Southsea lockdown artist is finally revealed
Mysterious hand-drawn quotes have appeared throughout Southsea during the last lockdown. Now, finally the man behind these pieces has been revealed.
During the pandemic, the struggle to find work inspired gallery technician, Ashley John, from Southsea, to use his “love for writing and politics” to create public pieces of artwork.
Being a gallery technician involves working alongside art handlers surrounded by art which values all the way up to hundreds of thousands of pounds, but outside of work Ashley prefers “the immediacy of creating something which isn’t precious.”
Ashley said: “Some people don’t notice my work, but some people do, and I find that more valuable than saying my work is worth say £50,000.
“This is my way of conveying something via text that I think matters, words can be extremely powerful, and I like to make things look beautiful.”
The act of replicating text started from a project completed a few years ago, alongside his collaborative public work which inspired his present independently created pieces.
Only throughout the past year has Ashley became prolific with creating pieces and caught an increasing number of people’s attention.
The 33-year-old, from Chetwynd Road, has recently completed a strand of quotes dedicated to the NHS, which take hours to create and are located randomly.
For example, at Palmerston Road where there is a large poem titled, “Hold tight a little longer”.
Ashley explained: “The most interesting artists don’t just make something, but they also address something.
“I created the NHS pieces because you can’t avoid the fact that it’s been abused; it’s always something that I’ve thought that I needed to express.”
More pieces are expected to be seen located around Portsmouth as Ashley works on new visual collage pieces.
