Biography

Ronnie Heeps was born in Scotland in 1958; he studied foundry management at Falkirk College of Technology from 1975 until 1980, and ceramics and silversmithing also at Falkirk, until 1982. After college, he became a lighting designer for both stage and clubs, and his artistic career has progressed through the nineties from multi-media art events in Glasgow to the setting up of his Dream Products department (in conjunction with his show Myrrh at Ichi-ni-san in Bell Street) in 1996, to his painting.

Heeps has designed lighting for bands such as The Wedding Present, The Shamen, Gay Bikers on Acid, World Domination Enterprises, Nico, Test Department, etc.. He has worked for clubs and raves across Scotland, in Newcastle and in Germany. His art events staged in Glasgow have included a collaboration with artist Ken Currie (Death,Tramway Theatre 1993); Elvis is Dead Long Live Elvis took place in the High Street in August 1995, and Clockwork (Arches Theatre, October 1994) was part of the National Review of Live Art. In September 1993 he celebrated the demolition of the Queen Elizabeth flats in the Gorbals in an audio-visual event using eight video projectors and ten special effects projectors: the countdown to the demolition became a metaphor for the transient nature of man-made landscape (Wave, Crown Street, Gorbals.)

Dream Products, he says, 'emphasize the difference between advertising copy and the product people really want': his Milk of Human Kindness was the first product in a range which went on to include Bob Hope Baked Beans, Gabriel's Angel Wing Soup, Art Beer, Cocaine Juice, Shuggie's Freeze Dried Nationalism - and the winged thistle seed entitled Scotlandium Futurama ('a genetic response to the (then) current Scottish political climate'.) At the 1997 Glasgow Art Fair he paid tribute to pop artist Roy Lichtenstein with his Roy's Pop Dots.

Of his products and paintings he says:

'I aim to produce objects and paintings which inhabit seemingly incompatible categories of experience, acting as transporters for the viewer. My work is enigmatic, oscillating between realms of experience, creating flaws and twists, which negate the viewer's acceptance of categorisation... I believe that the paintings are most successful when the viewer cannot decide how to read them, and glories in their hybrid state.'