Viewing room

Earthlings

Joe Webb

Jealous East

30 Jan 2020 — 16 Feb 2020

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urns to Jealous with 'Earthlings’, his much anticipated third solo exhibition at the gallery. The collection explores the human experience, examining our impact on the planet as well as looking far beyond into the awe-inspiring cosmos.

His colourful and vibrant artworks challenge us to reflect on serious environmental and societal issues, often with an injection of dark humour. Delving deeper, he questions our perceptions of reality, contemplating our place and purpose in an infinite Universe.

Webb's artworks are made from images serendipitously found in second hand bookshops, cut out and rearranged to create simple but elegant hand-made collages. He works to a rule of juxtaposing two or three simple images to invent a new narrative, without the aid of computer manipulation. The new exhibition also features new large scale oil paintings, which he has developed from ideas taken from the original collages.

Named one of the Evening Standard’s most ‘Exciting Young British Artists to Look Out For’ in 2017, Webb has won an army of high-profile fans including Coldplay, who cited his work as inspiration for their Grammy Award-nominated Up and Up video. His work has also graced album covers by Janelle Monae, The Madden Brothers and Tears For Fears. More recently the artist collaborated with pop sensation Dua Lipa to produce a series of animated collages for her new album.

'Earthlings' features new original collages, rare and previously sold out editions as well as new large scale oil on linen paintings. This is the first time a collection of his paintings have been exhibited together in the UK.

Joe Webb

Joe Webb (1976) uses vintage magazines and printed ephemera that he has collected to create simple but elegant hand-made collages. After many years of working on computers as a graphic artist, Joe turned his back on technology and started making ‘analogue’ collages. Since then Joe has published many popular silkscreen prints, sold his work in the Saatchi Gallery and sold work to celebrities and had his work featured on album covers. Webb's work is also an internet sensation with hundreds of thousands of people sharing his images online. "I started making collages as a sort of luddite reaction to working on computers for years . I like the limitations of it...using found imagery and a pair of scissors, there's no googling for material and no Photoshop to resize, adjust or undo.There's an element of serendipity in finding images that work together that can't be replicated in the digital world. I wanted to get back to basics so set myself a simple rule of working from just two images, it's interesting to find what narratives appear when two conflicting ideas are juxtaposed. Some of the ideas reflect on on the state of world today, like a 1950's idea of the future that went wrong...while others are more optimistic and surreal. I'm fairly anti-technology although I promote my art on websites, own an iPhone and use Facebook...which is confusing..I wish I had been born 100 years ago". Joe Webb “Joe navigates a rich landscape with grace and humour. He plays visual elements against each other in a way that puts different eras in dialogue, allowing characters to travel from their 50’s Home Gardening Magazine roots to the far cosmos. He flirts with themes of nostalgia and loss but ultimately composes light-hearted images that are in dialogue with today’s sampling culture, collapsing and hacking together sources from across the universe in fun and rudely jacked up colour schemes.” - Wangechi Mutu, internationally acclaimed artist.