INTERIOR ANGLE, ART DESIGN GALLERY AND FRAMING, CHELMSFORD, ESSEX

BEN ALLEN - ORIGINAL ARTWORKS

Richard Branson, Jade Jagger and Hollywood actor Stephen Dorff have all bought his work. His designs have graced 110,000 T-shirts on Britain’s high streets. He has a permanent art display in Selfridges and one of his 40ft artworks dominates the Notting Hill headquarters of Virgin.

Now self-taught artist Ben Allen is holding his first one-man show in London, organised and curated in a four-day, pop-up show by the Turner-Barnes Gallery. Ben has become one of Turner-Barnes’ best-selling artists in the 18 months that he has been on their books.

Dirty Sexy Money, which runs from June 28-30, (11am-6pm), with a private view on the 27th, at 32 Store Street, just off Tottenham Court Road, will unveil Star Skull, a unique, hand-finished, limited edition, silkscreen sponsored by Tresor Paris, the Hatton Garden-based jewellery house with a celebrity client list that ranges from Paris Hilton and JLS to Justin Bieber. Close to 50 other works by Ben Allen will also be on display.

Ben’s pop surrealist art, inspired by surfing and skateboard culture, has its origins in the jewellery he began making from coconuts while surfing in Mexico a dozen years ago.
Returning to the UK, Ben immediately embarked on his career as an artist, exhibiting his first paintings within months at a boutique hotel in Brighton. Before long his work was on the walls of a number of Brighton galleries and then further afield.

When the Neo boutique hotel launched in Brighton a little later, Richard Branson’s personal assistant fell in love with Ben’s work and offered him a rolling show at the Virgin HQ.
From there the commissions snowballed: work on the Virgin logo for a special project and then art for the interiors of the Graphic Bar in London as well as the newly built Hoxton Hotel.

Other clients have included Levi’s, Channel 5, Nokia, DJ Erick Morrillo, and Subliminal Records. Meanwhile two collectors of Ben’s work brought him in to design T-shirts and window sets for the Primark chain, firstly in Oxford Street and then across the country. Originals of his paintings also grace the walls of Richard Branson’s chalet in Verbier.

Five years ago, Ben decided to widen his technical knowledge, completing a course in screen-printing. It opened up a whole new world to him and his screen prints are now widely sought after, selling out at a number of fairs on the international circuit.

Most recently Ben has completed a charity project with Katie Price and now Sony have brought him in for a design project based around the Vaio laptop range – he has already completed similar projects with iPhone and iPad cases.

Now 33, Ben’s main inspiration stems from the mixed media of modern culture and technology, a great resource for his own work. His art comes from the love of exploring colour, seeing what it can change into, and how it can transform a canvas. Working in a multitude of media and materials, influences include comic book art, surfing, skateboard culture, Japanese graphics, the Mexican "Dia de la Muerte", typography, nature and the human condition.

Ben’s work is in private collections throughout the UK, in Australia, New York, Barcelona, Japan, Ibiza and has featured in Design Week, The Observer, The Times, Elle Déco, Plus 1 and GQ magazines to name but a few.