Hugo Farmer’s come a long way in his 50 years – all the way from his Bristol birthplace to the Auroville ashram in India at the age of six, back to Bristol to become a teenage rave aficionado and on to London’s legendary Dragon Bar for the baptism of fire in street art.

The wider rave culture and sound engineering led to his working for some of the most influential artists of our times.

Conflict, contradiction and downright fury runs through Hugo’s work like ‘Brighton’ through seaside rock. So, although his imperiously figurative bronzes subvert age-old traditional forms to wreak silent havoc and invoke chaos there’s no escaping the reverence, craftsmanship and, yes, sheer graft in his art. From boat-building and carpentry to painting, and sculpture he has always been a hands-on artist, thrilled by the physicality of the wood and metal he works with.

But while carving and chipping away to set free the proverbial angel (or in Hugo’s case Ohm Boy) in the wood the chips and chunks, savaged splinters and shavings get saved and remade into these ‘wood paintings’. Often created in the quiet times while the sun and the resin are slowly setting on other works, they’re a rare instance of symmetry and order amid his barely caged anarchism. And their highly finished, tactile, landscape-like topography is alive with a joyou exuberance of colour quite unlike his other works. Parsimonious yet liberal; chaotic yet ordered; iconoclastic yet committed to the craft of his art, Hugo Farmer delights in the random.

‘My art is a forum for putting out my ideas… I’m never going to be a politician – but I’m hoping this work will inspire people to say “Fuck Off” to the government…’ says the artist, suggesting that behind his genial, gentle demeanour hides a man who might be positively dangerous with a sharpened chisel in his hands.

Now back in his birth-city of Bristol for the last seven years, , one of the most recent in a series of major installation works (in his Madame Two Saws guise for the likes of Beyond the street/Wake The Tiger and the film the Game (released at some point in the future!) has been installing himself in a fabulous studio space called St Dunstan’s House (AKA House of Dunce).

Converted and run by Hugo this beautiful 17th century church is a hub of creativity and new beginnings, with the addition of several recording studio’s and a collective of artist’s) a ‘broad church’ indeed.

Farmer. Asked how he felt about it, ‘Blessed!’ was the simple and rather appropriate reply.

Follow @ohmboy1974 for the latest work and shows.