EVERYTHING AT ONCE JOHNNY ROMEO
OCT 29TH - NOV 17TH
JOHNNY ROMEO
Johnny Romeo is an Australian contemporary pop artist. His works infuse the aesthetics of print-based Warholian Pop with a street-art speed and grit, all executed through some strange on-canvas alchemy in acrylic and oil. The works heavily reference recent and current popular culture, unabashedly harvesting politicians, celebrities, pinups, and comic book heroes and villains, as protagonists. Rendered in muted pop hues, like high vibrancy paint applied thinly over stubborn grey concrete, these recognisable personalities often juxtapose witty stenciled wordplay, some letters scratched out to create unlikely double and triple entendres out of previously stale slogans and rehashed platitudes. Through that graphic style Romeo equally engages in, and simultaneously critiques consumer culture and branding in relation to the construction of personal identity. The artist exposes the childishness of our apparent ideals and elucidates what western culture has found to replace its heroes.
Australian, lives and works in Sydney and Los Angeles.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
“We live in an age of overload. A world of 24/7 news cycles, infinite scrolls, and an endless stream of likes, swipes, and soundbites. Pop culture isn’t just part of our lives anymore, it is our lives, saturating every screen and every waking moment with a wash of digital noise. With Everything at Once, I wanted to capture the dizzying sugar rush of this hyper-connected reality, where choice is infinite, stimulation is relentless, and even the things we love most can turn toxic. I kept coming back to the question: ‘what if everything you love is trying to kill you?’ Not in a romantic sense, but in the way our addictions, to Pop culture, to technology, to the quick-fix pleasures of modern living, can easily turn on us and lead to our undoing. The inspiration for the title came from Travis’ 2016 album Everything at Once, which perfectly captures the thrill and the chaos of a life lived perpetually online, where everything is happening everywhere, all at once. My new paintings dial this up to maximum volume, with hyper-saturated explosions of colour, bombastic cultural mashups, and defiantly Pop icons that feel larger than life. At its core though, Everything at Once is about Poptimism. Yes, the world is overwhelming, but there is joy in leaning into the madness - of finding clarity in the chaos, embracing the unexpected, and defining your own reality in a world where meaning is often lost amidst a sea of infinite impressions”.
Johnny Romeo 2025
EVERYTHING AT ONCE newpaintings
In a world driven by overstimulation and endless impressions, how do you cope when every sight, sound and thought crashes over you all at the same time? In his triumphant return to Perth, internationally acclaimed Australian Pop painter Johnny Romeo tackles this existential conundrum head on in Everything at Once, a rollicking series of new paintings that catapults his inimitable Kitsch Pop style to thrilling new heights. Hyper-saturated colours, high octane imagery and punchy word assemblages blaze across the canvas with focused intensity as Australia’s King of Pop captures the overwhelming sugar-rush of modern life in all its exhilarating glory. Romeo’s frenetic blend of comic book nostalgia, rock’n’roll theatrics, sci-fi mysticism, and humorous art history revisionism envisages a Technicolour universe where the sensory overload of Pop culture offers us both the promise of transcendence and the potential road to our ruin. EverythingatOnce is a visual rollercoaster that celebrates resilience, courage and the unshakable will to thrive when everything comes at you all at once.
Borrowing its name from Scottish rockers Travis’ 2016 album, Everything at Once cleverly encapsulates the chaos of 21st Century life, an existence where we are bombarded by an endless barrage of digital noise, crushing expectations, and simmering angst about the future. More is definitely more in Romeo’s latest series, as he fully embraces the over-the-top maximalism of an overwhelming world operating at warp-speed with some of his most vibrant and high impact paintings to date. Hyper-saturated colours explode from the canvas with pure, concentrated intensity, as confectionary-sweet hues and expansive, Rothko-esque colour fields evoke the psychedelic allure of Technicolour fever dreams. Pushing his Kitsch Pop style to electrifying new extremes, Romeo has assembled a truly larger than life cast of steel-fisted pulp fiction heroes, cyber-punk prophets and cosmological Viking vixens who are defiantly over the top and unapologetically themselves. Everything At Once sees Romeo venture into more surreal terrain, as he blurs the lines between the real and the imaginary, channelling the dreamlike delirium of slowly losing your grip on reality as life starts spinning out of control.
