Nick Hersey is a British born artist, currently living and working in Shanghai. He studied Graphic Design and Illustration at Kingston University before working with various advertising agencies, design companies and fashion houses in the UK. He has lived and exhibited in England, Brazil, Thailand and China. He is currently represented by Island6 gallery, a working studio and artistic collective in Shanghai.

Nick explores topics through drawn, literary and digital means, tackling diverse topics through casual research, explorative sketching and by exploiting cheap socio-commercial practices such as signage, graffiti and homemade dance music.

Through collaborations with sculptors, writers, typographers, photographers choreographers and musicians, he evaluates socio-economic trends among youth and secular society, often bastardising or misunderstanding the true essence of his subjects, recklessly appropriating themes for his own benefit.

Recently his works have focused on a return to drawing- reflecting a disregard for quality and production values in favour of a purer, hand made craftsmanship. The visual incoherence of amassed scrapbook images, often whimsical and ill considered and composed, serves to compound the home-made aesthetic, a deliberate snub of contemporary gallery practice and quality.  His work sells infrequently and no respected collectors currently covet his output. This is no accident, merely a further commitment to his philosophy of painting and drawing and writing as traditional skills and not a means to financial gain.

He recently established the Don’t Just Do It movement, the first new art movement in contemporary art since the launch of the stuckist movement in England in the late 1990’s.

Previous shows include ‘Show and Tell’ (2000) Hoxton, London, Labor III – ‘What Matters?’ installation (in cooperation with street children of Sao Paulo)‘- (2004) Sao Paulo, Brazil Burmese  Refugee  ‘Child Identity’ Project,  (2007) – Pattaya Thailand, Arch Café ‘LOUDSPEAKER’ installation Shanghai (2008) and various group show with island6 since 2007