Fin DAC: Cork street artist makes his mark with London exhibition
Fin DAC has a new exhibition at Gallery Different in London.
Fin DAC is a native of Cork who now lives in London, where his latest exhibition AFTERGLOW/UNDERTOW, opens at the Gallery Different. A self-taught artist, he has achieved a truly international profile without the traditional support of the gallery system; he is mostly known for his work as a muralist, and AFTERGLOW/UNDERTOW is only his second ever show.
DAC’s real name is Finbarr Notte, his pseudonym being an acronym for Dragon Armoury Creative, the name he originally gave to his online portfolio. Over the past twelve years, he has completed murals all over the world – in at least forty countries, by his current estimation – and his paintings and prints have been collected by the likes of the musician Goldie and the actors Idris Elba and Gemma Arterton.
Despite his success as a street artist, DAC did not, he insists, start out tagging walls as a spirited kid with a spray can. Indeed, his adolescence in Cork seems to have been a pretty miserable experience.
“My family have always gone back and forth to England,” he explains of a childhood partly spent in Togher. “I’d spent my childhood in the East End of London, so my brother and I had English accents when we moved back to Cork, and we got bullied a lot in school.”
DAC returned to London about a month after he completed his Leaving Cert in 1985. “There were no jobs in Cork at that time, so there was no reason to stay. A lot of my friends didn’t want to leave home, but for me, because my youth was so fractured anyway, it was easier to break away. And I think in hindsight that was a good thing,” says the artist whose work has also appeared as a postage stamp from An Post.
DAC had always loved art, but he put it aside while he concentrated on forging a conventional career, in digital advertising and website construction. “In my thirties, I don’t think I did a single drawing or painting,” he says. “But then I started getting into it again. For about four years, I devoted all my free time to making art. At that time, I considered it a hobby, but I was never happier than when I was painting, so it served as a form of meditation as well as a creative outlet.”
In 2012, he quit his job and began travelling the world, painting murals in countries as diverse as Australia and Cambodia, Mexico and Tahiti. “Most of my projects are self-organised and self-funded,” he says. “Generally, I pick the name of a country out of a hat, and put out a media call to see who’s interested in having me paint a mural. I can’t think of any place that I thought I would go, and then didn’t because there weren’t any opportunities.”
Eurasian women are DAC’s favourite subject, and he likes to lend them an air of mystique by painting a mask over their eyes. “It’s an aesthetic thing, for sure. I wasn’t seeing a lot of positive depictions of women, and especially Asian women, in street art, which, when I started, was very macho and very male-dominated. That has changed over the years, but even so, I still see way more sexualised images of women than I do women who look empowered or in their own strength.
"Also, my interest was in clothing and decoration, and I learned that from the old Japanese woodblock prints, as well as from the English artist Audrey Beardsley.”
DAC chronicled his street art projects on social media platforms such as Tumblr and Instagram. “A mural might still be there years later, or it might only last three weeks if someone wanted to tag it or dog it. Everything is emphemeral. The fact of the matter is, regardless of how long the mural lasts, the photo of it survives online.”
DAC’s social media following ensured he had a global customer base for his work when he began marketing his paintings and prints. “I don’t know why I was so adamant that I should do it my own way,” he says. “But I’ve always thought that I should trust my instincts on things. I get a lot more promotion on social media than other artists do, but that’s just because of how I’ve chosen to do it myself.”
DAC’s upcoming exhibition is a culmination of twelve months of studio industry and the past six years of mural painting. “There are sculptures, prints, collages and paintings, on canvas, wood and panels. To coincide with the show, I’ve also taken the opportunity to produce my first book.”
DAC has made no hard and fast plans beyond the exhibition. “Honestly, I just take each day as it comes, and I keep my plans really loose,” he says. “But there’s so many countries I’ve never been to, and the more exotic places, like Russia and Korea, would be highest on my list.
“But I’d also like to do another work in Cork. My brother organised my mural on the Kino cinema, but that’s been gone for four or five years now, and we’ve been trying to figure out how to do something else. I’ll paint a mural anywhere, if the right opportunity presents itself.”
- Further information: gallerydifferent.co.uk