Balancing razor-sharp humour with emotional gravitas, Johnny Romeo takes the exhilarating experience of overstimulation and pushes it to its philosophical extreme as he hilariously explores a world where the very -
- things we love try to kill us. In the context of the series, Romeo is not just referring to romantic love, but the way in which we develop unhealthy addictions to everyday vices and Pop culture, whether it be the brain-rot of cute animal content on social media, the escapist fantasy of cartoon heroes or the nihilistic allure of rock’n’roll. With tongue firmly in cheek, Romeo envisions an Absurdist, neon-drenched Kitsch Pop dreamland where adorable tabby cats become bloodthirsty katana-wielding assassins, and inspirational caped-crusaders reveal their dark side as they threaten to turn on us with a knockout sucker-punch.
Ultimately, Everything at Once is a Poptimistic rallying call for hope and resilience in an age of chaos, where the choice is simple: to hold up or fold up. Throughout the series, Romeo depicts empowered figures who have found meaning amongst the madness, defining their own sense of purpose by leaning into the absurdity of modern life on their own terms. Hard-rocking apes with arena-sized dreams stride confidently alongside undead rockers living out their fuzzed-out guitar fantasies beyond the grave, reminding us that the best way to overcome the craziness of 21st century life is to embrace your inner freak and fight back with your own unique brand of crazy. Meanwhile, Pop Art sad girls discover clarity amidst the maelstrom of modern dating, and love-sick femme fatales find unlikely romance under the glow of a kaleidoscopic moon. The recurring motif of the full moon humorously captures this duality between lunacy and lucidity to humorous effect, as it both possesses us to give in to our most outlandish desires, and illuminates a path towards rebirth and enlightenment.
With Everything at Once, Johnny Romeo delivers more than just a dazzling spectacle of colour and chaos - he offers a mirror to the whirlwind of modern existence, and a battle cry to embrace it with a radical sense of freedom. Bold, irreverent and unapologetically alive, the latest series from Australia’s premier Kitsch Pop powerhouse invites us to find clarity in the overload, courage in the absurd, and joy in the beautiful madness of existing in a world where everything comes at you all at once.
JohnnyRomeo,BoomDownHack,2025,acrylicandoiloncanvas153cmx153cm,$12,085
BOOM DOWN HACK
Step into the rabbit hole of the New Matrix in Johnny Romeo’s meditative sci-fi romp, Boom Down Hack . Blurring the line between the sacred and the dystopian, the painting depicts Laurence Fishburne’s iconic character Morpheus, from the 1999 cyber-punk classic ‘The Matrix’, with his palms outstretched, offering us a glimpse into a new reality with his signature red-blue pill. Unlike the film, however, there is no choice between the red pill and the blue bill, only a singular reality where the duality of life collapses into a world of sensory overload, and everything comes at you all at once. In contrast to this chaos, the dark, muted tones used to paint Romeo’s Morpheus imbue the character with a sagely, beatific demeanor that evokes both the expansive spirituality of Mark Rothko’s colour fields, and the epic scale of blockbuster films. The heaviness of Morpheus’ stare
and his impenetrable build is captured with Pop savviness in the word assemblage ‘No Nu Matrix’, a reference to the nu metal movement that emerged in the 1990s and featured heavily in the soundtrack to ‘The Matrix’. In this ‘Nu Matrix’, Morpheus returns, not with an option, but a provocation: to choose life. With his towering presence and piercing gaze, Morpheus demands our attention, encouraging us to ‘boom down’ on old ways of thinking and recognize that the radical power of choice lies not in choosing between the real world or a comfortable digital dreamland, but how we find meaning in a hyper-stimulated reality where everyday struggles blur into the fantasies of being terminally online. By tapping into this existential glitch in the system, Romeo believes we can ‘hack’ into the Matrix of our own lives and rediscover a sense of inner solace.
