Dave Buonaguidi — The Real Hackney Dave — is a London-born artist whose typographic practice harnesses the techniques of mass communication, screen printing, and propaganda to create works of immediate emotional impact and genuine wit. Born and still based in Hackney, he studied art in London before spending years running successful advertising agencies — an experience that gave him, as he puts it, "the inside track on the power of matching up the right words with the right images." That knowledge informs everything he makes.
His process is specific and deliberately impure. He screen prints by hand onto found materials — vintage photographs, maps, copper plates — so that each work carries its own pre-existing history and narrative before he touches it. He then overlays these surfaces with glitter, gold leaf, sprinkles, and a wide range of additional media, exploring what becomes possible when the rule book is discarded entirely. He has incorporated pheromone spray into his work. "There has to be a reaction," he has said. The works deliver.
His influences are precise: the anarchic décollage of Jamie Reid, the visual language of Pop Art, and a vintage Italian propaganda book given to him by his grandmother — sources that between them account for the political edge, the graphic confidence, and the democratic accessibility that characterise his practice. "I love the idea of creativity with a purpose," he says. "I want my art to be like pop music — accessible and democratic, something for everyone to enjoy."
He has exhibited at the V&A, the Imperial War Museum, and the Trento Museum of Modern Art. His collectors include Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Kate Moss, and Henry Golding. He has raised funds for the NHS, the people of Ukraine, and London-based charities including the Tottenham Food Bank.
Sail Away, The Slopes Are Always A Good Idea, You Are My World — available through Creed Gallery, Ascot, for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey, and London.
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