Notorious, Black-Irish, ‘enfant terrible’ of the Irish art-scene, Kevin Sharkey has donated one of his distinctively bold and vivid paintings along with art icons including Damien Hirst, Sir Peter Blake, Paul Smith…to raise money for Men Only, a London- based men’s charity helping victims of testicular cancer www.kevinsharkey.com
The artist says “I am a great supporter of this charity, they do incredible work and to have my work alongside such art luminaries is indeed a motherfucking honor…”
Forty-seven year old Sharkey has become known as much for his controversial conceptual work and his outspoken opinions as for his unique paintings and sculptures. In Ireland he is phenomenally successful and in the last couple of years has enjoyed sellout shows of his paintings in Spain, the UK and Mexico as well as Ireland. He has been described by the Irish press as “Ireland’s first art superstar” and “a true Irish legend”.
Banned by Unicef for his depiction of ‘Pierce Brosnan’s Arse’, Sharkey has also repeatedly caused outrage because of his provocative works which have included depictions of: the Pope as a Nazi, Lola Cashman Crucified by U2, Jordan over-feeding her child Harvey as well as Madonna & Angelina Jolie in a supermarket isle shopping for foreign babies. The artist famously told Bono in a national newspaper that he should “fuck off out of Africa” and then became a national treasure when his cash-covered life-size cow ‘Moolah’, hit the vein of the zeitgeist in Ireland at the height of the ‘celtic tiger phenomenon’.
Sharkey was recently filmed painting naked in his Ibiza countryside mansion (now on youtube). He says, “Naked is the natural state and I wanted to be free of all restrictions, althouth it took me ages to get the oil paint out of my pubes…”
Currently finishing a series of huge paintings for Ibiza’s brand new 5 star premier hotel, the Gran Hotel, Sharkey will leave for New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel shortly, where he’ll take up residence painting there for a couple of month’s preparing for his first solo show in the US next year. A US film crew will be following him on his odyssey in New York, on Ibiza and across Ireland shooting for a feature-length in-depth documentary on the artist’s life and his arrival at the centre of the world’s art stage…
Images attached include the artist in one of his own creations from ‘Free At Last’, his forthcoming exhibition in New York.
www.kevinsharkey.com