JohnnyRomeo,CuteBruteToot,2025,acrylicandoiloncanvas153cmx153cm,$12,085
CUTE BRUTE TOOT
Prepare to be killed by cuteness with Johnny Romeo’s deliciously deadly ode to Japanese kitsch, Cute Brute Toot . In the painting, Romeo depicts a cute tabby cat slurping on a comically large bowl of noodles, their wide-eyed expression evoking the distinct visual style of Japanese anime. Bursting with exuberant candy colours and playful imagery, Romeo’s ramen-loving feline on the surface is a vision of supreme sweetness who wouldn’t hurt a fly. As a ‘street hustling’ stray, Romeo’s playful pussycat has struck gold, feasting on their ‘sweet’ bounty of leftover noodles. However, look a bit closer and you will notice there is something slightly unsettling about the cat’s gaze, a latent violence in the way they clutch their sharp chopsticks that implies a darker, more brutal past. With Cute Brute Toot , Romeo subverts our expectations of cute animal imagery, creating a killer kawaii cat whose razor-sharp chopsticks double as samurai swords, as ready to silence their enemies with the slash of a katana as they are to purr for tasty treats. Romeo hammers home the bloodthirsty intent of his fatal feline through the exclamation of ‘Kurae!’, a crude battle declaration often used in manga that translates to ‘Eat This (my weapon)’. Written on the noodle bowl in bold Japanese characters, ‘Kurae’ hilariously plays on the cat figure eating noodles while hinting at the bloodcurdling battle purrs they use to strike fear in the hearts of their foes. With the title Cute Brute Toot , Romeo explores the paradox of the ‘cute brute’, a creature whose disarming charm conceals their predatory instincts. The inclusion of ‘toot’ bolsters the sinister cuteness of the painting, its short, sharp tone lending the work a childlike joy, while underlining that even the most adorable things we love will try to kill you.
JohnnyRomeo,FancyDreams,2025,acrylicandoiloncanvas122cmx122cm ,$8,895
FANCY DREAMS
Prepare to unleash your inner freak in Johnny Romeo’s monumentally primal tribute to rock ‘n’ roll, Fancy Dreams . Bursting out of the canvas with exuberant, larger-than-life colours, the painting depicts a towering, hard-rocking ape donning Ace Frehley’s iconic KISS makeup as he lets out a visceral scream. Set free from the constraints of his jungle homeland, Romeo’s colossal primate embraces his stadiumsized ambitions, taking to the stage with the raw, electrified swagger of a bona fide rock star roaring to be seen and hungry for the spotlight. Defiantly camp and boldly unconventional, the ape refuses to follow the pack and ‘stay meek’, instead choosing to fly his ‘Freek’ flag proudly with his garish glam make-up and indomitable sense of self-belief. The deliberate re-spelling of ‘Freek’ draws from the world of hip hop, highlighting the ape’s obsessive desire to not just be
your friendly simian eccentric, but a living embodiment of the freedom found in unapologetically staying true to your own eccentricity. Romeo cleverly straddles the line between the absurd and the aspirational with the title Fancy Dreams , envisioning a Technicolour rock opera where the King of Apes lives out his fantasies as a flamboyant frontman howling in front of a packed stadium of adoring fans. Channelling the fiery riffage of Ace Frehley and the riotously R-rated antics of Robbie Williams’ chimpanzee lothario in ‘Me and My Monkey’ (2002), Romeo’s primate Primadonna is truly in a league of his own, a savage superstar who has elevated ‘freekiness’ into a spectacle of distortionfuelled rock’n’roll theatrics.
