Reticulated Body - Bill Sankey

Bill Sankey, an artist and illustrator based in Birmingham, explores identity and social relations in the gay community through his work. He uses various forms and personal pictographic language to connect to archetypal experiences. His artwork spans multiple media, including paintings, collages, screenprints, and digital art, often integrating painterly textures for added tactility.

His project ‘Bodies in Forest’ depicts post-apocalyptic scenes and was an exercise in adding tactility and texture to his digital work. He also explores figurative imagery, creating narratives that serve as a form of psychotherapy. His characters, muscular men in patterned bodysuits, seek to build an idyllic existence in deserted forests and ruins.

Reticulated Body is from Bills project ‘Bodies in Forest’, depicting scenes of a post-apocalyptic exotica. Bill said he began this series as an exercise in introducing tactility into his digital artwork as well as incorporating mark making and texture into the pieces

Reticulated Body

In the shadows, a lone male figure stands. Clad in a patterned bodysuit, he emerges against an abstract backdrop—a fusion of concrete and Mayan architecture. This image, born from bodybuilder silhouettes, captures a paradox: muscle culture’s delicate dance between self-actualization and self-annihilation.

And then there’s the “gimp suit.” A provocative symbol of erasure, it reduces the human form to a primal essence—a totem stripped of individuality. Within its confines, the wearer grapples with identity, oscillating between empowerment and surrender.

Bill’s creation challenges us to explore these paradoxes, leaving us suspended between the tangible and the intangible, the seen and the unseen. As the male figure stands resolute, we, too, confront our own dualities—the intricate dance of existence, etched against a backdrop of concrete and memory.

This artwork, a Giclée print, is the creation of a meticulous process that fuses hand-drawn vectors, created in Illustrator, with supplementary textures developed in Photoshop.

Limited edition of 10.

Paper Size A2 - 42 cm x 59.4 cm

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