Born in London in 1962, he worked in the advertising and design industries and pursued work in conventional still photography before making the serendipitous discovery of applying X-ray imaging to everyday objects and skeletons after being asked to X-ray a cola can for a television show. Veasey also X-rayed the shoes he was wearing on the day and upon showing the finished image to an art director, was galvanised by the response it provoked.
Based near Maidstone England his work has featured in many international advertising campaigns and adorned products and packaging worldwide, notably Adobe’s Creative Suite 2 livery.
His work is also exhibited in galleries internationally, most recently in 2008 in The David Gallery, Culver City Californiaand Millenia Fine Art in New York and Orlando as well as having work represented in Europe and Asia.
Veasey’s first collection of images collated into hardback format: X-ray: See Through The World Around You has recently been released by Carlton/Goodman in the UK and Penguin in North America. The book collects images captured over a 13-year period of experimentation with X-ray imaging and equipment.
He is the recipient of many photographic and design awards including IPA Lucie Awards, AOP, Graphis, Communication Arts, Applied Arts, PX3 and awards from the D&AD also being nominated for the IPA Lucie International Photographer of the Year 2008.
He was responsible for X-raying the largest X-ray to date, a life size Boeing 777 jet, which currently resides upon a hangar at Logan Airport , Boston USA.
ARTIST STATEMENT
We live in a world obsessed with image. What we look like, what our clothes look like, houses, cars. I like to counter this obsession with superficial appearance by stripping back the layers and showing what it is like under the surface. Often the integral beauty adds intrigue to the familiar. We all make assumptions based on the external visual aspects of what surrounds us and we are attracted to people and forms that are aesthetically pleasing. I like to challenge this automatic way that we react to just physical appearance by highlighting the, often surprising, inner beauty.
This society of ours, consumed as it by image, is also becoming increasingly controlled by security and surveillance. Take a flight, or go into a high profile courtroom and your belongings will be X-rayed. The post arriving in corporations and government departments has often been X-rayed. Security cameras track our every move. Mobile phone receptions place us at any given time. Information is key to the fight against whatever we are meant to be fighting against. To create art with equipment and technology designed to help big brother delve deeper, to use some of that fancy complicated gadgetry that helps remove the freedom and individuality in our lives, to use that apparatus to create beauty brings a smile to my face.
To mix my metaphors, we all know we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, that beauty is more than skin deep. By revealing the inside, the quintessential element of my art speculates upon what the manufactured and natural world really consists of.