![]() He considers this visual process "more exciting than the music, ironically". Just as it was back in the Wild Bunch days, it's also been Del Naja's job to sort out the posters and backdrops for the Southbank's Meltdown festival (he and bandmate Grant Marshall are this year's artistic directors). My favourite album sleeve of all time is Inflammable Material by Stiff Little Fingers, which is the black sleeve with acid red text on it and the grey flammable logo, which I wanted to use for the first Massive Attack album, to add this complete connection to me because that's what I grew up with." "The red and black thing for me has been a thing from back in the day. James's input always kept me buzzing underneath." It was Lavelle too who advised Del Naja to go back to painting in red and black, the colours that have come to define his bloody, dark artwork. "When I was still very disinclined to get my ass into the studio, he was always the person who tried to get me back into my painting. Lavelle, who founded music outfit UNKLE in 1994, like Lazarides, has always been a big supporter of Del Naja's artwork. "A lot of the imagery was very obvious", he says, "and I was slightly concerned because James had called the album War Stories and that with my paintings and his title, the whole thing might suddenly be too direct and not intriguing enough." He needn't have worried the exhibition enticed a stellar crowd to the gallery on its opening night. ![]() The figure in Unbelievable, like many of his others, is haloed and has a stigmatic stain in the shape of a cross, soaked onto his solar plexus. ![]() The image of Christ infiltrates his War paintings. In terms of the imagery I find it amazing." I do remember hating it and being scared of it, though. I could try and be romantic and say it had a profound effect on my life, but I don't remember much about it. My dad's from Naples and I was brought up in a Roman Catholic school. "I've always been interested in Catholic iconography. "It felt like a mural you'd find on a wall somewhere, in a place where tumbleweed might be blowing around because something had happened there and everyone had since departed."Īn unlikely source of inspiration, given his uncompromising views on religion ("it always causes damage"), are Del Naja's Catholic roots. One of his more recent works, Peace at Last, which was developed from the album cover image, he sees "almost like a Mexican Day of the Dead festival." Painted in iridescent reds and dark shadows, the ghostly, skeletal figures in the paintings recall martyrs or saints. War Paint (the title is Del Naja's own) included 12 of his paintings, which were inspired by the artwork he did for James Lavelle's album, War Stories, released in 2007. Part of the Banksy posse and old pals from the early Bristol days, Lazarides was instrumental in Del Naja's return to the scene. It took place at Lazarides Gallery, whose owner, Steve Lazarides, also has Banksy and cult comic artist Jamie Hewlett on his books. And is unsurpassed in that kind of work."Įarlier this year Del Naja's own return to the art world materialised with a major exhibition of new paintings, War Paint. It's the image, it's the phrasing, it's the timing of it, it's the placing of it. Going back to my days doing stencil work back in the 80s I knew that it wasn't exactly the most demanding work: it's like printing, but then Warhol was a printer. "When you look at Banksy's work as a catalogue of ideas, it's undeniably brilliant. ![]() "It thrives and breathes and defecates independently of the artist."Įven so, Del Naja clearly has a lot of time for the younger artist. "I think the problem with the art market and the art scene is that it is its own beast," he says. It keeps going round."īanksy's name inevitably pops up, but Del Naja is unimpressed by the recent hoo-hah surrounding his work. And now I'm re-educating myself again with all the great new street artists. So I learned backwards, in a sense, from the street into the gallery. "I was looking at the work of the New York street artists and then discovering Basquiat and Haring after that and seeing how the contemporary art scene was, and then going back into Warhol and all that was happening in the 60s. "The graffiti thing got me out of the classroom into doing something I was actually inspired to do," he says. With no formal training (apart from an ungraded A-level), his art education was not conventional.
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