Meggs work can be found predominantly on the streets of Melbourne, but also as far as London, Tokyo, Barcelona and Paris.
With a background in graffiti, Meggs has evolved his skills in painting, illustration and screen printing to explore his own unique style of pop-art.
His paintings depict the subversion of heroic ideals, childhood heroes and alter egos whom express their struggle with self-conscience exploring themes of heroism, machismo, power and vulnerability.
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Obviously comics have been a strong influence on your art. 
Your work exudes the dynamic energy of a Jack Kirby, only in a more ragged and ruthless way. It’s like you’re painting with acid, scraping away the gloss and sparkle from his sixties retro-futurist fantasies. Were you a big Kirby fan growing up or are his characters merely reference points for your art? Who are some of the other comic artists that are present in your work?
I like and admire the work of JackKirby but I don’t consider myself a big Kirby ‘fan’. The comic characters I use are more reference points for some of my work and although I favour the classic Kirby-style of comic art I’m more of a general fan then hard-core enthusiast.
My choice of comic reference is based on the character itself, i.e. Phantom or Spiderman, or the strength of a particular frame/character or part thereof.
For me it’s about empowering a somewhat generic comic frame by taking it out of their original context or mixing pieces of recognized characters with my own illustrations and compositions to create something more abstract and unique.
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You’ve described your work as an examination of the Jekyll and Hyde nature of the human condition. Tell us a bit about how you surmise this inner duality. Are you an optimist or a cynic when it comes to placing faith in people’s basic decency and the honesty of their intentions?
The examination of a Jekyll & Hyde condition is based on questioning what defines good and bad in a person.
To surmise the idea of inner duality I guess I would say that I believe strongly in the power of context and how context can change the definition of what is socially and morally the right or wrong way to act, both within yourself and towards others.
So I try not to believe in absolutes and be judgemental towards others depending on circumstances… We all make mistakes.
Ultimately though I’m an optimistic person and I do place faith in peoples decency and honesty. Innocent until proven guilty. I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt until it’s confirmed someone had destructive intentions and then I feel it’s best to avoid that negative influence on your life.
I believe in karma, what goes around, comes around.
Through your art do you consciously attempt to engage with popular issues and public discourse or is it more a product of your own private, personal meditations?
It’s a bit of both for me. Ultimately most of what I do relates to me personally, so I feel I can make relevant comment on the subject.
This includes personal experiences, emotions, frustrations but often this also relates to a broader social issue or trends. Inevitably I’m outwardly influenced by pop-culture and social changes/events and sometimes it feels like something I’ve been thinking about for a while or a comic/cartoon I’ve been obsessing over will start to get media attention or something.
As a creative person I think you start to notice that as your generation ages together, all these common ideas and influences will cross over different outlets and genres at the same time.
Where do you think pop art is today? Is it still vibrant and edgy or has it become too comfortably complacent, content simply to regurgitate the past for the sake of fuzzy feel-good nostalgia? Has become too seduced by commercialism, losing its artistic impulses in the process?
That’s a hard question.
I do see a fair amount of contemporary ‘pop-art’ out there that just seems to regurgitate nostalgic imagery purely for style’s sake, without bringing anything new to the imagery either in concept, style or technique.
I do think there is also a lot of good contemporary ‘pop-art’ too, but I guess the term ‘pop-art’ is probably less definitive in these works.
Ultimately I believe it’s up to the artist to develop new directions and techniques with ‘pop-imagery’ and explore personal emotion and interesting concepts in their work so it’s not just a case of style over substance.
What was the best He-Man figure ever made?
Ha, that’s a hard question too, but I think I’ll have to go with Trap Jaw. He didn’t quite have the fancy effects of a Ram Man or Power Punch He-man but he just looked bad ass and I liked the interchangeable weapon arm.
