On April 16, Birmingham street artist Void One set out to paste up a 20ft x 10ft painting on a billboard in the heart of Digbeth, Birmingham, UK, highlighting a topical anti-war theme with undercurrents to the recent events in Syria.
About the Painting
Entitled “Death From A Dove”, the painting satirizes the oxymoron fighting for peace. It portrays the reality of a world where the concept of peace has been rendered a hollow platitude served up to justify war. The last green leaf has fallen from the laurels, withered in the mouth of a suicide dove pulling the pin on a grenade. It’s presented in “primesight” as a “crime site”, because that’s how the artist feel about what’s happening, as it captures the hypocrisy and sense of hopelessness that pervades the current political climate.
“Why is it acceptable to attack Syria under some pretense of moral duty, when in the same week journalists and civilians are being shot by snipers in the West Bank with not a word of condemnation from our government? When we sell billions in arms to Saudi Arabia whilst it’s widely known those weapons have been used for atrocities in Yemen? This government has blood on it’s hands and must be held accountable! When Theressa May’s husband stands to directly benefit from these strikes as a shareholder in Lockheed Martin, one of the worlds largest arms manufacturers, we should be very fucking alarmed!
I’m by no means done with this concept…” – Void One_
About the Artist
Void; Noun – A completely empty space. One; number – The state of being unified or whole. Void One; oxymoron – The binary machine code at the core of the ‘Armourgeddon’ mech characters & ‘Tetsuo’ abstract graffiti concepts.
Void One is from a broken home and a product of gang violence, drugs, poverty and petty recriminations. He was an obstreperous, angry, partially deaf, dyslexic and overly hyperactive child, given sedatives from the age of two. He is none of those things now. Art, both martially and creatively, has been his meditation for as long as he can remember. An opportunity to switch off from the chaos of his internal dialogue and a way of challenging both himself, his preconceptions about the world, and the vicissitudes of the human condition. It is the only true peace he has ever known.
