Agape Charmani for Art-Sheep
Joe Webb is an artist whose work has always managed to shock and move us. Through his collages, Webb creates powerful analogies and metaphors, connecting worlds and cultures and commenting on serious social and political issues. This time, his new series of works discusses the most basic and dangerous injustice in our world, the difference between the free, essentially ignorant West, towards the less fortunate East. Connecting the enormous trauma the civilized world has caused to the rest of the world, with the wars, the constant oil turmoils and the recent tragic deaths of thousands of refugees who drowned in the Mediterranean sea, Webb simply points out the perpetual ignorance of people in Europe and America, towards the disasters war and poverty cause.
According to the statement the artist gave to Art Sheep, “these are all hand made collages, pulling in sources from modern day magazines and from yesteryear. These mashed up images aim to say something about about everyday culture, issues that is in our faces but are largely ignored or have grown a tolerance to.”
In his way, the skilled collage artist continues the discussion artists started years ago and is now more topical than ever. In the image where he combines the balloon dog of Jeff Koons with a recent picture from Syria, Webb simply explains what went wrong in the many years of the West looking the other way.