DOTMASTERS (UK)
An intrinsic part of the Nuart Festival, The Dotmaster has acted as producer, sometimes co-curator and artist at the festival. This year he returns under his Dotmaster guise to produce a series of intricate stencils that will adorn more than a few city walls.
Born and raised in London, The Dotmasters is the offspring of C6.org, a new-media based collective of art-pranksters. Active throughout the 1990’s, they bridged the gap between art and activism with attention snatching events that pulled no punches. Hitting the headlines worldwide in 1997 with "Man in a box", they incarcerated and starved one of their members in a surveillance cube in a gallery in Brighton. Their work was eclectic, merging graffiti, new media and performance from the street, night clubs and galleries generating a steady stream of irreverent broadcasts.
Founding member Leon Seesix, bored of the new-media world and the group dynamic started working under the alias ‘The Dotmasters’ , a sideways look at a populist medium says the East London based artist. The Dotmasters possesses a typically English sense of humour, throwing two fingers up at the passer-by with his impeccably detailed stencil work.
The Dotmasters work can be found anywhere from a pikey trailer park to the penthouses of the rich and famous and work has featured in both Banksy’s Cans Festival as well as his Oscar nominated feature film ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’.
A frequent collaborator with the Mutoid Waste Company, The Dotmasters love of the sinister has morphed the dark heart of the fair into a twisted set of sideshows, dubbed ‘The Unfairground’. The sideshows can be seen at festivals as far flung as Glastonbury and Fuji Rock Festival in Japan. High striking Test Your Strength machines stand side by side with rigged knock-‘em-downs (‘The Crack Heads’) and unlikely ball-games of skill such as ‘The Gobbler’. Dotmasters says the street is an immediate place; a place without a mediator. Its invasion, defacement and its appreciation are ultimately a symptom of today’s society.
