LONDON.- Celebrated artist Pete McKee announces his brand-new exhibition Don’t Adjust Your Mindset exploring themes including digital dependence, climate change, police brutality, internet fame and socioeconomic disparity in the wake of the pandemic. It is the Sheffield-born artist's first major exhibition since 2018 and the first time he has exhibited in London in nearly a decade.

Don’t Adjust Your Mindset takes over London’s Hoxton Arches from Thursday 22 April - Sunday 1 May before heading to Pete’s hometown of Sheffield from Saturday 13 – Sunday 22 May 2022.

Comprising paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installations, Don’t Adjust Your Mindset explores modern British life and how we communicate today and, curated in the wake of the pandemic, marks a shift in focus for the Sheffield-born artist.

Pete McKee said: ““During the pandemic everyone’s life was completely turned upside-down with most of us increasing the time they spent online, especially on social media. I turned to my phone for companionship and used it as a window to the outside world. When scrolling its screen over the following months, I saw a mixture of anger, injustice, LOLs, contrary opinions, misinformation and a plethora of community-spirited endeavours to lift the mood of the nation. It was like someone had found society’s volume button and turned it up to 11.

I decided to start organising and making sense of what I saw by creating art which examined the world that surrounds us, much of which we view through a device.”

Known for his funny, nostalgic and touching work, this brand-new exhibition delivers the humour his fans and art critics have come to expect, tinged with dry, satirical and dark observations of the world that surrounds us and how we interact with it. Prompted by the pandemic, which saw so many of us turn to our screens for a window into the real world.

An undeniable sign of our times is the increasing financial pressure placed on the majority of the older generation by the steady increase in the state pension age. Symbolising this increasingly disenfranchised and underrepresented sector of society, Happy Jack depicts an individual forced back into work because his state pension isn’t enough to support his household. Some people choose to continue working however, Jack is an individual who doesn’t have a choice but to work.




Climate Change is explored in a brand-new painting Wish You Were Here. Designed like an old postcard and depicting a collapsing sandbank strewn with detritus, including a holiday caravan, this piece makes an important and poignant point about the earth’s increasing fragility. However, the light-hearted way in which this message is delivered alludes to the fact that while many of us are very concerned about global warming and rising sea levels, some of us are unwilling to change how we behave in order to mitigate it.

Another topic of contemporary significance, not least as we emerge from nearly two years of restrictions, is the hospitality crisis which sees the industry wrestle with problems including shifting consumer habits, tax rises and job security. A play on Manet’s The Absinthe Drinker The Absent Drinker depicts an empty pub table, a solitary coaster on its corner and a view out to high rise flats through the window behind. Where The Absinthe Drinker shows an inebriated man out on a dark street, The Absent Drinker references the steady decline of certain UK pubs in the last 20 years. While chain pubs in bustling city centres continue to grow, their clientele transient and ever changing, small independent establishments and those on the outskirts of major cities, are in sharp decline. This represents more than the financial impact on the owners of these establishments, as The Absent Drinker alludes to a loss of community as much as it does revenue.

Alongside painted works, Don’t Adjust Your Mindset features a series of photographs that explore how much we communicate online and how we rely heavily on emojis to express our emotions. These works pose questions such as: "does social media bring us closer together or isolate us from one another?" "Does it allow us to express our emotions more freely or give us more opportunity to hide what we feel?”

Don’t Adjust Your Mindset is Pete’s first major exhibition since his hugely successful 2018 sell-out show, This Class Works. It is also the first time in nearly a decade that he has exhibited in London.

Born in 1966 Pete McKee has forged an artistic career that over the years has attracted a worldwide following. At a young age Pete discovered his ability to draw, finding that art was the one subject he ‘didn’t get told off in.’ Growing up he read every comic he could get his hands on, with particular favourites including Whizzer and Chips, The Dandy, The Beano and Hergé’s iconic Tintin. The strong graphic style prevalent in such comic books was one of the many influences on Pete’s unique and immediately recognisable aesthetic.

His work explores various themes including working-class culture and humour. Pete grew up on a council estate during the '60s and '70s in Sheffield, a city rooted in the steel industry. His father was a steelworker until an industrial accident forced him to retire. His mother worked part-time at a bakery. Pete’s upbringing has had a direct influence on the images he creates which often examine facets of working-class life, for example depicting holidays, relationships and family. His passion for subcultures and music is also evident in his work, depicting mods and rockers as well as many musical greats including David Bowie, the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix.

As a self-taught artist Pete has developed a signature style partially influenced by his years as a professional cartoonist. His understanding of this genre allows him to create balance in his work, painting ‘minimalistically’, using only those figures and objects needed to convey a story. There are elements of a brightly coloured ‘Pop art aesthetic’ mixed with observational character study. His paintings consist of blocks of colour traced with fine black lines. This echoes the ‘Cloisonné’ style traditionally seen in Chinese pottery where coloured enamel is divided by thin strips of precious metal. Although Pete’s work is contemporary, his compositions often echo classical paintings, influenced by Caravaggio, Vermeer, Hopper and Manet.

In 2010 Pete opened the McKee gallery in Sheffield. Since then he has put on several major exhibitions. 2016 saw 8,000 people visit his '6 Weeks to Eternity’ exhibition over a single weekend. In 2018 his collaborative show, ‘THIS CLASS WORKS’, sold out, with over 10,000 visitors coming to see this exhibition. Pete has collaborated with various creative individuals and collectives including: Paul Smith, the Arctic Monkeys, Richard Hawley, Oasis, BBC 6 Music, Disney, ACME Studios, Warp Films and Rega. For several years he has produced work for the Teenage Cancer Trust charity and is also a patron of the Sheffield Children’s Hospital charity, Artfelt. In 2018 Pete received an honorary doctorate from Sheffield Hallam University and was presented as Doctor of Arts at that year’s graduation.