JohnnyRomeo,FlawLessGlare,2025,acrylicandoiloncanvas153cmx153cm ,$12,085
FLAW LESS GLARE
Plunge into the depths of an alternate universe where the real and the imaginary blur into one in Johnny Romeo’s exuberantly Surrealist painting Flaw Less Glare . The work portrays a sullen women staring coldly in the distance, her head immersed in a fishbowl while goldfish swim around her. Curious viewers will notice that the fish are swimming both inside and outside the bowl as Johnny Romeo toys with our perception of reality, creating a fantastical dream world where people breathe underwater and fish defy the laws of physics by floating through air. Blending the bright immediacy of Kitsch Pop with the psychological depth and dreamlike ambiguity of Surrealism, Flaw Less Glare thrives on duality, where reality glitches and bends between the tangible and the otherworldly, recalling the dual realities of ‘The Matrix’. This sense of dichotomy is reflected in the figure of the woman, whose perfect porcelain features betrays her fractured inner turmoil as she ‘glares flawlessly’ towards the viewer, caught between confinement and release, despair and the playfulness of her free-spirited fish companions. Ruminating in her own melancholy, Romeo’s Surrealist siren is spiritually connected to the depressive grunge dirge of Nirvana, and the weeping woman featured in Run Hero Stun . The woman’s hair unfurls like the sinewy serpent locks of Medusa, lending the painting a mythological gravitas that perfectly complements the ‘free flowing woe’ emanating from the woman’s selfimposed aquatic prison. Akin to Medusa, Romeo’s haunting fishbowl maiden finds dignity in her sorrow, leaning into the ‘free flowing’ movements of the fish orbiting her as a source of momentary calm amidst the internal storm of her mind.
JohnnyRomeo,GhostFlow,2025,acrylicandoiloncanvas101cmx101cm ,$6,500
GHOST FLOW
Step into a world of pure rock’n’roll attitude where even the dead continue to live fast beyond the grave with Johnny Romeo’s riotously rambunctious work Ghost Flow . In the painting, Romeo pushes his penchant for pitch black humour to hilarious heights as he depicts a rockabilly skeleton decked out in a leather jacket and rocking a slick quiff. Revved up on a self-destructive love of fast cars and furious guitars, Romeo’s grease hound skeleton looks on with steely determination towards an unseen horizon, relishing his second chance to rock out and live recklessly without death standing in his way. Undead and unafraid, Romeo’s rebel rocker now has all eternity to embrace his love of rock’n’roll, knowing full well that it was this dangerous obsession with living fast and
dying young that led to his untimely demise in the first place. Romeo plays up this notion of everlasting youth with gloriously ghoulish gusto through the word assemblage ‘Rock Deadly’, which he ingeniously alters to create the text passage ‘Rock Steady’. With tongue firmly in cheek, the artist employs the phrase to humorously allude to the skeleton’s ability to rock steadily through the afterlife, while also paying homage to the cross-pollination between rock’n’roll and Jamaican music such as ska and reggae. Romeo continues to thread references to genres outside of the rock canon through the title Ghost Flow , which imbues the painting with a rhythmic pulse that recalls the gritty flows of hip hop MCs.
