MARCSTA
 
active Australia 2001

Cool power. 2001
stencil
35/43 , published state
edition of 43
Signed and inscribed with edition details, lower right within image in black pen 'MARCSTA 35/43'. Not dated. Titled printed centrally within image 'Cool / Power'.
printed image 59.0 (h) x 45.4 (w) cm
Gordon Darling Australia Pacific Print Fund 2007
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
NGA 2007.58.9
© Marc de Jong

Marcsta (Marc de Jong) has been on the scene for over two decades and is recognised as a veteran member of a group of Australian artists well known for their skilful execution of the adbust as a way to actively participate with visual culture ‘beyond the consumer drip-feed’. Marcsta’s motivation for busting the mainstream media is to combat what he considers the ‘unbearable, unsustainable terror of disorienting corporate messaging’ with his own ‘simple, non-violent counter-terrorism’.

By taking the logos of large companies and brands, such as Coca-cola, KFC, 7-Eleven and Cold Power which are ‘designed and formulated commerce whose wasteful indulgence is a form of massively funded, distracting social brainwash’, Marcsta has created a series of ‘critiques, de/reconstructions and honest (re)appraisals of post-consumer life’. In his ReAdvertising stickers, the artist skilfully cannibalises the tactics of the mainstream media, disrupting the advertising message to effectively produce a corporate logo-implosion.

In the tradition of the mass-produced print, the creation of artworks that exist as multiples has gained popularity. Stickers, in particular, have become an obsession for many street artists as the perfect, lo-fi, viral means of saturating a city with images and messages.

Jaklyn Babington