Most of you are probably familiar with Swoons work, but if you’re not, then you should start looking her up – we’re massive fans of her wood/lino block prints, and the scale of them is both impressive and inspiring for the level of detail that she puts into them. There’s something about block prints that makes a paste-up look fresh and unique – and not too many other street artists own the style in quite the same way that Swoon does.

She had some pieces in the amazing work in the On The Wall show at Metro Gallery late last year, and she’ll be having her first Australian solo show come February, and apparently the lady herself will be in attendance – pretty cool.

“Swoon is a Brooklyn-based artist whose life-sized woodblock and cut-paper portraits hang on walls in various states of decay in cities around the world. She has designed and built several large-scale installations, most notably the Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea at Deitch Projects in 2008.  Her pieces have been collected by of The Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art , and the Tate  Modern.  Major pieces have appeared at PS1,  Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Black Rat Press.   Swoon has been traveling for the past several years creating exhibitions and workshops in the United States and abroad.

Swoon is also an instigator and a collaborator. She founded the Toyshop collective and the Miss Rockaway Armada, and is a member of Just Seeds and the Transformazium. Since 2006 she has organized four large-scale raft projects and floated down the Mississippi and Hudson rivers with them. Most recently, she and her collaborators designed a flotilla of sea-going rafts that invaded the 2009 Venice Biennale.

Her artistic process is predicated on the belief that art is an immersive, provocative, and transformative experience for its participants. Although Swoon’s aesthetics can be seen as an outgrowth of street art, her engagement with ethical living and making art share a close kinship with the idealism of off-grid, barter-based cultures and economies based on sharing. She uses scavenged and local materials and embraces print media as a potent means of action for social change.”

Check out this video interview with Swoon from The Run Up …

Who: Swoon
Where: Metro Gallery, 1214 High Street, Armadale, VIC
When: Show opens Wednesday 16th February from 6:30pm til 8:30pm, and runs from 14th February to 5th March

Check out more details on the Metro Gallery website.