Antony Micallef
23-Oct-2009
Antony Micallef has exhibited throughout the world from L.A, Tokyo to Palestine. As well as exhibiting at the National Portrait Gallery recent group shows include the Royal Academy, Burlington Gardens and a print show at the Tate Britain.
Despite winning second prize in the
BP portrait award
Antony has always turned down portrait commissions insisting not only
that he's a figurative painter, but that he could never see himself
"inflicting brutal emotions on somebody I didn't know."
At
once colourfully beautiful and deeply troubling, Anthony'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 says. "You have to
drag it down and challenge it to make it interesting. When you put two
contrasting images together, it causes friction, and that is the bit
I'm interested in. Play a Britney Spears track and then follow it with
a Nine Inch Nails tune - Britney no longer sounds the same, the union
of two opposites make an intriguing and strange chemistry."
Described
as 'Caravaggio meets Manga' and 'Bacon in Disneyland' this strong
cocktail has already seen Anthony become enormously popular with
collectors.