The Dude Zone: SAM’S GARAGE

5 May - 28 May

Sam MacInnes is a London-based artist originally from Glasgow. Dealing with the topics of nostalgia, British drinking culture, cartoon characters and memories from childhood, MacInnes presents his experience of the contemporary world through ‘The Dude Zone’ – a satirical cartoon universe of animals playing the main characters in the world of a young artist in London.

In the exhibition SAM’S GARAGE, MacInnes showcases the paintings created in his parents’ garage during the pandemic in 2021. Surrounded by his toys, cartoon characters and elements from his childhood that dictated everything about the fantasy worlds he had formed as a kid, he created a series of paintings in which he combined both of the worlds that are present in his everyday conscious mind. His art is autobiographical; naïve and authentic, childish and serious.

In SAM’S GARAGE, MacInnes creates his own form of escapism, implementing cartoons and animal characters into his works and promoting them to the symbols of a man’s vulnerability. Once the animal characters are portrayed in their mutated form, and corrupted by the cruel realities of his everyday life, childhood and adulthood are concurrently united and separated.