A new art exhibition in London will exhibit the work of former homeless crack addict Ed Worley, a graffiti and pop artist from St Albans, known as ‘Opake’.
The exhibition, which opens on 20th October at the Quantus Gallery in London’s East End, features 30 works created especially for this solo show, and follows the influences and contours of Opake’s personal journey through addiction.
The 34-year-old artist is looking to demonstrate the power of creativity in turning a life around and hopes that its raw honesty and confidence will inspire others who may be in flux to change the course of their own.
With work described as storybook realism, combining graffiti with pop art and blurring the boundaries of traditional 19th century portrait photography with popular cartoon imagery, the London-based artist joins the lineage of other pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Claes Oldenburg.
And in keeping with the aim to disrupt a status quo, Quantus Gallery itself is challenging art market orthodoxy by putting its focus on artists, like Opake, who work outside the mainstream platforms: “There’s an increased appetite for work by artists with new, diverse voices, who have had their talents overlooked by other galleries due to not attending certain art schools or having a particular background,” says founder James Ryan.
Having first tried alcohol when he was nine, Opake, then Ed, progressed to illegal drugs and self-harming at boarding school. At the same time, he became obsessed with becoming a graffiti artist, stealing art materials, breaking into tube yards and dangling off bridges to spray-paint.
By 16 he was taking cocaine, and things spiralled from there; throughout his early 20s he battled addiction and drug use which led him to live much of this period in psychosis and insanity before having a massive seizure in his mid-twenties.
Subsequently moving to New York to work for an animation company, he decided to clean up and become a proper father to his girlfriend’s son — and the couple how have another a child.
Much of Opake’s art takes its inspiration from this dark and compulsive shadow that dominated his early life: “I realised my art could be my addiction,” he says. “Being obsessive-compulsive, becoming addicted to things — if you can channel that into something creative instead of something harmful, you can be so powerful.”
