Colourful collab now showing on View Street

ALICIA S. COOK

A GROUP exhibition by local artists who work with pop and street art styles is now on at Dudley House.

Pop goes the easel, curated by Chris Duffy, brings together 10 artists and aims to play with form, scale, and content, while showing off the local contemporary art scene.

Cody Dewit-Hayes is one of the contributing painters and said the experience of uniting with other creatives on a show without strict themes had been liberating.

“It feels like everyone gets to do what they want,” he said. “They don’t have to twist and bend around some kind of rules, so that’s quite cool, it’s very freeing.”

The artist described his style as deconstructive pop-art, the reframing of a recognisable image.

U.S artist Matt Gondek popularised the art form with deconstructed images of popular cartoons like The Simpsons, an idea that Dewit-Hayes brought his own spin to with reinterpretations of Disney iconography.

“I mostly pull inspiration from 1920’s rubber hose art, like the super, super old steam-boat willie, very old Disney animations,” he said.”Right now I’m just making things that are visually appealing to me, just things that other people might see and think ‘oh that looks cool.'”

The 13 works he has included in Pop goes the easel range from large-scale paintings to smaller works and make use of materials like heat and UV light reactive paint.

“I don’t think we have any UV light in the exhibition, but I think the colours will look fine with the windows open,” Dewit-Hayes said.

“With bright lights and sunshine really pushing out the UV colours in contrast to white cubist-eque gallery walls of Dudley house.”

Dewit-Hayes previously took part in the City of Greater Bendigo’s RAW Arts, a program for young young creatives, where he painted a mural along the Back Creek Trail in collaboration with Nacho Station.

One addition to the growing local art scene Dewit-Hayes said he would like to see is more support for young creators. “I feel like it’s very scary and daunting for the young artists,” he said.

“It can be really nerve-wracking to try and get your foot in the door, so stuff like Chris has done and Nacho Station, Raw Arts is wonderful, and it’d be good to see more of it.”

Pop goes the easel is on at Dudley House until 19 February.