For the first time Ben Montero is taking his art out of the music scene it’s inspired by and into the outside world. An artist and musician with over 20 years experience in the music industry, Montero’s work is inspired equally by a love and loathing for pop music culture, past and present. In a few short years, Montero has gone from producing imagery for the local underground music community to developing an ever-growing international following. His work has featured in Vice, The Australian Book Review, Huffington Post and Desktop Magazine, as well as, events for Melbourne Music Week and Music Victoria.

Montero’s richly coloured and humourous, cartoon-style imagery has also been commissioned by numerous Australian and international music artists including Wooden Shjips, Kurt Vile, Pond, Beaches, Sonny And The Sunsets and Ariel Pink, in the form of hand-drawn animated music videos, tour posters, T-shirts and album cover artwork. Then there are the homages to his musical heroes such as Fleetwood Mac, Lou Reed, Scott Walker, Phil Spector and Santana.

Influenced by 1960s psychedelia, pop art, vintage underground comics and children’s book illustrations, Montero’s work is a visually striking mix of optimism and disenchantment. Alongside his commissioned work are personal illustrations, quickly drawn treasures that reveal a twisted humour and childlike sincerity as well as frustrated personal and social insights. Taking these sentiments further, his series of posters for his own musical outfit Montero, boldly blur the lines between music promotion and self-revealing confessionals that expose the artist and musician’s own insecurities and paranoia, along with sly digs and antagonistic attacks on record label executives, indie music fashions and bedroom beat makers.