It all started when…

English artist Nick Veasey is best known for using x-ray technology to reveal the deepest layers of his subjects. While working as a photographer and designer for a morning television show in England, he was assigned the monotonous task of X-raying soda cans to determine which ones contained a winning code for a contest sponsored by Pepsi. After three days without a winner, he X-rayed his sneakers as a form of entertainment. Veasey recalls, “It was a great image and I thought ‘there’s something to this’.” Afterwards, he spent the next three years working with scientists to perfect his technique. He learned to gauge object density and structure by experimenting with a variety of materials including plastic, flowers, metals and people, taking the utmost care with his living subjects. His intriguing visuals led to assignments for Nike, Porsche, IBM, Bloomberg, and the European edition of Time. We live in a world obsessed with image. What we look like, what our clothes look like, houses, cars… I like to counter this obsession with superficial appearance by using x-rays to strip back the layers and show what it is like under the surface. Often the integral beauty adds intrigue to the familiar. We all make assumptions based on the external visual aspects of what surrounds us and we are attracted to people and forms that are aesthetically pleasing. I like to challenge this automatic way that we react to just physical appearance by highlighting the, often surprising, inner beauty.

This society of ours, consumed as it is by image, is also becoming increasingly controlled by security and surveillance. Take a flight, or go into a high profile courtroom and your belongings will be x-rayed. The post arriving in corporations and government departments has often been x-rayed. Security cameras track our every move. Mobile phone receptions place us at any given time. Information is key to the fight against whatever we are meant to be fighting against. To create art with equipment and technology designed to help big brother delve deeper, to use some of that fancy complicated gadgetry that helps remove the freedom and individuality in our lives, to use that apparatus to create beauty brings a smile to my face. To mix my metaphors, we all know we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, that beauty is more than skin deep. By revealing the inside, the quintessential element of my art speculates upon what the manufactured and natural world really consists of.