The Sky’s the Limit
27-07-2009
‘Inkfetish'. These two words you wouldn't normally coincide together but as Tom Blackford showed last week in his latest exhibition ‘The Sky's the Limit' the strength to conceptually realise his true painting style that encompasses his talent in illustration in the murals gave him a successful show at London's 118 Gallery.
He was born in London in 1981, at a time where the mainstream music was dominated by individualism and experimentation. He solidly practised through his early years for his stories to be published in UK comics, but confronted by frustration that his commercial illustration jobs gave him no freedom in sense of creativity, he decided to publish is own comic. In 2005, it was entitled ‘No Strings' with a depressing dark tale of the original Pinocchio story.
In true Banksy style he began spray painting his twisted designs and characters onto the canvasses of the city, where he created a small army of followers, desperately enjoying his creativity to share his ideas loudly and proudly.
The origin of ‘InkFetish' starts to unravel as his deep experimentation of spray paint and technically graffitting the city with his images suggests his love of ink and permanent marking is strong enough to be given the loose term of fetish.
From this he learnt to combine the aerosol colours and acrylics onto canvasses, which this technique was popular at his latest show. In true graffiti fashion, his designs delved off the canvasses onto the wall, highlighting that raw appeal.
His latest images use traditional graffiti colours, such as bold reds and silvers to emphasise his somewhat futuristic comic blurred images, and delicate personalities such as angels.
In September last year he was chosen amongst 200 other artists to exhibit at the Pixar Animation studies in San Francisco, where is talent flared and settled in perfectly, even with his unusual subject matters and bold themes.
I found it interesting to realise one of his main clients is MTV (Europe) which totally encompasses youth, rebelling, celebrity lifestyles and heavy baseline music that is almost mirrored in his exhibition, with the two subject matters almost colliding, especially with his reference to tattooing.
By Harriet Edgar
