If you’re in London between now and 18 January 2025 and need sanctuary from all the midwinter festivities, why not head to the Saatchi Gallery for Paper Cut, the new exhibition by contemporary artist PRIEST?

With displays including a giant cardboard diorama, huge colouring sheets, a popsicle-stick shack, and pipe-cleaner people, at first it feels like a nostalgic trip to a kindergarten craft area. Playing with the scale of objects – look for the enormous markers – and presented in a naive style, the aesthetic is fun and familiar. Look a little closer, however, and PRIEST’s true messages become clear.

"The giant cardboard diorama focuses on phone theft in London and how normal that crime has become for young people to witness," he explains.

"The popsicle-stick house deals with homelessness and the lack of safe and stable housing for children, including the reality of temporary accommodation. The giant colouring-in sheet looks at knife crime and how children grow up surrounded by the fear and language of it, long before they understand it. The childlike materials soften the surface, but the subjects are extremely present in day-to-day life."

Credit: Jack Hall, PA Media Assignments

Credit: c/o Saatchi Gallery / Sergey Novikov

Large-scale sculptures and installations that at first seem so innocent provide a reflection of society that subverts brands and demonstrates how blind we are to the pressures children face growing up in a world that caters to adults.

"Housing instability, surveillance, youth crime and how early kids absorb the problems around them are central across the work. My partner is a children’s social worker, so these issues come up in our conversations at home and naturally became part of a show that focuses on children’s art," says PRIEST.

"Kids move through a landscape shaped by marketing, crime, pressure and adult problems long before they have the understanding for any of it," he continues. "The brand twists sit inside the work because corporate influence starts early and is treated as harmless. One of the pieces looks directly at the drink Prime and how aggressively it has been pushed toward children. They have turned a sugary energy product into a kind of playground status symbol."

Credit: Jack Hall, PA Media Assignments

Credit: c/o Saatchi Gallery / Sergey Novikov

Originally from New Zealand, PRIEST is a self-taught creative who arrived in the UK via Australia, with a background in graffiti art. Online antics, such as camouflaging himself in a bin bag while tagging in Glasgow, caught the attention of the American artist KAWS, who began collecting PRIEST’s work, leading to offers of gallery shows.

From walls, he moved on to canvas, then began planning physical sculptures and installations. His 2023 show Beyond the Streets featured sets made from supersized Lego-like blocks, Star Wars and Sesame Street characters, and plenty of graf. He returned early in 2025 with Model Living, a model of a town peopled by characters on huge wooden blocks, with an enormous wooden train set running through it.

Credit: Jack Hall, PA Media Assignments

Credit: Jack Hall, PA Media Assignments

"Each sculpture requires a different understanding of how something will look once scaled up," says PRIEST. "For example, the giant spray paint box diorama at Paper Cut is made of metal, but it needed to sag like a cardboard box would. This meant creating it in such a way that it would hold its own weight whilst still appearing soft."

Chatting with PREIST about his latest show, two things become clear. Firstly, though naive artwork appears simplistic and childlike, creating it convincingly is anything but easy. "It has been the hardest style to learn and work with as it looks so effortless, and I was forced to unlearn a lot of things," he says.

Secondly, he’s proof that you don’t need representation to break into the art world. "A gallery does not represent me, and that was never a requirement to be offered a solo show at Saatchi. If people tell you galleries are the only way to grow as an artist, that is absolutely not true. If you are doing well, they will approach you. Focus on the craft," says PRIEST.