drift, perspectives in surfing

For nearly a decade, Roxy has been uniting competitive surfing with an art festival featuring exhibits by photographers, sculptors and painters, all of whom share a common theme: surfing and the ocean.

This year, the Roxy pro art exhibition will be dedicated to California. As the cradle of surf culture, California has played a crucial role in the growth of surfing over the last fifty years. The Roxy brand itself was founded there twenty years ago. It’s that legacy that the Roxy pro is celebrating this year, through the “new wave “exhibition . The exhibition will showcase works by artists from the Californian new wave movement, in the original setting of a house arranged by local artist and Roxy girl, Pandora Decoster. The guest artists have carte blanche to rework some of their favourite and iconic images, sculptures, photos, drawings and paintings, decade by decade. like a time machine, a walk around our Californian house will take you on a journey from San Diego to Eureka , from the 1950s to the present day.

A group of friends with a shared passion for surfing and art, they met through the Keep A Breast Foundation five years ago, and their artistic careers have been intertwined ever since. Colin Whitbread and Brandon Lomax are up and coming Californian artists whose works are exhibited throughout the USA and Europe.

Colin’s work is mainly about social issues, and his paintings and drawings explore wide ranging themes like pollution, destruction, extinction, the establishment or fascism. He likes to juxtapose these serious subjects with a romantic and naive vision, with clouds, flights of birds, flowers or beautiful faces. For the Roxy Pro, Colin Whitbread will be exhibiting artworks illustrating Californian surfing in the 50s and60s, with paintings and miniatures depicting models from the period.

Brandon Lomax’s work is heavily influenced by the world of skating and graffiti. He will be looking to bring the 80s to life at the Roxy Pro, exhibiting abstract paintings in harmony with the spirit of that decade. He is also working on special portraits of the idol of the era Tom Curren and Mark Occhilupo, his two favourite surfers. Finally, Brandon will be presenting around a dozen ink drawings inspired by the style and the philosophy of the 80s.

In recent years, a new artist has joined Brandon and Colin’s artistic circle, a promising photographer who like them originally hails from Oceanside, and goes by the name of Kassia Meador. The charismatic longboarder also happens to be an accomplished photographer with a distinctive style of her own. Originally a hobby she enjoyed on her many travels around the world, photography has now become a central part of her life. Today, Kassia exhibits in Japan and NYC, and has just produced the images for Roxy’s Spring/Summer campaign, as well as a series for prestigious photography magazine FOAM. She’s also working on a book with celebrated fashion photographer David Mushegain.

Naturally, she got together with Brandon Lomax and Colin Whitbread at a surf session, and since then the group has been joined by Pandora Decoster, another Roxy Girl of an artistic persuasion who met them on a trip to California. At the Roxy Pro, Pandora will be exhibiting her paintings and producing some short films. The longboarder from Biarritz, who’s known for her drawings, is carrying on an artistic heritage passed down from her art collector and surfer grandfather and her artist mother. All these works will be on sale at the Roxy Pro.