Remi Rough

The street and gallery artist Remi Rough, from South London, is one of the pioneers of the original U.K. graffiti movement of the 80’s and 90’s. Beginning as a graffiti artist in the 80’s, he moved to gallery art when his work became more widely accepted due to the geometrical, abstract forms that he created which were in stark contrast to the traditional and sometimes indecipherable graffiti “tags”.

Somewhat ironically, razor-sharp straight edges and clear demarcations between the shapes reflect the predominant visual style of Rough’s work. Rough’s work is further built on a signature neon palette with sharp shards of colour, utilizing his mathematical precision in handling the tenuous issues of perspective and space. Early on in Rough’s career, he developed the notion that graffiti was a type of battle – each artist needed to outdo the other in every sense – visibility, technicality, meaning – or else it’ll be sprayed over by another artist. Rough’s work stood the test of time due to its highly unique visual form, and its proliferation enabled him to move to gallery art over time.

Rough’s work contains cues from the early 80’s “wildstyle” graffiti that played with clear geometry, straight lines and distinct shapes, generally in flat colours, which in some works, like Loaded, evokes an aura of the classical primary-coloured Bauhaus shapes, taken completely out of context yet still in perfect harmony with the rest of the piece.

Rough has undertaken several collaborations with notable street artists of his generation including surrealist Shok1 and LA stalwart Augustine Kofie, whose work is also represented in the Twr y felin Art Hotel Collection. Artists Steve More and LX One also collaborated with Rough to create the largest mural in the U.K. on the façade of the Megaro Hotel in St. Pancras. Remi has exhibited both solo and in group extensively in LA, New York, San Francisco, Detroit and throughout Europe and Morocco.

Remi Rough’s commissioned series of 8 paintings was inspired by his visits to St Davids. The coast, sea, islands and landscape are his inspiration to this work. The title of the works, ‘Dark Sands’, refers to the black sands, slate cliffs and quarry of the Blue Lagoon and Abereiddy. The dark geometry of the slate intervenes into the huge over-arching sky and seas.