Cyberius Sunfire’ from fine artist Luke Austin-Heywood.

Luke Austin-Heywood  was born Hammersmith, London in 1976. I am thirty years old and have lived in Cornwall and Devon since the age of three. He gained a 2.1 degree on leaving college in Exeter and has since been working as a painter exhibiting through involvement in a number of art groups in the South West. In 2004 he completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art at Falmouth. 

The set of paintings is about modern music, Japanesism and punk surrealism. The former is primarily about aesthetics, a fusing of modernist patterning, neo pop and graffiti as parallels for music through painted form.

The dominant aesthetic stream is fused further towards a neo-pop identity. This is a Brit-art neo-pop strain, one which pushes further into post-modern ideas, identity fragmentation and the fusing of low and high art ideals.

A section of the paintings absorb advertising, as designs to be replicated for aesthetic value and as a concept vehicle utilising the play of ideas.

The surreal paintings are about identity, fragments of youth culture, punk, death, war, coolness and heavy techno music including drum-n-bass or metal rock.. The shallowness of the media is obvious yet its depth is also apparent.