Tony Lee: ‘A Tribal Vision’

About

Tony Lee’s artwork is very stylised and idiosyncratic and references various global and ancient cultures. He describes it as a celebration of the power of the imagination. He mainly produces screenprints which develop from drawings that are collaged and photocopied and finished using intricate hand-cut stencils.

This show is a collection of old and very recent work and is laid out to show the development and continuity of his vision with each older print representing a set of similar prints made at that time.

Some of the prints and titles have direct influences from books and films with ‘Reacting to the World’ coming from the book Lawless “I thought he was like an animal or a machine just reacting to the world” or the print ‘In The Forest of The Mind’ which had such diverse influences as the Tales of King Arthurs knights and Mexican Huichol Shaman who both thought a white deer would guide them deeper into The Forest….of the mind. His latest screenprints on paper appear either side of a large new screenprint on wood and are inspired by some of the philosophies and dialogue in the True Detective crime drama. They are ‘Death is not the end’ and ‘A Dream about being a person’. One speech ends …“and like a lot of dreams there’s a monster at the end of it.” Which brings us to the mannequin that Tony spent most of 2018 working on. Not really a monster but a 3-D embodiment of a lot of Tony Lee’s themes and designs. When describing it to another artist interested in North American Indian culture she said “Oh you’ve made Deer Boy that, along with Crow Woman, comes out at the beginning of Spring to herald in the new season.” This ritual is by an Arizona tribe that doesn’t let the costumed characters be photographed so Tony was pleased he had intuitively created him and happy to showcase him as Spring approaches!

Tony Lee has an MA in illustration from the RCA and worked as an Illustrator for some years - most notably producing Logos, animations and T-shirt designs for MTV. His work has appeared in magazines, newspapers, billboards and several times on TV. In 1999 he completed an MA in Printmaking at Camberwell College of Arts and continues to work in the Printmaking workshops specialising in Relief and Screen printing.

All prints are for sale and are limited edition water-based screenprints on acid free paper.