Rocker Pete Doherty unveils Winehouse collaboration in new art exhibition at the Cob Gallery in Camden
Former frontman of the Libertines Pete Doherty is making a bid to be taken seriously as a painter, using blood as his primary medium. Next week will see him exhibit these works alongside those he created with the late Amy Winehouse. The show will be called On Blood: A Portrait of the Artist, displaying over 20 works that were created with a technique he calls ‘arterial splatter’, whereby a syringe is used to squirt blood onto the canvas.
Many of these works are collaborative, and the show will include a small self-portrait made by Amy Winehouse: ‘She was on the phone to her dad when she did that’, Doherty explained: ‘She said, ‘Dad, I’m with Pete and he’s making me draw with my blood!’ He didn’t like me much, her dad.’ Other collaborations include a work by French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg and the artist Alize Meurisse.
Responding to allegations that the method of painting might be a bit gimmicky, Cob Gallery curator Victoria Williams argues that it is in fact ‘about breaking down the boundaries between yourself and your art’: ‘I don’t think it’s destructive, it’s quite giving actually’, she says – ‘It’s certainly not about gore’.
Some of Doherty’s newest works have begun to be painted in watercolour, it being the only way, in his experience, to replicate the ‘emulsive, wishy-washy residue on the neck of a crack-cocaine bottle’, he explained: ‘Look at the colours, the oranges. You see that there? You can only get that with watercolours.’
Downstairs there will be an exhibition of ‘curiosities’ collected by Doherty himself including ‘silks, bones, leathers, skulls, palettes …, easels, frames, boots, laces, wigs, mannequins’.
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