JohnnyRomeo,HurricaneBeat,2025,acrylicandoiloncanvas122cmx122cm ,$8,895
HURRICANE BEAT
Immerse yourself in the rhythmic beatdown of the boxing ring in Johnny Romeo’s knockout homage to Batman, Hurricane Beat . In the painting, Romeo portrays the iconic Dark Knight as a furious boxer with a serious vendetta to settle, his face twisted in a gnarled expression as he flexes his fists, ready to strike. Exchanging his signature cape and Batsuit for boxing gloves and custom championship shorts, Romeo hurls Batman into the boxing ring, reimagining Gotham’s gothic crusader not as a superhero but as a brawling antagonist hellbent on beating the life out of you. The work draws from Romeo’s own childhood memory of a boxing Batman from old volumes of Golden Age DC comic books, twisting and contorting this nostalgia into a darker vision where the superhero you once trusted suddenly turns on you. Visually, Hurricane Beat is also influenced by the frenetic spectacle of anime and manga, with a vibrant colour palette of pinks, purples, blues and reds that recalls the romantic, slightly melancholic swoon of cherry blossoms. The clash of sweet tones and violent subject matter amplifies the surreal contradiction at the heart of the painting, where heroism hardens into white-knuckled villainy. Amid this death of innocence, however, Romeo encourages us to not ‘Fold Up’, but defiantly ‘Hold Up’ and stand our ground, even if it’s against the very hero you once looked up to. The title Hurricane Beat carries its own double edge, with its allusions to unbridled storms and the whirlwind fist frenzy of Muhammad Ali. At the same time, Hurricane Beat evokes the pulsing, percussive drive of a fight that is as much psychological as it is physical, where the memories we once held sacred turn against us, testing our resilience.
JohnnyRomeo,MoonStare,2025,acrylicandoiloncanvas122cmx122cm ,$8,895
MOON STARE
Romance blooms in strange and unexpected ways in Johnny Romeo’s seductively absurd work Moon Stare . In the painting, the gothic grandeur of Gotham is given a jolt of Kitsch Pop levity as DC Comic’s resident feline temptress Cat Woman locks eyes with the most unlikely of lovers: a rubber duck. Bathed in the incandescent glow of a full moon, Cat Woman and the duck are locked in a lustful, dreamy gaze, imagining alternate lives where the unconventional affair of a comic book sex symbol and a floating bath toy wouldn’t be so complicated. Romeo playfully teeters between the surreal and the strangely tender as he riffs on the notion of Cat Woman, a femme fatale renowned for her ability to seduce anyone she wants, falling under the spell of Florentijn Hofman’s inanimate rubber duck sculpture. Dressed in her skintight latex catsuit, Cat Woman pouts alluringly towards the rubber duck as she delicately holds it in her hand, a vision of dangerous beauty that is gleefully juxtaposed with the duck’s toy-like innocence. Cats may hate water, but under the enchanting spell of their Moon Stare , desire overrides instinct, as Cat Woman and the rubber duck turn bath-time kitsch into an amorous fantasy. The endearing peculiarities of this oddball couple are emphasised in the word assemblage ‘Dream Quirks’, which is altered to create the phrase ‘Dream Works’. With its allusions to the animation studio DreamWorks, Romeo uses the phrase to reflect the highly animated quality of the painting while also envisioning a world where the dream of following your true heart’s desire does not just work, but flourishes. Wild, cheeky, and a little surreal, MoonStareopens a universe where absurdity reigns, comic book mavens flirt with destiny, and love pops up in the strangest places.
JohnnyRomeo,RunHeroStun,2025,acrylicandoiloncanvas153cmx153cm ,$12,085
RUN HERO STUN
Sometimes the bravest thing to do in life is to run away. In Run Hero Stun , Johnny Romeo explores the complicated, fraught emotions of doomed relationships with his signature Kitsch Pop flair. The painting updates Roy Lichtenstein’s love-sick girl in ‘Oh, Jeff… I Love You, Too… But…’ (1964) for the social media generation, portraying her as an overwhelmed but resilient modern woman who is over the drama and wants out. Influenced by Lichtenstein’s own explorations of dysfunctional relationships, Romeo imagines an alternate universe where his distressed woman summons the courage to follow through with her breakup, rather than remain trapped with a toxic partner. The painting is an emotional Technicolor Pop rollercoaster that sees the woman openly crying over the phone with deep, oceanic tears rolling down her cheek amidst a melancholic colour palette of subdued blues and purples, and fiery oranges and reds. Leaning into her pain, the weeping woman’s dismissive response of ‘Nevermind!’ recalls both the restless ennui of Nirvana and the grunge generation, and the unfiltered disappointment of someone who has been let down for the last time. Romeo captures the shellshock of the breakup with emotional gravitas in the title Run Hero Stun , a cheeky interpolation of the cult 1998 German film ‘Run Lola Run’. The word ‘stun’ implies that there is a time to stop and grieve through your trauma, but ultimately what our heroine needs to do is to save herself and ‘run’ away from her toxic relationship. While ‘standing alone’ may lead to temporary solitude, Romeo rounds off the painting on an optimistic note, reassuring his distraught woman that she will not just be better, but ‘Grand Alone’ once she leaves her destructive romance behind.
