We love anything that crosses the boundaries, and Short, Sharp & Sweet looks like it does a fair bit of that, judging by the list of artists in this group show opening at Greenwood Gallery in South Melbourne tonight – and it’ll be a great mesh of pop, comic, graff and other genre-traversing art.

“10 days/4 artists/no-holds barred original artworks of pop and neo-expressionism scented with eau de la Lichtenstein, Basquiat, graffiti and comic book imagery.

Green-Wood Gallery showcases again the artworks of enfant terrible Sydneysider Ben Frost, Victoria’s Dave Bowers and Nick Morris (aka the painting duo ‘Doug Bartlett’) and for the first time in Australia, France’s Johanne8.”

Ben Frost “There is duplicity where cuteness and evil coexist behind the saccharine façade of a comic-book character or a much loved fast food restaurant. I am reflecting a world in trouble, a heaving dying fur-seal of an earth that is being repeatedly clubbed with baton-sized television remote controls. The drips that melt down the canvas are nods to an immense self-destructing machine made up of endless icons, logos and expressions that are the infected medical waste of the 21st century. At first it is a feeling of wanting to express this consumerist, pop-culture Armageddon that we are a part of, but I realize I have no choice, as, like you I have been given the responsibility of its maintenance and I never flipped through the instruction book (if there ever was one). Any second now, any second now – we’ll all wake up.”

Doug Bartlett The ‘Self Portrait Red’ by Doug Bartlett was a finalist in this year’s coveted as well as lucrative Doug Moran Art Prize and recently completed Hoodoo Guru’s artwork for their new album ‘Purity of Essence’. Doug Bartlett is the name given to the energy created when Nick Morris and Dave Bowers work together on the same canvas.

Johanne8 Born 1974, Paris-based Johanne8 is an emerging artist considered to be a rising figure in the French urban/pop/graffiti art scene.

Who: Doug Barlett, Ben Frost, Johannes8, Dave Bowers and Nick Morris
What: Short, Sharp and Sweet group exhibition
Where: Greenwood gallery, Hotham St, South Melbourne, VIC
When: Show opens Thursday 25th November @ 6pm, runs til 5th December

Via Greenwood Gallery