Nicky Carvell

Nicky Carvell (born 1983) is a British artist based in London who works under the name "Naff Grafix," a style of brightly coloured, digitally drawn compositions built from suburban signage, sportswear branding and pop imagery.

Early life and education Carvell was born in Hertfordshire in 1983 and grew up in Hemel Hempstead. She studied at Chelsea College of Arts (Foundation Studies in Art and Design, 2002–2003) and Goldsmiths, University of London (BA Fine Art, 2003–2006), then completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art at the Royal Academy Schools in London (2006–2009).

She lives and works in London.

Career Carvell works across painting, installation and product design, drawing on branding, sportswear and club culture. She calls her aesthetic "Naff Grafix": compositions drawn digitally on a tablet and printed onto aluminium, combining consumer imagery with painterly mark-making. Her work has been shown in the United Kingdom and internationally, including in the United States, Belgium and the Netherlands.

In 2012 Carvell completed a residency at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn, New York, after winning the Grand Prize in the 3rd Ward Open Call.

In 2013 she launched the clothing line NIKWEAR, applying her Naff Grafix imagery to garments. Her crossover between art and fashion was the subject of "Lady of Leisure Wear" by Namalee Bolle, with photography by Rosaline Shahnavaz, published by i-D on 25 March 2017.

Her installation Esprit Heat, staged at the French Protestant Church, Soho Square, was part of the 2016 Soho Create Festival and was featured in the Soho Create supplement of The Guardian. That year Carvell was named the Soho Create Festival Winner for Installation.

Her earlier work also drew national press coverage. Peace from East 17 (2014), an exhibition at the Self Run Pop Art Centre in Walthamstow featuring former East 17 member Brian Harvey, was covered by NME and the Evening Standard.

Carvell's work has also featured in Super Super Magazine (Issue 12, June 2008), It's Nice That (December 2011), The Upcoming (October 2011) and the design anthology Pretty Ugly – Visual Rebellion in Design (Gestalten, May 2012).

Her public work was included in Sculpture at Canary Wharf – A Decade of Exhibitions (Canary Wharf Group, 2011). In 2014 she appeared on the BBC Culture Show special marking the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and was profiled over two pages in the Radio Times (7–13 June 2014, pp. 28–29).

She has continued to exhibit in the UK and internationally, including with GIANT, Bournemouth (2021), Tatjana Pieters Gallery, Ghent (2019), and OHSH Projects, London (2023). Her work is held in private collections worldwide.

Style and themes Carvell's visual language draws on commercial design, neon signage and 1980s and 1990s pop culture, which she has described as "the grit of British suburbia" reworked into what she calls "abstract digital paintings." Through NIKWEAR and installations such as Esprit Heat, her work has moved between gallery and street contexts, placing it alongside the neon-toned, streetwear-adjacent visual culture that ran through London's club and fashion scenes in the 2000s and 2010s.

Awards and residencies 2019 — J.M.W. Turner's House, Sandycombe Lodge, six-month residency, London 2016 — Soho Create Festival Winner, London 2012 — 3rd Ward Open Call Grand Prize Winner, Brooklyn, New York 2009–2010 — The Land Securities Studio Prize, Oxford Street, London 2009 — Alumni Award, Royal Academy of Arts, London

Selected exhibitions 2024 Visage, Blackbird Rook Online (11 January – 14 February) 2023 MERCHBAU, OHSH Projects, Peckham, London Solo/Social Scribbles, Photo Book Café, London 2021 Big Medicine, GIANT Gallery, Bournemouth Summer Exhibition, Artwave West, Dorset 2019 Installation at Turner's House, London Fully Awake, Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland There's Something About Painting, Tatjana Pieters Gallery, Ghent, Belgium 2017 Wearable Expressions, Palos Verdes Art Center, Los Angeles Brains and Lip Takeover, Hix Art, London 2016 Mannequin, Griffin Gallery, London Run Forrest Run, The Kennington Residency Esprit Heat, Soho Create, London 2015 Bonfire of the Vanities, Display Gallery, Holborn, London 2014 SECURE DECOR and Flatpacked/Wrapped/Stacked, Punk and Sheep, Canary Wharf RA Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London 2012 RAINBOW REV, 3rd Ward, Brooklyn Red, White and Blue – Pop/Punk/Politics/Place, Chelsea Space, London 2010 Modern Love, Simon Oldfield Gallery, London This is England, Aubin & Wills Gallery, London 2009 Plastic Culture: Legacies of Pop, The Harris Museum, Preston and The Exchange, Penzance