JohnnyRomeo,SquadElite,2025,acrylicandoiloncanvas101cmx101cm ,$6,500
SQUAD ELITE
Stand proudly above the pack and keep your eye on the prize with Johnny Romeo’s vibrant, sun-kissed celebration of trailblazing women, SquadElite . Inspired by Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Girl with Ball’ (1961), Romeo reimagines the artist’s beach babe as an empowered AFLW player reaching for the skies as she successfully marks a ball amidst a background of summery hues. By cleverly replacing Lichtenstein’s beach ball with a football, Romeo taps into the symbolism of ‘marking the ball’ in AFLW as a moment of control in a game defined by constant motion, where individual brilliance can shine within a team game. Read from this context, Squad Elite’s contemporary ‘Girl with Ball’ becomes a Feminist symbol for seizing the moment, claiming space and asserting your presence in fast-paced environments dominated by men, such as sport. With her chic AFLW guernsey, candy-coloured palette and carefree expression, Romeo’s sporting heroine effortlessly ‘soars’ through the air, gliding gracefully above the surging ‘roar’ of the crowd below. Brimming with confidence, the ‘girl with ball’ figure is suspended in a moment of temporary triumph, rising above the chaos of the football field as she takes charge of the game and leads her team to victory. The notion of teamwork directly informs the commanding title of the work Squad Elite , as Romeo positions his star player as a valuable member of a winning team driven by liberated women collectively kicking down the glass ceiling. To be a member of this elite squad, you can’t just be a follower, you need to be a headstrong leader committed to supporting your fellow woman and breaking down barriers for future generations.
JohnnyRomeo,WonderLand,2025,acrylicandoiloncanvas122cmx122cm $8,895
WONDER LAND
Be enchanted by a scintillating vision of the future where seductive advertising, Norse mythology and comic book mysticism collide in brilliant Technicolour with Johnny Romeo’s Wonder Land . Evoking the spirit of celebrated glamour artist Mel Ramos, the painting re-imagines a classic 1950’s pin-up girl as a fiercely independent modern woman adorned with a biker-inspired Viking helmet. Romeo ingeniously flips the consumerist objectification of mid-century pin-up culture on its head, injecting his sweet and instantly magnetic glamour model with a healthy dose of Nordic muscle and high-octane sass. With her horned biker helmet at the ready, Romeo’s candy-coloured Pop Valkyrie is a force to be reckoned with, double protected and ready to take on anyone foolish enough to reduce her to an object of affection. Bathed in confectionary sweet colours and the lunar glow of a full moon, the pin up figure radiates power and provocation in equal measure, recalling the spellcasting grandeur of Marvel’s resident sorceress Scarlet Witch as she overcomes life’s blights and charges inexorably towards a ‘Bright Future’. Romeo doubles down on the nocturnal magic of his Viking vixen, depicting her with a love choker that teases the viewer with both irresistible allure and raw, arcane witchcraft. Mythical, sensual, and defiantly alive, Romeo’s Occult pin up inhabits a cosmic Wonder Land where everything converges together in perfect harmony, a point sharply captured in the ‘42’ emblazoned on her helmet - the answer to the meaning of life in Douglas Adams’ sci-fi odyssey ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ (1979).
