1. Joe Machine was born on Joseph Stokes, 6 April 1973 and is an English artist, poet and writer.
14 Facts About Joe Machine
1. 2.
Joe Machine is a founding member of the Stuckists art group.
3.
Joseph Machine was born in Chatham, Kent, and comes from a Romani background on the Isle of Sheppey.
4.
In 1988 Joe Machine was sent to Alston House Approved School, Rochester, for the theft of scrap material, and the following year to Dover Borstal for young offenders, after burgling a greengrocers in Leysdown.
5.
Joe Machine spent time claiming benefits and running the family business, an amusement arcade in Leysdown, as well as breeding Rottweiler dogs and working as a bouncer in South London night clubs.
6.
Joe Machine started painting around 1988 and has not had any formal college art training.
7.
Joe Machine's painting Diana Dors With an Axe was used on the front cover of the first book on the group, The Stuckists, and to promote the show The Real Turner Prize Show in Shoreditch in 2000.
8.
Joe Machine has exhibited widely with the Stuckists, most notably in their first national museum exhibition, at the Walker Art Gallery for the 2004 Liverpool Biennial.
9.
The exhibition, titled The Stuckists Punk Victorian, was a definitive showing of the Stuckist oeuvre, and Joe Machine was one of the "featured artists".
10.
Joe Machine was one of the ten leading Stuckist artists to show in the Go West at Spectrum London gallery in October 2006, where six of his paintings sold in advance of the show opening.
11.
Billy Childish owns a Joe Machine painting of a woman slashing her wrists, which he describes as "quite disturbing".
12.
Joe Machine sang with the "junk" group, The Dirty Numbers, and has published six poetry books.
13.
In 2003 Joe Machine married Charlotte Gavin, who has exhibited her work in Stuckist shows.
14.
Joe Machine has shown fighting dogs and a sailor having his throat slit.