Joy Ride

Moniker Art Fair, London

4th -7th October 2018

Moniker Art Fair is the largest urban and contemporary art fair in the world, The London event took place in Shoreditch, London, on the 4th-7th of October.

Image – Moniker art fair

I was invited to build an installation for the 2018 London fair as a part of the Uncensored Installation Hall Co-Curated by Urban Nation Museum.

I was in amazing company with Artists Vesod, Ann J Lewis, Hera, Edwin, Faith XLVII, James Burke, Lek & Sowat, Li’Hill. David Mesguich, Utah & Ether and Rocco and his Brothers all creating pieces for the show, more details on individual projects can be found here.

I used the opportunity to expand on my fascination with transportation and create this piece titled joy ride.

Growing up in 1990’s Essex I witnessed a huge amount of joy ridden vehicles being dumped in the country lanes and woodlands that my friends and I would ride our bikes through. The aesthetic of burnt out vehicles always really interested me, the colours of the rust and melted interiors mimicked nature and seemed to be blending back into the soil.

The dumped vehicles also represented a kind of reckless enjoyment taken at somebody else’s expense; someone had stolen the vehicle, thrashed it and then burnt it out probably without ever giving a thought to the owner or the problems they would encounter in the coming weeks.

In a way this mirrors our treatment of our environment, our buy now pay later attitude to the earth’s resources. I think everybody is aware that our current rate of consumption isn’t sustainable, but it seems like the more obvious the problems become, the harder we try to ignore them.

It’s all too easy to keep walking and assume the council will be along soon to clean it all up..

Here’s a couple of great videos from the fair produced by Fifth wall TV..

You can find out much more about Moniker Art Fair on the website here.. monikerartfair.com

The project wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the Moniker art fair team Tina, Olivia and Alice. Hugo, Claire and Zekan for their help set dressing. Liam for the lighting help, Chris and JIm for the help moving everything and Pete the mechanic for helping me take the car to pieces and letting me make a giant mess in his garage! (and all the cups of tea)