Beautiful de Greg Bun Ruy analyse

« Beautiful » by Greg Bunbury

Hi everyone and welcome to our first art exhibition ! We are going to introduce you to a specific work of art that we find quite meaningful and our job today will be to make you feel this connection as much as we do. In the first place, we are going to give you some background informations about the artist and the context and secondly we will analyze the work. The work of art is entitled “Beautiful” and it was created in 2020 by Greg Bunbury, a Black British artist.

It goes without saying that the year 2020 was marked by the Black Lives Matter movement and its return to national headlines. Black Lives Matter or BLM is a political and social movement emphasizing basic human rights and racial equality for Black people. It gained further international attention after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer back in may. In fact, Black people are far more likely to be killed by police in the United States than white people. That show how inequal the society is.

Some artists took inspiration from the movement and some of them created street art work, that’s the case of Greg Bunbury. He is a freelance graphic designer from England. who produced impactful work for brands and businesses including Sony Music, Samsung, Warner Music, Jaguar and many more. As a Black British designer, and a proud member of the design community, he uses his voice to educate, engage, and share his experience. According to him, graphics and communication design are crucial to spreading the message of any movement, and Black Lives Matter is a burning topic for him. Moreover, that’s the reason why he created  Black Outdoor Art project, an initiative in partnership with a media agency, that utilises unused billboard space as a platform for other Black British designers.

We wanted to show you this specific art work called « Beautiful» that is currently visible in London, United Kingdom. What catches our eye first is the vivid yellow volor and the “strange” skin tones colors. At the start, we are intrigued by the many scratches but we quickly get the message written in black bold letters « Beautiful». On the upper part we read « Black is still » and then we can link it to the central word. The skin colors represented tend to be dark which make us think that Bunbury advocates for the representation of black people in the society and the fight against injustice. In fact at the bottom left corner the hastag BlackOutdoorArt is visible. It was created by the artist and it is a social initiative, that uses outdoor advertising space as a platform for positive Black expression in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. Furtermore, this street art initiative  aim to inspire discussion, activism and change. Other artists like Banksy also shown support to the BLM movement . By exposing such subversive work of art at the sight of every pedestrian, he hopes it catches their attention and make them realize things.

To conclude our exhibition we wanted to share you this quote from the artist in which he justify the use of street art to spread messages : If I can put three words and make people visibly uncomfortable then I’m doing my job,” Bunbury says. “I want ideas like this to be disruptive.”

...