Joe Cruz
A London based artist and educator. His work is predominantly process driven with a focus on physicality and expression. His intention is to captivate his emotions in an unadulterated way, encompassing painting, drawing and printmaking techniques to produce essential rapid forms and marks.
A large part of his work is research focused, collecting found imagery from film, photography and advertising. He subverts the original source material as a reflection of the modern world.
The main themes throughout his work are sexuality, beauty, history and culture.
El Rocio
El Rocio is a town in Andalusia, the southern part of Spain. It’s a place of pilgrimage which holds a religious festival every year.
My family live very close by and I have visited many times throughout my childhood. The town and festival have made a very strong visceral impression on me.
Working with found film footage of the festival from the 1990’s, I was searching for fragments of objectivity that could describe the sight, smells, sounds, the true expressive nature of the culture and environment.