JohnnyRomeo,ZealSteel,2025,acrylicandoiloncanvas122cmx122cm ,$8,895
ZEAL STEEL
While we often see superheroes today as caped crusaders with supernatural abilities, the first wave of comic book heroes relied solely on strength and sheer grit to fight injustice. In Zeal Steel , Johnny Romeo rewinds the superhero myth to its pulp fiction beginnings, casting the Phantom as the comic book world’s original costumed crime-busting hero with his signature Kitsch Pop flair. Inspired by the bold graphic style and color palette of 1940s Phantom comic books beloved in Australia at the time, No Capes has a decidedly old-school feel, with Romeo depicting the Phantom as a steel-fisted masked avenger from a bygone era drenched in prismatic purples and orange hues. While often typecast as a superhero today, the Phantom does not possess the superhuman abilities we associate with comic book icons such as Superman or Spider Man. As such, Romeo positions the Ghost Who Walks as a continuation of the gladiator tradition, whose impressive combat skills, raw power and resilience in the arena went on to inspire the concept of the superhero. Romeo skillfully alludes to the Phantom’s status as a pulp fiction gladiator by replacing the Shadowed Protector’s iconic skull ring with a traditional gladiator ring. The design of the ring also tips its hat to the abstract stylings of hip hop innovator MF Doom, whose signature Dr Doom inspired mask playfully jams together the worlds of rap and comic books. Romeo’s muscular rendition of the Phantom tears through the canvas with a hefty dose of Zeal Steel , delivering walloping blows to his enemies with unrelenting energy and purpose. With the word assemblage ‘No Fakes Capes’, Romeo ingeniously reminds us that fake cape crusaders may rule the comic book world, but there is no substitute for the real deal OG hero.
GicleePrintonInnovaPaper80cmx80cm(LimitedEdition/10)
$2,280
GicleePrintonInnovaPaper80cmx80cm(LimitedEdition/10)
$2,280
JohnnyRomeo,OldSchoolFlow,2025
JohnnyRomeo,GoldGrind,2025
EVERYTHING AT ONCE
LIMITED EDITION PRINTS
To celebrate his exhilarating new Perth exhibition, Everything at Once , critically acclaimed Australian Pop painter Johnny Romeo is launching two exclusive, limited edition prints alongside his dynamic series of new original paintings. Exploding with larger-thanlife imagery, hyper-saturated blasts of colour and irreverent Pop culture mashups, the prints distil the sensory overload and life-affirming sugar rush of modern existence pulsing at the core of Romeo’s latest exhibition. Old School Flow kicks out of the gate with colossal force, as the artist ingeniously pits the King of Monsters, Godzilla, against the fearsome swell of Hokusai’s iconic ‘Great Wave’. Romeo cheekily injects his Japanese-inspired clash of the titans with a slick hip hop swagger with the title Old School Flow , a reference to the eternal flow of the ‘Great Wave’ and Godzilla’s status as a beloved old school icon in the canon of Japanese Pop culture. Awash with eye-popping, psychedelic colours, Romeo’s ‘Sized
Up’ Godzilla is epic in the truest sense of the word, a monumental force of nature who symbolizes our ability to ‘Rise Up’ against even the most terrifying waves and overcome life’s greatest challenges. Gold Grind takes this elemental triumph of overcoming your fears and beams it into a sun-kissed alternate reality where Vincent van Gogh finds gold in the grind of personal development and breaks free from the chains of depression. Romeo’s radiant rendition of van Gogh depicts the once-tortured artist finally finding true happiness as he clutches a bouquet of golden sunflowers, bathed in the warm, kaleidoscopic glow of confectionary sweet colours. Like the flowers he embraces, van Gogh is fully ‘In Bloom’, as Romeo cleverly subverts the nihilism of Nirvana’s 1991 smash single into a Poptimistic mantra of inner peace.
