PRIEST’s Paper Cut at Saatchi Gallery: Childlike Art with a Stark Social Message

With displays that include a giant cardboard diorama, massive coloring sheets, a popsicle-stick shack, and pipe-cleaner figures, the show feels like a nostalgic trip back to a kindergarten craft table at first glance. PRIEST plays with the scale of everyday objects—keep an eye out for the enormous markers—and uses a naive, childlike style that’s fun and familiar. But look a little closer, and PRIEST’s true, hard-hitting messages start to sink in.

“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 tackles homelessness and the lack of safe, stable housing for kids—including the harsh reality of temporary accommodation. The giant coloring sheet looks at knife crime and how children grow up surrounded by the fear and language of it, long before they can even understand what it means. The childlike materials soften the surface, but the subjects are everywhere in day-to-day life.”

These large-scale sculptures and installations, which seem so innocent at first, offer a sharp reflection of society—one that subverts familiar brands and reveals how blind we are to the pressures kids face growing up in an adult-centered world.

“Housing instability, surveillance, youth crime, and how early kids absorb the problems around them are at the heart of this work,” PRIEST says. “My partner is a children’s social worker, so these issues come up in our conversations at home, and they naturally made their way into a show focused on children’s art.”

“Kids navigate a world shaped by marketing, crime, pressure, and adult problems long before they have the understanding to process any of it,” he continues. “The twisted brand references are part of the work because corporate influence starts early and is often brushed off as harmless. One piece looks directly at the drink Prime and how aggressively it’s been marketed to kids—they’ve turned a sugary energy drink into a playground status symbol.”

Originally from New Zealand, PRIEST is a self-taught artist who moved to the UK via Australia, with roots in graffiti art. His online stunts—like camouflaging himself in a bin bag while tagging in Glasgow—caught the eye of American artist KAWS, who started collecting PRIEST’s work and helped land him gallery shows.

He transitioned from painting walls to canvas, then moved on to 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 graffiti. He returned in early 2025 with Model Living, a town model populated by characters on huge wooden blocks, with an enormous wooden train set running through it.

“Each sculpture requires a different understanding of how something will look when scaled up,” PRIEST says. “For example, the giant spray paint box diorama in Paper Cut is made of metal, but it needed to sag like a cardboard box would. That meant building it in a way that it could support its own weight while still looking soft and flimsy.”

Talking to PRIEST about his latest show, two things become clear. First, while naive art looks simple and childlike, creating it convincingly is anything but easy. “It’s been the hardest style to learn and work with because it looks so effortless—I had to unlearn a lot of what I knew,” he says.

Second, he’s living proof that you don’t need gallery representation to make it in the art world. “No gallery represents me, and that was never a requirement to get a solo show at the Saatchi,” he says. “If people tell you galleries are the only way to grow as an artist, that’s totally untrue. If you’re doing good work, they’ll come to you. Focus on the craft first.”