About me

Anglo-italian artist. I studied painting and drawing in my formative years and completed my undergraduate degree in Architecture at University IUAV in Venice.

I nurtured my passion for painting and drawing alongside my work as an architect. As well as house renovations, interiors and store designs, I worked on museum and temporary exhibitions and theatrical scenographies in Rome, Padua and Milan between 1991 and 2010. I experimented with the re-use of recycled newspaper glued on canvas, cardboard or wood, as a base for my paintings, as well as exploring many other techniques, materials and subjects. However, in terms of themes, there have mainly been three recurring ones: people’s faces, the movement of the human body and the relationship between public and private in everyone's life.

Between 2004 and 2008 I took part in various group and solo exhibitions in Padua, Milan and Turin and in 2005 I founded, together with other artists, the group “Gruppo Fuoridisegno”.

In 2008, in search of new artistic solutions and leaving painting as unique form of expression behind, I began the production of artworks using printed paper recycled from magazines, newspapers and catalogs . This new artistic research was inspired by my move to Brussels in 2010, where I found new inspiration in the chaotic succession of images, messages, colours and culture characteristic of this city.

Art and Creativity have always been a form of escapism and survival for me, a kind of virtual world where to find peace. The Virtual/Digital and the Real/Physical are and have always been part of my practice.

The main material in my works is usually recycled paper, which I manipulate to create 3D portraits. I always started with a digitally-made initial concept, that I then translate into physical pieces. I also create digital artworks and NFTs avatars to explore the idea of identity, primarily how we use these to extend or change our own to become something or someone different to how the world usually perceives us.

I was based in Manchester UK between early 2012 and 2021 and I have recently moved back to Italy where I am continuing to explore further the dimension and the power of printed paper, along with questions of identity that I investigate using Physical and Digital forms of expression.

Full Curriculum Vitae

my work

My work explores the constant change of our identity, its destruction and re-construction and the effect that things like information overload or the simple passing of time have on us. This research is conducted using both figurative and abstract means of expression using digital and physical media and many different techniques.

Art and Creativity have always been a form of escapism and survival for me, a kind of virtual world where to find peace. The Virtual/Digital and the Real/Physical are and have always been part of my practice.

I use repurposed paper sourced from all over the world but mostly donated locally by newsstands, typographies and private individuals. I reuse the paper in many different ways, selecting it considering its quality, thickness and colour, and always in innovative ways to create one-of-a-kind pieces. Digital computer technology as well as technological instruments such as paper cutting machines or scanners are part of my creative process and intertwined with traditional hand manual work and non-artistic materials, like books and magazines. I use them as a way to mix different types of media, allowing more human interaction, rather then as a way to simply make the process of creating easier. Technology is for me both an help and a way to expand the artisanal expertise and overcome the limitation of traditional human hand making .

I create 2d and 3d physical collages. I always start with a digitally-made initial concept, that I then translate into physical pieces. Using repurposed paper is a way for me to convey and communicate the importance of the reuse of materials and the value of sustainability in every practice.

Printed-paper is one of the mediums through which advertising and consumption messages are spread and by using it I try to explore the role that consumption has in the construction of our identity. We are what we buy and consumption functions as a way to create a sense of self. But consumption has an illusory e momentary nature. As fashion, any product grows obsolete very quickly. Nothing lasts for long, everything is disposable. In the same way our identities are also temporary and changeable, in a state of continuous flux.

Portraits and abstract works make the viewer engage with matters beyond what is immediately visible raising public awareness about issues relating to our environment, our privacy and identity.

A short film about my work created by film director David Richard Birtles - Trevors House Productions