BIOGRAPHY
Johnny Romeo is an internationally acclaimed Australian painter, widely regarded as Australia’s leading Pop artist. As a seminal figure in the global Neo-Expressionist Pop movement, Romeo fuses the irreverent swagger of rock’n’roll with the visual semiotics of comic books and the raw immediacy of street art. GQ Magazine Australia aptly described his aesthetic as ‘part punk, part pop’, a stylistic hybrid that defines Romeo’s vivid, neondrenched works and its balance of candy colour explosions and punchy, rebellious imagery. Romeo’s signature Kitsch Pop paintings are electrifying visual assemblages, combining Technicolour palettes and urban iconography to produce a visceral, high-octane art experience.
With sharp wit and a keen eye for social critique, Romeo is a trailblazing
culture jammer in the international art scene. His work explores the construction of identity within contemporary culture, examining the pressures of life in the digital age and the omnipresent influence of celebrity figures, ever-changing social trends and the 24-hour news cycle. Through his bold, graphic compositions, Romeo reframes the relentless stream of popular media, transforming familiar visual tropes into biting, ironic reflections of our image-saturated world. Standing at the crossroads of Pop and protest, Romeo’s paintings are playful and subversive, repurposing the visual language of Pop culture, advertising, music, comic book nostalgia and silver screen entertainment to comment on the absurdities of modern life.
Over the last decade, Johnny Romeo has enjoyed a successive number of critically acclaimed and sold-out exhibitions across Australia, New Zealand and the US. Romeo has -
-continued his dominance as a world-class Pop artist with acclaimed and sell-out exhibitions in Sydney, Perth, Auckland, Canberra, Byron Bay, the Gold Coast and New Orleans. In 2018, Romeo notably exhibited at the Australian Consulate-General in New York. He was a highly celebrated feature artist in the HOTA Gold Coast’s Sign of the Times group exhibition, alongside street art juggernauts Banksy, Blek le Rat and Swoon. A major force in contemporary Pop art, Romeo is represented by many top galleries both in Australia and overseas.
Romeo has graced numerous prominent publications such as the Sydney Morning Herald, Vogue, Australian Art Review, Artist Profile and No Cure Magazine. Television features include the ABC 7:30 Report, Foxtel’s STVDIO, and the ABC documentary ‘Conquest of Space: Science Fiction & Contemporary Art’, written and hosted by renowned
art critic Dr. Andrew Frost. In 2023, he appeared in the podcast ‘Tell Us Something We Don’t Know - A Serious Chat with a Comedian’, hosted by internationally recognised Australian comic Joe Avati.
On the international stage, Johnny Romeo is a Pop Art tour de force, with hugely celebrated exhibitions in the US, including New York, Los Angeles, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Williamsport, Harrisburg), Florida and New Orleans, as well as Auckland and Napier, New Zealand and Malmö, Sweden. He has participated in several high-profile group shows across the US and Europe, including Language Art, alongside childhood hero and Pop Art icon Robert Indiana. Romeo made a massive splash as a celebrated featured artist in POP AUSTIN 2017, exhibiting with contemporary art powerhouses like Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Mr. Brainwash. Over the last decade, Romeo has made many standout
appearances on US national television and universities. Since 2015, Romeo has released many books examining his paintings and art-making practice, including TV Land (2015), the 10year retrospective survey Plastic Fantastic (2017) and Pump Up the Jams: Culture Jamming in the Works of Johnny Romeo (2019). As well as these books, there have been a number of publications produced by leading galleries on his work.
As one of the biggest names in Pop Art today, Romeo’s works are highly sought-after globally and held in prominent Australian and international public and private collections. He has collaborated on illustrious projects with the likes of leading US snowboarding company Gilson Boards, craft beer alchemists Zeroday Brewing Company, worldfamous punk band Blink 182 and luxury car brand Lexus Australia.
