Banana Carts
$2,200.00
About Artist
Jamie Cole is an Australian artist based in Cairns, Far North Queensland. Cole creates beautiful, quirky, and vibrant paintings and sculptures, with a social or political message. His instantly recognizable pastiche style of acrylic, aerosol, collage & mixed media work is influenced by his love and respect for the Pop Art movement. His background in photography, illustration & graphic design are the perfect training for his urban pop creations. Theses influences leap from his canvases today.
The early part of his professional career was spent teaching in front of the art classroom and from behind a camera. Cole returned to painting as therapy in 2011 and discovered there was an appreciative audience foe his work, when his first solo show, a fundraiser for the Randwick Children’s Hospital, sold out.
Cole has been practicing art full-time since exhibiting in 2013 and over this time has presented more than 20 solo and group exhibitions in commercial and public galleries in Cairns, Townsville, Sydney, Wollongong, and Kiama. The move to Far North Queensland in 2022 has been very successful for Cole. In 2023 he was awarded a solo exhibition at Northsite Contemporary Arts and in June 2024 Cole was selected as a finalist in the Percival’s 2024, a National Portrait Prize.
Artist Statement
All over Queensland we have Banana Carts. Sunny little roadside carts selling sustainably farmed bananas directly from the farmer to the consumer. Using an honesty system for trade, these little yellow wagons are the epitome of responsible consumption. Low food miles, low carbon footprint, super cheap and healthy, requiring no refrigeration and no packaging. Win-win for us, the farmer and the planet!
This urban pop creation sees the coming together of Queensland’s carts with Andy Warhol’s velvet underground banana, the blues brothers and the bananas in pyjamas. It’s a party for the planet!