Maxim — Keith Palmer, b. 1966 — has been one third of The Prodigy since the band's inception in 1990, touring seven studio albums worldwide and collecting MTV and NME accolades along the way. He turned to visual art in 2004, initially exhibiting under the moniker MM to keep his two practices separate, and has since built a body of work that is as formally distinctive and emotionally serious as his music.
His practice is rooted in the surreal — influenced by Dalí and Bosch, by the specific tradition of art that finds in the dreamlike and the unexpected a more truthful access to human experience than realism allows. Working in a range of mixed media, he places objects in unexpected contexts to create works that are simultaneously thought-provoking and emotionally challenging, the final meaning always open to interpretation. His art intertwines positive and negative elements of society with what he describes as a deeply personal convergence of the shocking and the gentle — the darkness examined in the service of a passionate belief in positive outcomes, the uprising of the oppressed, the triumph of good over evil.
His butterfly works — the LepidopTerror series — take the butterfly as the ultimate underdog: individually fragile, collectively transformative, beautiful in a way that carries its own vulnerability. His Formation, Reborn, and Pure Energy works bring this visual intelligence to bear on the themes of transformation and collective power that run through his entire practice. His sculpture Rebel with the Paws — "a cat that stood up to the wrongs in society but what he did was spread love" — encapsulates the contradiction that makes his work interesting: fierce in its diagnosis, generous in its conclusion.
"Art is another expression for me," he has said. "When I'm not doing music, I'm doing art. When I'm not doing art I'm doing music. That's my life fulfilled." His charitable work has raised funds for breast cancer research, the NHS, Shelter, Young Minds, Chain of Hope, and ChildLine. Available through Creed Gallery, Ascot, for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey, and London.
