Desire Obtain Cherish recently started a new campaign of anti-billboard pieces using the slogan “Is This Illegal?” which points out that LA is overrun with unlicensed advertising and that street artists who go over billboards can face felony charges even though the billboards themselves are often illegal to begin with. So far, the group has hit up at least one full-sized billboard and some street-level advertising.

When watching this video of their billboard takeover, please ignore the general cheesiness of the video, as the text at the end is actually quite informative:

Benjamin Alejandro has also used the “Is This Illegal?” slogan in a takeover featuring his own work:

Once the issue of the mural moratorium in LA is more or less fixed (should be soon), maybe “Is This Illegal?” will become the new slogan of LA’s outdoor art community and the disruption of illegal advertising will become their new political cause. One can dream…

Photo by Birdman Photos

Via PublicAdCampaign and Melrose&Fairfax

Anthony Lister had an extremely well received show earlier this year at New Image Art in LA. Here’s a little look at how it came together along with an interview with Lister. I always love to hear what Lister has to say, because he seems like a smart guy who knows a bit more about art in general, his own work and just about anything else than your average artist.

Photo by Birdman

Aryz for the G40 Art Summit

By this weekend, the G40 Art Summit will have brought 19 new murals to Richmond, Virginia. This year’s version of Art Whino‘s annual event includes 19 new walls by muralists from around the world and an indoor group exhibition with over 500 artists across 6 locations. You can go here for more about the indoor show, which opens this evening. Once all the murals are done, you can expect a massive post here on Vandalog with photos of a lot of them. Artists painting murals include Aryz, Gaia, Jaz and Roa. For now, here are two videos of walls in-progress:

Photo by Shane Pomajambo

Trek Matthews

Keeping with their tradition of bringing attention to under-appreciated artists, the latest edition of Living Walls Concepts (the mini festivals organized by the Living Walls organization) has just the duo La Pandilla to Atlanta where they were matched up with local artist Trek Matthews. Although I’d heard of Trek Matthews and La Pandilla, I definitely haven’t followed them closely. Now though, particularly with La Pandilla, I’m going to have to pay more attention. Here’s what Living Walls’ Joshua Rackliffe had to say about these artists:

La Pandilla (Puerto Rico) and Trek Matthews (Atlanta, GA) were the latest participants of Living Walls Concepts. Over the course of a week, the artists produced a mural in the historic Cabbagetown neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. The duo behind La Pandilla created a piece true to their signature imagery of contoured, meticulous animal hybrids; their mural was installed with only brushes and Chinese ink, leaving behind a large format piece of art that activated the neighborhood and instigated ideas of enhancing the public space adjacent to the work. Several hundred feet away, emerging artist Trek Matthews painted the wall at Wylie & Carroll Street in the heart of Cabbagetown. His work combines imagery of tribal, geometric, and sacred iconography. The end result: a well-decorated and thoughtful design that blends itself into the urban landscape.

La Pandilla. Click image to view large

Photos by Bonham Johnson

HowNosm have just finished an installation, called “Reflections,” at the Andrew Freedman House. What is that building? Until the mid-1980′s, it was a poorhouse for the formally rich. Basically, the functioned as a place where those who used to be rich and had fallen on hard times could live with the comforts that they had grown accustomed to (like servants). Definitely strange, but that idea was put into practice for decades at this mansion in the Bronx. Now it is about to be used for a show of 20-some artists organized by No Longer Empty and curated by Keith Schweitzer. This Side of Paradise looks to be a fascinating show with a great space and great artists including Daze, Crash, Cheryl Pope and others. The show opens next week.

After the jump, check out more photos of HowNosm’s installation as well as a video of “Reflections” coming together. If anyone out there was worried that HowNosm might be one-trick ponies with their quite distinctive style, I think this should convince them otherwise… Read the rest of this article »

Dancing Trash Bag is one of Mathieu Tremblin‘s latest pieces. If you like it, also be sure to check out Strictly Cone Dancing by Filthy Luker and David Ellis’ trash sculpture.

