Pinched this post from Invurt, an absolute MUST see documentary on Melbourne’s graffiti and street art culture. From our awesome train graffiti to street art and gallery art; this documentary gives a great insight into the city I love and the amazing graffiti and street art that I’ve loved since I 1st got on a train as a kid. The movie features friends, favourite artists and familiar places so that makes it even more special.

From Invurt: “Created by Alex MacBeth and Miriam Hison, the documentary ‘Charts the development of the Melbourne street art scene,’ Children of the Iron Snake looks at the last thirty years and tracks the journey of graffiti from railway junctions at night to festivals, abandoned factories, rooftops, drains and galleries. Comprising interviews with over 15 artists, as well as criminologists, anti-graffiti activists, and politicians, the film offers a in-depth look at one of the biggest art movements of our time.”

No point in me trying to write much about this film from Fra.Biancoshock and Milkshake Studio. Just watch.

OBEY THE GIANT, the long-awaited short film by Julian Marshall, is now streaming for free online. The film tells the story of Shepard Fairey‘s first billboard takeover, which he did for an assignment while he was at the Rhode Island School of Design. This is not a documentary with grainy footage from 20 years ago. It is a biopic staring Josh Wills as the college-aged Shepard Fairey. Such a cool project. A must-watch for fans (and also probably haters) of Shepard Fairey. I’m glad to be able to share OBEY THE GIANT with you here:

OBEY THE GIANT – The Story of Shepard Fairey from Julian Marshall on Vimeo.

Photo courtesy of OBEY THE GIANT

Anthony Lister visited London last fall and painted quite a few pieces around Shoreditch. The piece pictured above is in a Shoreditch carpark where art is organized by End of the Line, who have just released a nice short film of Lister at work. Check it out:

Photo by Alex Ellison

The fantastic Horfée’s recent solo show in London, Imaginarium, looks like a real hit. Hooked has plenty of photos of the show, and turned me on to a great video of Horfée made by Hypebeast in which he discusses the Imaginarium. Check it out:

Photo by Hooked

Hendrik ‘ecb’ Beikirch recently opened a show in Cologne, Germany and painted a large mural to accompany the show. Beikirch’s show, Transsib – Greyhound. Paintings from train and bus rides, is on now through May 19th at Ruttkowski:68 in Cologne, but I want to focus on his beautiful new mural.

To learn more about Beikirch and his process for this body of work, check out this video:

Hendrik ‘ecb’ Beikirch, “Greyhound – Transsib”‘, exhibition video (Ruttkowski;68, Cologne/Germany) from Ruttkowski;68 on Vimeo.

Photos by Nils Müller

For the past few years stencil artist Vexta has been enjoying what she likes to call her “endless summers.” Being an Aussie, the artist tries to avoid cold weather in any way possible; this year that meant escaping to Kochi, India for the country’s first biennial. Vexta sat down to talk with Vandalog about her experiences painting in a small town in India, being a woman artist, and the public’s reaction to her visually intense imagery.

R: What was it like to paint during India’s first biennale?

V: It was my first time in India so it was a lot of things – fun, challenging, confronting at times, really hot & dirty (I would seriously shower 3 or 4 times a day sometimes), late nights and early mornings, super rewarding, hard work and there were some great parties too. The whole of Fort Kochi was full of incredible artists from India and around the world there to paint, perform and create mostly site-specific artworks. It was pretty great.

R: Especially given that India is not traditionally thought of as a mural hot-spot?

V: Yeah I was surprised to see any other murals at all – I thought I might be the only artist painting on the streets but when I got there, there was already some graphic sprawling works going up and by the time I left other artists had started to get up and travel to Kochi just to get involved. The street art definitely changes the city, in a good way.

R: What was the community’s response to the walls?

V: Generally people were inquisitive, and sometimes a bit confused, I mean it’s a small city in India, some people had never seen or heard of street art before.

