Street Artist, M-City goes to war in new print

The 818 work by Polish Street Artist, M-City is an arresting print produced in collaboration with UK-based print studio, Edition Fifty. Expressing his horror at the indiscriminate effects of unmanned aircraft in modern warfare, the artist uses his art to rally against cowardly warmongers.

A flock of drones, the likes of which are seen routinely destroying villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan, swarm across DRONES, a new print by Street Artist, M-City. More commonly found working to increasingly large scales – such as painting airport control towers and ships – the artist has been urged to commit his work to paper by Edition Fifty, the Bristol, UK-based specialist print studio.

A false sense of security is imbued by the busy composition, rendering the killer aircraft largely unrecognisable as part of a pack until the viewer pays closer attention. The mass of wings and nose cones conceal the morbid danger of the weapons until the last minute, much like the last helpless moments of the drones’ real-life victims.

The origin of the print lies in a wall painting completed in autumn 2014, the drones appearing in a Barcelona car park. The vast, landscape piece has been condensed and refined for the purposes of the two-stage screen print, derived from the two-stencil original. The monochrome composition reflects the work that M-City is globally recognised for, providing sharp contrasts and textures with a minimal palette. As well as the spray can and craft knife, M-City draws on the internet and computer-aided design to plan and execute his precise paintings.

Having seen much of Europe as an artist, including a standout piece painted for in Bristol in 2012, M-City now travels further afield to find his inspirations, to be more frequently found in the poverty-stricken, but vibrant environments of Asian and South American inner-cities. Born and raised in Gdynia, northern Poland during the Communist era, the lingering taste of political dissent is never far from the artist’s mind or art.

M-City says:“Poland has a long history of using stencils for art. Before 1989, stencil art was most the popular independent technique. People used stencils against political powers and the darker forces of communism. This piece is stencil art, but that’s perhaps not the most important aspect of the work, it could just as easily be woodcut or linotype. I want the viewer to see the danger in the piece, as the drones observe this house. Maybe they will finally decide to destroy it, maybe not.”

‘DRONES’ by M-City will be released to the public at 15.00 GMT on Thursday 25 June 2015 http://www.editionfifty.com in a strictly limited edition of 50, high-quality prints.

Cheba Bristol, of Edition Fifty, says: “M-City is a fearless artist, you only have to see some of his incredible work in unusual locations to see that, and Edition Fifty is really pleased to see him putting his work onto paper. Simplicity is often the best way of achieving perfection and translating his two-colour print through a two-colour screen print process has resulted in a beautifully hand-made, yet precise reproduction of a remarkable piece of work.”

For more information about the work of M-City visit: http://www.m-city.org/