Via Rebel:Art

What an authenticated Banksy looks like, but not what it costs

Okay, so you’ve seen Exit Through the Gift Shop, right? You probably laughed at those IDIOTS paying boatloads for Mr. Brainwash pieces, the ridiculousness of MBW’s operation, and the complete sheep that art-lovers can be. Because YOU ARE SMART. You don’t like MBW. And you’d never fall for something like that. Exit was safe, and that made it entertaining.

But the real world is not safe, and as it turns out, you probably aren’t safe either. How to Sell a Banksy is the unofficial Banksy movie. The film tells the relatively honest (as far as I can tell) story of Christopher Thompson’s efforts to try to sell one of Banksy’s street pieces that he ripped down off a wall in London back in 2007. The piece at the center of the film are some very poorly salvaged scraps of paper that were once a poster of Banksy’s smiling cop in Shoreditch. Thompson starts out with a pretty limited knowledge of both Banksy and the art world, but since he hope to sell his scraps of paper for tens of thousands of pounds, he sets out to learn. Read the rest of this article »

Jade and Seth

So I’ve been working a lot lately on Re:Humanities, a symposium of undergraduate work in the digital humanities. It’s taking place next week at Swarthmore College, just outside of Philadelphia. I hope you’ll come check it out if you’re nearby. I’ll be speaking about how the internet has changed street art, and there are a bunch of other great topics up for discussion for anyone interested in the digital humanities. Okay, that’s my personal announcement for the week, now onto the news:

• Conor Harrington, Dscreet and Ronzo collaborated on this wall over in Dalston.
• Sweet Toof and Paul Insect have also been painting some fantastic walls in London.
• Okay so this video of a piece by Verbo isn’t the best quality, but the piece is pretty awesome and very different from a lot of what is out there. I wish I could have seen the animation in the flesh and I hope he continues to work with this combination of mural and digital projection.
• 2 Many Printers is a cool little clothing brand with t-shirts by Husk Mit Navn, Ian Stevenson and others.
• This mural is probably my absolute favorite piece of public art that I’ve seen related to the Egyptian Revolution.
• Glad to see I’m not the only one who thinks Anthony Lister’s “Planet of the Apes” mural was problematic and a disservice to the art community.
• C215 has a show in Paris of stained glass windows based on his imagery.
• Shepard Fairey is involved in a possible new film version of 1984. Could be cool, although it’s a bit ironic since Fairey was involved in trying to rewrite history himself when he submitted doctored evidence in a court case.
• Niels Shoe Muelman has a show opening this week at 941 Geary in SF.

Photo by Jade

A screenshot from "Home"

Ian Strange aka Kid Zoom‘s installation, Home, at last year’s Outpost Festival in Sydney was, from what I heard, the highlight of the festival. We covered Home last year, but now the video aspect of that installation is available online. It boils down to 5 minutes of explosions and destruction of property, which is always fun to watch. Strange explains the installation as “a work reflecting on my origins in the Australian suburbs I felt that I needed to escape when I was younger,” so I’m thinking of the video as a high-definition expression of teen angst and the dream of running completely wild in the boring suburbs. Anyone have other thoughts? Here’s the video:

‘HOME’ an exhibition by Ian ‘Kid Zoom’ Strange from KID ZOOM [Ian Strange] on Vimeo.

You’ve almost definitely seen a photo at some point over the last few weeks of Tilt‘s Panic Room installation at The Hotel Au Vieux Panier in Marseille, France. Well now Tilt has released a video of how the project was done. It’s pretty much what you’d expect: Tilt and friends going a bit wild over a couple days in the hotel room. But just because it’s what you might expect doesn’t mean it can’t also be fun to watch. I am absolutely not a fan of Tilt. Almost everything I’ve seen from him has been boring and old cliches from street art and graffiti: Hot naked girls, basic bubble letters, and simple pop art iconography. But Panic Room is hard not to love. Here’s the making of video:

TILT – PANIC ROOM from BIG ADDICT on Vimeo.