Atelier OPEN: Meet the Artist Royce Wood Junior

by Tutton & Young August 14, 2023

Electric Box

by Royce Wood Junior

Acrylic, spraypaint, house paint, marker pen, stickers and street posters on canvas.

Dimensions: 120 x 100 cm.

Our Atelier OPEN exhibition continues at our contemporary art gallery on Brighton Beach, and we've invited some our exhibiting artists to tell us a bit more about themselves and their work. With 150 exhibitors, we might not get to hear from them all, but we'll do our best!

Today Royce Wood Junior tells us how he mixes his painting with music making...

I am a Grammy/Mercury nominated songwriter and music producer from London/Brighton, UK. I started making abstract works in 2019 while Living in Peckham (South East London). I began to appreciate the heavily urbanised surroundings and started noticing real beauty in some of the naturally compounding decay of the area. Layers upon layers of old posters, stickers, flyers, graffiti, tagging, murals all conspiring together to make what seemed like unintentional art pieces.

This idea of accidental, found, urban beauty struck a chord with me aesthetically and I started to investigate the idea of making art that looked and felt the same way. The idea that you could literally cut something off the wall that people walk past without noticing, put it in a gallery context and all of a sudden its beauty is perceptible is a paradox at the heart of all of my work. I've always loved classic abstractionism and wanted to make something in this vain that incorporated the urban aesthetic.

Electric box is inspired directly by one of those municipal dark green electric boxes on street corners that contain all the cabling that powers the locale. This one in particular had some nice tags on it in colours that really complimented the dark green of the box so this one is an interpretation of that.

Everything is loosely inspired by things you see on the street and walk by without noticing. In terms of practice, I'm still learning, each one is different as I know very little of classic technique.

I am a full time songwriter/music producer. Painting is my creative outlet now that music has become a somewhat commercial endeavour. I do sell paintings but it's primarily a creative outlet for me.

I make my work in a split studio in my house - half music half painting - trying desperately but failing to keep my music gear from getting covered in paint. :)

If I had to pick a desert island artwork, it would be xxx*x by Jacqueline Humphries. It's my favourite painting, incorporating modern digitality into the classic abstract style in the most pitch perfect way ever.

Okayness as an Act of Rebellion

See more of Royce's work on his Instagram and at Saatchi Art, and come and see it in person at the Atelier OPEN, open daily until the 17th September.