Bike Art. The show is nearly ready!

After weeks of furious lino cutting, rubbing and solar print making, my  Bike Art show, Nothing but bikes, is almost  ready. Phew!

Ready in the sense that the bike art is done and for the most part, framed.

61 works  of bike art will be on the walls of the Tap gallery, Darlinghust Sydney, starting July 4th and going for two weeks. The gallery's open each day, noon till 6 pm. I'll be there during those hours each day

You know, it just  might be a world first in art, 61 works on the same topic, bikes, by the same artist in the same place.

It's art and activism combined. I'm hoping that  this  bike art show will cast a new glow over the sort of cycling which interests me. I'm hoping to fascinate people with beauty they've missed.

Sorry, but you wont find any Tour de France bikes  here, hunched figures, going hell for leather on carbon fibre bikes. They'd  make great art, but that's not my interest.

They may be going hard and fast, my riders, but they're riding stately sit-ups like Paul on this Gazelle. These are the bikes which most most Europeans ride to the shops or work.

 Or for a chat. That's my bike art, and only that.

Actually,  whilst I'm not going to show too may more images, because then you won't come, I am giving the wrong impression here by showing mostly my rubbings.

Much of the bike art is lino cuts like this.

 And these four naked cyclists, a  lino cut  which was inspired by a recent nude ride in London. 


Also, I make lots of solar etchings like this guy on a Dutch Gazelle sit-up



And this one, based on  an old photograph from 1900. First, I turned it into a drawing and then, using a sun sensitive polymer plate, created this solar etching of these five women getting away.

My idea behind the  bike art show is that artists have not paid much attention to bikes,  to the interesting ways they display the human body. Photography has, but not graphic arts.  Mikael Colville-Andersen, who started Copenhagen Cycle Chic, has to take a lot of the credit.

Here's Mikael, ready for the walls as a big part of the story of rediscovering the beauty in cycling

The nude has great status in the art world. The human figure on a bike should have status too. I have 61 bike art images in this show at the Tap Gallery,  and I've hardly scratched the surface of the  subject. .

It's a shame the bike is ignored  because I suspect that,  when people see how great such stately bikes can look in bike art, they'll be tempted to try them,  and then we might have more people getting around on bikes.

By the way,  if you come to the opening, which is mid show on July 10th at 3pm, if you come on a bike, you'll be in the draw for bike art.

The Tap gallery at 25 Burton st. Darlinghurst, Sydney, (9361 0440) is just one block from the new  Bourke  st Cycleway, surely one of the most beautiful in the world. Sydney City Council has just installed bike locking rings outside the gallery in time for the show

I leave you with a country road, where I'd like to be right now. Holland, actually