Collection: The Real Hackney Dave
Creed Gallery in Ascot, Berkshire, represents The Real Hackney Dave, the London artist known for The Slopes Are Always A Good Idea, You Are My World and Sail Away, for collectors from Ascot to Sunningdale, across Surrey and London, and internationally. Recent pieces have sold in the £1,295 to £1,395 range — get in touch to hear about upcoming availability. Our team will talk you through provenance, condition and framing on any work.
About The Real Hackney Dave: From Advertising to Art
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.
The Technique: Screen Printing on Found Materials
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 even incorporated pheromone spray into his work. "There has to be a reaction," he has said. The works deliver.
The Influences: Jamie Reid, Pop Art, and His Grandmother's Propaganda Book
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."
Collecting The Real Hackney Dave at Creed Gallery
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, and he has raised funds for the NHS, the people of Ukraine, and London-based charities including the Tottenham Food Bank. All three of Creed Gallery's current pieces are sold out — get in touch to be notified of the next release, for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey and London.
Why Collect The Real Hackney Dave
His advertising background gives his typographic work a precision most artists working with text and imagery don't have, and his institutional exhibition record — V&A, Imperial War Museum — confirms that precision translates into genuinely serious art. As with any artist, individual pieces vary in demand and value — our team is happy to talk you through the specifics of any work you're considering.