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Johnny Romeo

Astro Hustle

Name: Astro Hustle - Harvey Galleries
SKU: H34590
Price: 8895.00 AUD
Availability: OutOfStock

SKU: H34590

Acrylic and Oil on Canvas

124 x 124 cm Framed

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Get ready to soar through the galaxy with one of Pop culture’s most unlikely cosmic explorers, Laika the Dog, in Johnny Romeo’s vibrant homage to space travel, Astro Hustle. Beginning her life as a stray mongrel on the streets of Moscow, the beloved space dog went on to make history as the first animal to orbit Earth. Laika’s maiden voyage to the heavens aboard the Sputnik 2 satellite, however, ended in tragedy after she died from overheating while re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. In Astro Hustle, Johnny Romeo playfully rewrites Laika’s story, envisioning a neon-drenched alternate universe where the intrepid Soviet cosmo-hound survives her ill-fated voyage and is gearing up for her next celestial adventure – this time to the moon. Bathed in the incandescent glow of celestial nebula while donning her signature cosmonaut helmet, the painting’s portrayal of Laika very much embodies the heroic hound immortalized in Moscow’s Monument to the Conquerors of Space. At the same time, Romeo riffs on canine humour and Soviet imagery, using the Russian Cyrillic alphabet to hilariously spell ‘woof woof!’ on Laika’s helmet. Recently, there have been reports that NASA will set up a human base on the moon to use as a stopover for space tourists to travel to Mars. Romeo cheekily employs the word assemblage ‘Moon Bound’ to pull Laika from the annals of 1950’s Soviet history into the present, resurrecting her as a pioneering ‘moon hound’ taking to the stars once again on a new mission to inhabit the moon. Read in this light, the plucky title Astro Hustle evokes the excitement and lawlessness of this new space age we find ourselves in, where spacefaring thrill-seekers and interstellar tycoons are pushing the limits of travel and tourism to Mars and beyond.

H34590 Astro Hustle

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About Johnny Romeo

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, neon-drenched 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.