James McQueen Oh Bollocks 1/1 For Sale

About this work

Oh Bollocks is a one-of-a-kind mixed-media work on fine art paper (66 × 99 cm) in which James McQueen applies his characteristic layered technique — acrylic, spray paint, ink, and silkscreen — to one of the great all-purpose expressions of the British vernacular. In its most common usage the phrase communicates disbelief, exasperation, or resigned defeat; isolated on paper and rendered through a painterly, process-rich approach, it becomes something at once comic and curiously poignant. McQueen's technical process reflects the emotional quality of the phrase itself. Spray paint introduces a sense of urgency and flux, ink provides gestural directness, and the silkscreen brings typographic weight to the word. Fine art paper anchors the work within the tradition of the artist's print, even as the 1/1 designation confirms its uniqueness. The interplay of these elements produces a surface that feels both impulsive and made — evidence of a practised hand channelling an immediate reaction. The work sits comfortably within McQueen's larger body of language-based art, which has attracted a devoted international following. His practice invites viewers and collectors to find meaning and craft in the phrases that define everyday experience — and to recognise that the most honest statements are often the most artistically potent. Oh Bollocks is a confident, characteristically forthright example of his approach.