“It’s the sick glamour which interests me.” —Micallef

Antony Micallef was born in 1975 in a small town of Swindon, England. He studied Fine Arts at the University of Plymouth, and currently lives and works as an artist and graphic designer in Brighton, UK.

Micallef grew up with a great interest in fashion, graphic design, music and pop culture, however, as an artist he had trouble interpreting all these subject matters into paintings. His early work incorporated solitary figures in bleak backgrounds with neutral colors. And up till then, there wasn’t a solid reason for him to use pop culture icons or motifs, until his visit to Japan in 1999. “Japan was a complete visual overload for me. It allowed me to find myself as a painter and come to terms with what I am interested in and what excites me as a visual artist,” states Micallef. From that point on, the characters he created in art were no longer vulnerable, they had more confidence in their posses and as a result hinted that the artist was more self-assured. “My senses had been heavily immersed in fluffy pink, Japanese cartoon characters, neon cities and shit ‘J-pop.’ It was only a matter of time before my painting metamorphosed into what it is today.” He also found himself buying Hello Kitty milk cartons to bring back to his studio for inspiration. Now, his work is a mix of ingredients: comic cats, bubblegum pop, designer t-shirts, slutty girls, pink hearts, and more. His influences start from classical masters such as Caravaggio and Velazquez, to even cartoon graphics. Thus, Micallef’s work is definitely remarkable in its colourful and disturbing approach.

Despite his central focus on the human figure in each of his paintings, Micallef does not consider himself a portrait artist but rather a figurative painter. He has already declined requests for commissioned portrait paintings, because he cannot just paint without having a source of inspiration or a strong attraction within someone he sees. He expresses symbolism through open emotions, and he is keen on making a point but not misusing an inspirational identity with certain type of emotions such as violence and pain. For those feelings, he puts himself in the shoes of the canvas — a self-exploration process which makes him more at ease. The reason behind this, is, he couldn’t see himself inflicting brutal emotions onto someone he doesn’t know.

Recently, his work was been exhibited in a show called ‘Perverse Pop’ at the Catto Contemporary gallery in London, along side artists such as David Hancock and the cult graffiti artist Bansky. Micallef’s work has already grabbed attention of REM rocker Michael Stipe, and the show was a great opportunity for recognition at a larger scale. The exhibit revolved around the pop culture theme: How society has evolved into a moneymaking brand name — authors Ben Austin and Godfrey Barker comment about its mission, “Fifty years on, artists see the consumer culture very differently. They smell malaise. They see global multi-nationals eating us up — Coke, Nike, Texaco, those all-pervasive brand names from which nobody can escape. They see life packaged from your shoes to your DVDs to your pop idols to your holiday in Ibiza. After death and taxes, they see brand names as the biggest facts of life. (…) Everyone does. We are all alienated consumers. We despise the thing we love. We accept the consumer gods as integral to our lives, but we resent them. At the same time we can’t imagine what we'd do without them. They validate us, they give us status, define us, make us feel we belong. (…) Perverse Pop is saying: Coke, Big Macs, Marlboros, Levis, Reeboks, they have become the new global Big Brother. They follow you wherever you go. They fuck you up; they tell you what to do. They stifle individuality with pre-packaged lifestyles. (…) Nobody knows. But artists are now fighting for identity, space and air. Art is emerging as the strongest protest against the uniform cultural scene. (…) It’s a lonely and packaged world. Fact and fiction are blurred. News is entertainment. Time Magazine found in 1962 that the average American was exposed to 1600 ads and brand names a day. What escape now? There are 77 channels on the telly, the universe is at the end of a mouse-click, Big Macs are on sale in 200 countries — and just who are you?”

Anthony Micallef is who he is, an artist exploring a twisted culture which tends to hide behind a sugarcoated reality, and underneath its coat, there may exist a dark, bitter side. “The trouble with pop is that it doesn’t really go deeper than the surface. For me, this isn’t enough substance. 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 am interested in.” He gives us a hypothesis comparison, “Play a Britney Spear’s track and then follow it by a Nine Inch Nails tune — Britney no longer sounds exactly the same, the union of two opposites make an intriguing and strange chemistry.” And that is what ‘sick glamour’ is about!