‘Offshore: artists explore the sea’ – An Interview with Badgers of Bohemia

Artist duo Badgers of Bohemia are more flexible in their output than your average painters. Their vibrant, nature rich imagery is used to create environments, installations and sets at festivals and exhibitions, but can also be downsized to decorate the interior of your house. There is humor but also a profound message mixed with a passionate love for the biodiversity of earth ingrained within all of their work.

We spoke to them about what they do and what we can expect for their commission for Offshore.

ID: Badgers of Bohemia is an interesting name; how did it come about?

BB: Its actually part of a much larger ‘narrative’ we’re working on, so everything will be revealed over the coming years in our creative works. Sorry to sound so enigmatic… but it’s part of a big story.

ID: Nature is obviously your primary focus; when you’re creating these murals, where do you normally draw your inspiration from? Is it personal experience?

BB: As active people who chose to experience all elements of our environment (sea swimming, surfing, triathlons & even parachute jumping) observing it through third party interactions & research into alternative theories and thoughts, our work is a personal observation and a bringing together of those separate elements through representative pictorial symbolism.

We both love the beauty & diversity of life on our planet, its truly amazing and never ceases to inspire us. On this blue dot spinning in space we have this amazing ‘pandoras box’ of evolutionary biodiversity, this we try to incorporate into our works, so, we do focus on nature & environments, but, we’re equally trying to tap into the profound question of what ‘nature’ is & how has it come to pass that we continue to relate ourselves as ‘separate’ from nature. As artists we both feel we have an incredibly important responsibility to highlight ‘nature’ because without it, well, everything else is pretty inconsequential to a put a point on it.

• 

We’ve both been involved with art & culture from music creation, organising festivals, painting & other creative projects so, our creations ‘new & old’ are the expression of our experiences and observations from around the globe. Our oil paintings are often made with a whimsical approach that serve to underline, amplify and make aware the current crisis & potential collapse of keystone species in nature. For instance hidden within our mural for ‘Offshore’ we will find a rare Harlequin Lobster with a shisha pipe, yet other elements of this work will relate to historically important figures, symbiosis, dates, through to coral bleaching and how ocean temperature changes are affecting the great oceanic conveyor belt.

 So, behind the light & playful aspects of our works lies a deeper ‘discovering’ narrative, this we hope will inspire the observer to become aware and further investigate the pressures threatening our environment.

ID: What can we expect from your mural for Offshore?

BB: It’s a very large oil painted creation and we hope highly enlightening of the evolutionary biodiversity, fragility of the oceans & educational too, there’s many layers to it natural, historical & even mythical, worlds within worlds! We’ve interviewed marine biologists, researched & delved deep into reference material old & new.

Follow Badgers of Bohemia here:

Twitter: @Badgers_Bohemia

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/badgersbohemia/