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Artist Reuben Dangoor who combines underground music with 18th-century portraiture is recognised by Tate Britain
November 30, 2015 15:35
By, Rosa Doherty
1 min read
ByRosa Doherty, Rosa Doherty
The artist behind an unlikely series of images mixing 18th-century British portrait painting with the underground music scene known as grime is to have his work shown at the Tate Britain.
Reuben Dangoor’s images, already a hit online , will now be part of Late at the Tate exhibition, on Friday.
Mr Dangoor, 28, said he was “super proud and humbled” that the gallery was showing his “ Legends of the Scene” collection.
He said: “I started this project because I thought it would be a fun Idea to work on and just because I'm a fan of the grime scene.
“I’m very overwhelmed with the response so far, definitely ticked off something from the bucket list.”
He said his depictions of grime stars as landed gentry were a chance for him to flip “what we see as quintessentially British on its head.”
Born out of a development of drum and bass and garage music in early 2000, grime has attracted international attention, with American Hip Hop royalty Drake, and Kanye West declaring themselves fans.
In one of his paintings Mr Dangoor depicts grime’s newest star, Stormzy, resting in his country manor in a Adidas tracksuit, while behind him hangs a painting of Wiley, known as the “godfather of grime”.
Mr Dangoor said: “Grime has become such a British export as a genre of music. It is so British as a sound and so is that style of painting and I wanted to bring that together.
“One represents Britain now and the other one used to. Back in the day if you had done something noteworthy you’d get a painting done of you.
“Now more than ever Grime is getting the respect it deserves internationally and I thought there was a lot of fun to be had by mixing the two images.”
Mr Dangoor is related to the late, Iraqi-born entrepreneur Sir Naim Dangoor, who died last week .
