New Yorker Ron English is a master of the Art of Propaganda. Father of Agit-Pop and an illustrious ‘billboard liberator’, the man is an esteemed social revolutionary as much as he is one of the most iconic artists of our time. Originally hijacking urban billboards with his paintings to hold impromptu rush-hour art exhibitions in the early ‘80s, Ron’s guerrilla art tactics evolved to broadcast a message of a more contentious nature, waging what has become an almost three-decade war against advertising. His emergent ‘subvertisements’ attack monopolisers of public space who shamelessly use deception to sell, challenging everything from commercial to political institutions. Ron usurps the visual codes they employ and turns their carefully constructed propaganda into his own elucidative art form that he’s dubbed ‘popaganda’. Incorporating imagery rampant in the contemporary experience, Ron seeks to redraft interpretations of history and conceptions of modern life. And in turning the status quo on its head he offers an alternative universe where nothing is sacred and absolutely everything is answerable to a little interrogation. Sarah Jayne Fell chats to him in a little interrogation of her own.
one small seed
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