Illuminati Neon

Illuminati Neon - artist Mark Sloper - has created a new piece in memory of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, celebrating her life's achievements within its collaged background. Simply titled 'Elizabeth', the piece is bright and colourful, which, as Mark says, "remembers the Queen’s beautiful smile and garners memories of happy times”.

The limited edition piece naturally features his unique touches of bejewelled nose ring, necklace and tattoo, mixing Mark's punk roots with the image of an eternal icon. 'Elizabeth' is hand-embellished with gems and printed onto aluminium, giving the piece a whole new level of depth, colour, and texture. It is framed in a suitably majestic gold baroque style.

The late monarch has been a regular feature in Illuminati Neon work, with Mark's previous hand-embellished canvasses influenced by the English artist and anarchist Jamie Reid, whose controversial ‘God Save the Queen’ album artwork for the Sex Pistols was based on Cecil Beaton’s Silver Jubilee portrait. Says Mark: “My art punk Queens are beautifully constructed with sparkling jewels, newspaper headlines and the fabulous Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II looking splendid and regal, but of course retaining a little punky attitude.”

Queen Elizabeth has been a patron of the British Red Cross since 1949, when she became Patron of the British Junior Red Cross when she was still Princess Elizabeth. More recently, she praised the charity's work during the Covid pandemic, saying that British Red Cross staff and volunteers were "valued and greatly appreciated".

This is why Castle Fine Art is proud to make a donation of £100 to the charity with every purchase of 'Elizabeth'.

His stunning collection, The Art of Chaos, is a homage to the punk rock genre, featuring a selection of large-scale, mixed media artworks and two now sold-out rock 'n' roll limited edition prints with a graphic that reportedly had the approval of the late Queen herself.

Unveiled at a star-studded event at our St Christopher's Place gallery in London, these maximalist artworks were adorned with gems by a specialist artisan, and feature a bespoke one-of-a-kind frame that was created especially for this release. Crafted in the Rococo style - which originated in 18th century Paris and celebrates theatrical ornamental details - the frames boast a metallic finish that appears more silver or gold depending on the warmth of a room's lights

For his original pieces, Mark works with genuine vintage flags, which he sources from a dealer on Portobello Road in London and upscales by mounting them to a modern board and sewing holes before preserving them with fabric conditioners and glazes. He says: "I’m saving them for the future by restoring them to their former glory. What I wanted to do was take things from the past and make them look very modern, so you’re sort of confusing time parallels.”

To create the neon, Mark delicately bends the glass under a temperature of 500ºC and compresses gas within the tubes before using electric transformers to ignite it and create an organic glow. The true colour of neon is red, so Mark uses powder-coated neon tubes filled with argon (a chemical element) to produce a spectrum of colours. Jewels and gold leaf are added as finishing elements to create complexity and make each piece unique, while the ornate frames pay homage to the works of the Old Masters.

Mark says: "Every piece tells a story about that transformative era: my experience of it, the people who made it and became my friends, and the honorary punks who personified its anarchy, chaos and rock ‘n’ roll long before the movement had a name. It’s a constant state of rebelliousness: you wake up, live and dream punk. I’m proud of every single piece. I wouldn’t make an artwork that I wouldn’t hang on my own walls at home."