For over 50 years, Rocky Dobey has been creating and installing prints, posters, public sculptures and hidden-in-plain-sight metal plaques across Toronto. Working anonymously for the first two decades, his interventions drew attention to social and civic issues like justice reform, globalization, neighborhood gentrification, indigenous sovereignty, drug rehabilitation and homelessness.
An ironworker by trade, an outsider artist by choice, his prints are medieval in their making. Engraved, etched, carved into metal, inked and pressed into paper – the scratching and inscribing are clearly urgent and obsessive. And beautiful. Their striking imagery of demonic towers toppling in flame, horrific machines and cryptic symbols of oppression work like strong medicine, and are part of a creative resistance in Canada and abroad.
Rocky Dobey – On his life & experiences as an activist & street artist (30min Camas 2025)
Rocky Dobey’s plaques, sculptures and memorials are everywhere in Toronto. (CBC 2023)
Rocky Dobey – How street artist Rocky Dobey sculpts Toronto’s memory (8min CBC 2023)
Rocky Dobey – Street Art: Alternative Toronto Map
Rocky Dobey – Instagram Gallery
Dynamic Collectivity – A Punchclock Story – Signal04 (2014)
Rocky Dobey – Exhibition (2008)
Rocky Dobey 