Gavin Rain has been selected as the guest artist to provide the artwork for this year’s OppiKoppi music festival. The annual music festival which takes place from 9-11 August at Northam is the biggest in the country and caters for a diverse audience with a variety of top local and international artists.

The theme for this year’s festival is Sweet thing – “Hey it’s me I am dynamite… and I don’t know why”. For the artwork (pictured above), Gavin has used a composite image of seven different faces to create an artwork similar in style to the one that was exhibited at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011.

Gavin Rain is a pointillist artist. In his own words: “The message of the work is fairly straightforward: step back to see the bigger picture – to see what’s been hiding beneath your very eyes. Step up close though and there’s a more subtle message – digital images are made from dots. But what about the space between the dots? I’d like you to think about this for a second. Digital seems cool, but it’s just not as cool as having all the information. That old analogue camera could take a photograph with a hell of a lot more information than even the most expensive digital ones. People who care about music are going back to vinyl. They’re not just being nostalgic, there’s a massive difference in the quality of the sound. Constantly we are sacrificing quality for convenience. How dull we are getting.”

Rain drags sociological themes along these lines out into the open: Russian Brides, Sexual Inequality, the plight of Burmese freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi…Wherever we’re trying to bury our heads in the crowd.

More artworks by Gavin Rain can be viewed here: http://www.worldart.co.za/artists/gavin-rain/