The Arts & Culture Journal

The first thing we learnt about Louis Michel is that his best friend is Lola - a boxer dog. The second thing we learnt is that he loves creating. Put these two facts together and it isn’t difficult to imagine that his work consists of a beautiful blend of obsessions.

Currently living, working and dj-ing in Falmouth, Louis has hit upon a renewed love of his art, the products of which are showcased here. The images are both familiar and unsettling. We see at first the cute, perfectly executed illustrations of bears, cats and dogs. Closer inspection reveals an unnerving addition of human attire, shirts, jackets and ties.

Louis calls this metamorphosis of human to animal ‘humanimuation’, literally speaking a human animal mutation. He explained how these new creations put renewed vigour into his work: “I get more excited about my sketches I realise what it is that I aim to include in my work; patterns on the fabrics, mixture in mark-making, humour, composition and fluidity with the mutation - it has to look believable...”

And the great thing is they do! Far from simply pasting these creature’s heads to human frame, Louis gives them an upright, alert posture and inquisitive eyes that begin to question the viewer.

Observing Louis’ skilled creations begins as unsettling and turns out to be darn right terrifying. The artist was forthcoming with an explanation: “I guess we need to remember that we are all animals and at some point we need to respect that more. The human species is too arrogant and needs to see images like I’m drawing at the moment to make them realise that we are all here doing the same things. We are born, we eat, we sleep, we run, we have babies and then we die... the only thong humans do different is destroy everything along the way...”

Louis will be exhibiting his latest work at the