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Imbue

Imbue was born in London on January 19, 1988. He spent his childhood in Kent, in the Southeast of England. The artist recalls always leaning into his creativity, a pursuit fuelled by his father. Many times his dad brought home boxes and tape from work, and the youth set to cutting them up, sticking the pieces together, and otherwise making somewhat of a great mess. It also proved a lot of fun and served as an early introduction to a crude and rudimentary form of working with found objects and installations.

Art became Imbue’s favourite subject in school and then his only focus of study in college. He has stated that college granted him the freedom to explore, and the experience provided him a great opportunity to discover many different forms of art.

After his school days, Imbue took a spare room with his brother who had moved to Brighton, relocating to Great Britain’s south coast. The young artist was immediately taken with his new surroundings, especially its people and the local feeling of community.

When Imbue discovered graffiti and street art it was hugely influential and really began to shape who he was becoming as an artist. His initial street art experiments in Brighton covered numerous techniques, employing paint, markers and printing as he worked towards his unique style. By 2009, he had made his mark, artistically speaking, and held his first solo exhibit, “A World Gone Mad,” at Brighton’s Ink-d Gallery.

'I often create work that features an icon or an image that people are familiar with, they make a quick connection with it and then as they look closer, there’s a twist. I think people like the feeling of doing a double-take and noticing that there’s more to what they’re seeing than they first thought.’ - Imbue, 2019

Probably his most famous piece to date is the ‘Always the Real Thing’ sculpture series, where he merges the two iconic silhouettes of the Virgin Mary and the shape of the glass Coca Cola bottle to comment on icons, consumerism, and surrounding issues that arise in our society today. There’s also a gummy Jesus - he has had type 1 diabetes since his teens and the complicated relationship diabetics have with sugar also feeds into this series.