"I’m angry, and I don’t even know what I’m angry about,” says Joe Coleman. Whether assuming the role of painter, performance artist, illustrator, writer or freakshow curator, Joe Coleman defies categorisation. His compelling roster of highly detailed portraits – including edgy subjects such as Ed Gein, Charles Manson, Harry Houdini, Edgar Allan Poe and performing freak Johnny Eck – explore the depths of fringe-culture icons, and in the past he has expressed himself by attaching exploding firecrackers to his body and biting the heads off rats in front of an unwilling audience.


“I hate clichés,” the 53-year-old artist spits. “I don’t want to be pigeonholed.