Your Drugs
By Jonathon Prestidge
Published Issue 083, November 2020
Best of Birdy Issue 032, August 2016
I have been producing collage art since around early 1993, when I first picked up a copy of Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death by San Francisco punk artists, the Dead Kennedys and opened up the A4 lyric and art booklet provided containing artwork from the band’s frontman, Jello Biafra, and artists John Yates and collage master Winston Smith. I was so impressed with the cutting, surreal and informative illustrations to the lyrics that I immediately decided to attempt my own twisted creations. Not many of these early experiments survive today, but after beginning to find my own style and voice, I needed a vehicle to show my work beyond the traditional world of art galleries, which can be hard to get into, especially for a medium that is still not taken to seriously by the so-called “serious” art world, like collage. Sticking with the punk rock ethos that brought me to this medium, I began publishing underground magazines, known as zines, eventually contributing illustrations to other such publications, from small run A5 photocopied zines to A4 lithographed magazines with print runs in their thousands.
Eventually I began to also contribute cover artwork for underground punk and hardcore bands from across the globe (the cover for Endstand’s LP Never Fall Into Silence, a stylized version of my Bullet With Butterfly Wings piece has even been made into a number of tattoos!)
As time went on I caught up with the web and published many online galleries, all of which have sadly run their course, and most of my online output can be found here at Art Pirate, with the exception of Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram.
Recently, I have turned to print on demand for merchandise, and have put together a free digital magazine to also showcase the work of other underground collage artists. Most recently, I have put together a book of my collage art, which is available through Amazon’s Createspace.