ANDY Warhol crashes into Damien Hirst in Antony 'H' Haylock's new exhibition Pop Goes The Easel at the Art of Protest Gallery in Little Stonegate, York.

H is known for his playful merging of art genres and movements in oil, acrylic and airbrush paintings and sculpture, and on show from today until June 4 is his successor to his Defence Of The Inanimate series, created and published in 2015.

As with those 2015 works, Pop Art’s celebration cum confrontation of mass production in the mid-20th century collides with the 1990s' wit and irony of the YBA (Young British Artists) in his new portfolio.

H says: "I’m excited to be having a solo show outside of London with the guys at Art of Protest York. They have done really well with my Defence Of The Inanimate series over the past 12 months so, when deciding where to launch Pop Goes The Easel, I knew they would do a great job."

H's latest works, such as the F#@k It Bucket and Everything Happens For A Raisin, probe our relationship with marketing and consumption in the 21st century while also demonstrating where fine art sits in this visual transaction. Alongside this collection, he also has created paintings that examine mental health within a consumer society.

Craig Humble, of Art Of Protest, says: "For a long time, these subjects have appeared disparate projects speaking to different audiences and collectors in a diverse way: as seen in his Valium bottle piece, Sunshine On A Cloudy Day, or the series of skulls and skeletal subjects, stripping away the trappings of a consumer society in search of a deeper reality.

"But as with many great creatively driven people, a Eureka moment comes through his working practice. Pop Goes The Easel, as a collection, shows how H has always been painting about the art world itself, how it reflects our inner selves and the society from which we have emerged.

"H’s two favourite artists are Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst, two names guaranteed to divide a room. Pop Goes The Easel crashes these behemoths' most famous works into each other to create an original H which engages art, mental health and consumption in one eyeful."

Warhol’s final self-portrait project for The Tate in 1986 and Hirst’s For The Love Of God are known around the world, making them perfect icons for H’s new interpretative assemblage. "From humans to dogs, sculpture to screen print and some new signed limited editions from Defence Of The Inanimate paintings, they all go towards making the Pop Goes The Easel exhibition an ideal collection for fans and new collectors alike," says Humble.

"H’s work is often spoken of as art about art, which is certainly the case with the Pop Goes The Easel Collection, where H blends two of his favourite artists, Hirst and Warhol's most famous pieces together in a series called For The Love Of Pop. In this collection, H aspires to continue and develop Sixties' Pop art’s observations of consumer culture via Hirst’s witty confrontation of consumption in the Nineties and Noughties."

H also saw his York exhibition launch as "an opportunity to refresh my mural painting skill" with the gallery’s entertainment partner, Brew York, in Walmgate. "I have painted a large unique piece there to be unveiled later in the year," he says. Watch this space.

Gallery opening hours are Monday and Wednesday, 11am to 6pm; Thursday and Friday, 11am to 7pm; Saturday, 11am to 6pm; Sunday, 11am to 5pm; closed on Tuesdays.

Charles Hutchinson