Boy With A Secret

A unique, limited edition piece of wall art by Nick Cave. Each mash-up is date stamped, and was created using a mixture of collage, stickers and typed text based on The Red Hand Files Issue #26, February 2019. Boy With A Secret comes presented in a printed folder.

´Welcome to the ‘Mash-up.’ For me, songwriting has always been primarily a visual thing. Since I began writing songs, I have created a visual language to accompany them. I always ‘saw’ my songs. In my Berlin years the visual element —— the drawings, photographs, collages, found objects and paintings —— ended up becoming the dominant element in the creative process. I have continued this habit of joining together disparate elements, of words and images, to this day.

In this, the first of a series of ‘Mash-ups’, I have used a photograph my mother took of me as a small child. It is a favourite of mine. I have added part of a letter that I wrote to a boy named Ptolemy on The Red Hand Files, which, in a way, was written to my child-self. This ‘Mash-up’ is called BOY WITH A SECRET and is part of a larger as yet undisclosed project called ‘The Secret Life of Children.’

- Nick Cave


Size: 21 x 29,7 cm
Material: Photograph (c-print), stickers, rubber stamp, typed text
Edition of 300
Signed and numbered

Every sheet is unique and might differ from the product image