Dave Buonaguidi, better known as The Real Hackney Dave, is a British contemporary artist whose distinctive screen prints combine found imagery, bold typography and an instinct for making people stop and react.
After more than 35 years working in advertising, Dave discovered screen printing and became fascinated by its possibilities. Vintage maps, photographs, currency and other pieces of found ephemera provide the starting point, before assertive words and phrases transform their original meaning.
His advertising background remains central to the work. Drawing on the techniques of mass communication, Dave understands how a few carefully chosen words can completely alter the way we see a familiar image — creating art that can be humorous, provocative, irreverent and occasionally controversial.
WORDS | IMAGERY | REACTION
Say It Loud
Dave Buonaguidi's work is built around an idea he understands particularly well: the power of a simple message. Familiar imagery is interrupted by bold words and phrases that can be funny, provocative or deliberately confrontational.
A map, photograph or piece of printed ephemera might already carry its own history and associations. Dave changes the way we read it by adding a line of text that instantly shifts its meaning.
It's an approach rooted in communication. The imagery catches your attention, the words change its meaning and the combination encourages an immediate reaction.
Found, Kept, Reworked
The surface Dave prints onto is rarely incidental.
He searches auction sites and flea markets for old maps, photographs, currency and other pieces of ephemera, choosing materials that already have a story before he begins working with them.
He has also pushed screen printing onto less conventional surfaces, including copper plates, while experimenting with materials such as glitter and gold leaf.
Maps can become statements about love, travel or identity. Currency can be transformed into observations about money, ambition or success.
Rather than beginning with a blank surface, Dave starts with something that already means something — and then gives it an entirely new voice.
Advertising Without the Product
Before becoming an artist, Dave spent more than three decades working in advertising and helped establish a number of creative agencies. That experience hasn't disappeared from his work; it has simply been redirected.
Bold statements, humour, repetition and the tension between words and imagery are all familiar tools of mass communication. They're designed to catch our attention quickly and make an idea stick.
But in Dave's art, there isn't necessarily a product being sold.
Instead, the message can make us laugh, question what we're looking at or see something familiar differently.
The Real Hackney Dave takes the language of advertising, removes the product, and leaves us with the message.
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