Dates: 11 November – 11 December

“Hey, Mamacita!” (A series of prints produced while working at the Taller Tamayo in Oaxaca, Mexico)

“Mamacita is the Spanish diminutive of ‘mama’ but it can also carry a sexual connotation. It can mean gorgeous or babe or chick and is often used as a pick-up line. For the last couple of years I have been based in Oaxaca in Mexico. I arrived here on a short holiday but I was so taken with the vibrant colour and the creative energy of the city that I decided to stay.

I joined the Taller Tamayo, an open access printmaking studio that also has facilities and classes for painting, sculpture and ceramics. Because it was quite difficult to find copper at the time I began making relief prints using MDF board. It felt good to carve. Very therapeutic because it’s quite a physical technique that produces lines that are strong and edgy and I have grown to love working in this manner.”

For these prints, the artist incorporated a lot of Mexican pop culture iconography and also experimented with tattoo imagery and the patterns that are seen throughout the region on the handmade garments and clay pottery.

“I have tried to take a humorous and provocative look at the Latin American machismo stereotype.Pin up boys is an example of this. I kept on seeing pictures of very sexy females plastered on the walls in the workplace and so I have decided to create the male version. This is a series of very masculine men but I have given them animal faces to portray their animal natures. I started working on my “Pin up Boy” series just before I had to leave Oaxaca and so it remains unfinished but I will create more as I meet them.”