Chris Bourke is an artist and skate shop owner based in Worcester, UK. He’s owned and operated the fiercely independent skate shop Spine for the last 7 and a half years, having skated for 21 years, and still skating as much as possible despite serious injury. In March 2007 he started a small gallery space within his skate shop to provide a much needed alternative art space in Worcester.
Chris has worked on his artwork for as long as he has been skating. For the last two years, he has worked solely in the labour intensive medium of lino prints, cutting and printing each design by hand himself, so no two prints are the same. His influences are tattoo art (having previously worked as a tattooist), religion/religious art, music, nature and politics.
Once printed, his lino print images can then be digitised, cut out, coloured and manipliated, and converted into graphics for stickers, postcards, t-shirts, and skateboards.
Chris has produced work for Document Skateboard Magazine, Skateboard and t-shirt graphics for A Third Foot and Death Skateboards, and board graphics the US company Consolidated Skateboards. His work was chosen for the cover of issue 8 of European magazine Modart, and he has also been featured in several skateboard magazines and the book Concrete to Canvas: Skateboarders’ Art.
He exhibits his work as part of the Outcrowd Collective and has also had solo shows in London, Holland and in his hometown Worcester.
Chris was recently invited be part of the infamous Scrawl Collective, and limited runs of certain lino prints are available through the Scrawl Collective website.
Chris is also working on setting up a creative clothing company Ours as another outlet for his artwork and designs.