Since 2017, Hancock has been at work on his epic graphic novel, and in 'The Skint Alterpiece: Vegans Make Deposits at the Tofu Bank' he marries that process to his...
Since 2017, Hancock has been at work on his epic graphic novel, and in "The Skint Alterpiece: Vegans Make Deposits at the Tofu Bank" he marries that process to his painting practice to create one of his most detailed works to date. Intricately rendered in a stark black and white palette, the canvas depicts a slice of Vegan life—a teeming landscape of interlocking and overlapping ossiform structures—that illuminates the underbelly of Hancock’s imagined universe.
In a continuation of his ever-evolving narrative, the painting details the aftermath of the second chapter of his graphic novel. Once the villainous Vegans have made their escape through the bowels of the police and the bowels of the septic system, they return to their underworld. A beacon within this bone-strewn, primordial landscape is the Tofu Bank. This imaginary institution is designed to take the excess out of Vegan society and amend resource inequality, a pointed reversal of the role played by banks in the artist’s world above ground.
Pure Vegans are ossiforms—creatures made from bone—that can’t see color. Red, the only color in the painting, is present in the bloodshot eyes of the Vegans, representing the tenseness in that world and suggesting a world of color beyond their colorblind existence.