artist with a passionate engagement with the punk rock scene and the squatting movement.