I had some really great responses from people on the street – one great response I had was this beautiful and serious 9 year old boy who spent hours watching me paint and asking me super thoughtful questions about painting, street art and the art world and his own artworks. Then he brought his whole family to meet me and see my work and they all came to my exhibition opening. He was easily the youngest person there. It’s moments like that which make me love making public work, there is no way he would have ever stepped into the gallery if we hadn’t met on the street. Other times some men would be confused as to why I was a women, was working on the street painting. A couple of them they told me I should be at home looking after the kitchen or something, that was definitely confronting.

R: Can you talk about the specific site you were given to paint.

V: So when I got there, the gallery space which was showing my painting had arranged a couple of walls for me in Kochi, I then found more myself. It’s always part of the adventure, right? Driving around scouting spots, talking to people, convincing people who’ve never even heard of street art or myself to let me paint a giant painting on their wall!

Mostly I looked for walls that were already beautiful in some sense, peeling paint, old and falling apart, moss and plants growing on them. Kochi has a lot of very old Portuguese architecture which is beautiful with a strong sense of history. I wanted the pieces to form a kind of path through the centre of the old town so you could go from piece to piece and thematically they’d link together, like a story.

R: How does your work interact with the location?

V: My street work is really site specific. I had a bunch of sketches I’d prepared for India but then changed things up when I got there. I felt like it was really important to explore creating work that not only reflected my experience of being a woman but also to create something for the women of Kochi. Obviously there’s a connection between the women and the birds and ideas about freedom.

I also painted a lot of skeleton crows in the pieces. The local Kerala crow is everywhere. For instance the massive painting I made of a girl with neon bird wings who is perched on the wire with bird feet, that wall attracts so many crows at dusk, so when the real birds take off and land. It’s like they are coming out of the work on the wall & wire.

All photos courtesy of Vexta

KATSU at Eyebeam for F.A.T. Gold

KATSU, one of my favorite writers of all time, has had quite a week. I was just going to throw these things in the weekend link-o-rama because other blogs have covered the events so well, but then stories about KATSU just kept piling up. So, here they are:

• Need a bit of a refresher on the awesomeness of KATSU? Brooklyn Street Art has you covered.
• KATSU has a series of 3 prints available this week at 1xRun. They have almost sold out already. Personally, I picked up the black on black version.
• KATSU is part of F.A.T. Lab, and they have a show (F.A.T. Gold) on right now at Eyebeam in NYC. This evening from 5-7pm, KATSU and Mike Baca aka 2ESAE will be in conversation live online. That event should be streaming here and will presumably be available to watch at a later date as well.
• It seems that KATSU’s most noticeable contribution so far to F.A.T. Gold has been to paint the outside of Eyebeam with a fire extinguisher, as pictured above. As it turns out, those things are hard to control when it’s windy. Some of the paint got onto the gallery next door, Paula Cooper Gallery. Paula Cooper is not happy about that. For the rest of us, there’s a hilarious video to watch of a Paula Cooper Gallery employee trying to figure out what’s going on with all the gold paint flying everywhere.
• KATSU is also using launching a new postering campaign on the street this week called Status Update. The posters feature Facebook’s Marc Zuckerberg, but with a black eye and chipped tooth. KATSU emailed with Gizmodo about the project.

Photo by Dani Mozeson

Last year while Above was in Cape Town, South Africa, he completed a project that he has titled Ubuntu, after the South African philosophy that says that to be human is to be part of a community. With this project, Above reminds us that even relatively simple interventions in public space can be extremely powerful if done right. Okay, this one did require that Above get up on a lift for the installation, but the piece was made by local children out of old car tires. The tires went from trash to community artwork. Now, every child who helped Above has a stake in that sculpture, which serves as a physical reminder of the stake they each have in their community. Plus, it got a lot of kids painting, which is always good.

Here’s a video of the project:

You may notice that the video does not include a shot of the finished piece, but it kind of doesn’t matter what the piece looks like. What matters is that it was built by a community.

Photo courtesy of Above

Graffiti legends Revok and Ces are the stars in Diego Bergia‘s latest animated short for his ongoing arcade game project featuring his character Lepos. Okay, I know this is just a quick little animation and all of Bergia’s other arcade game pieces are just animations too, but I wish this could be developed into a fully functioning game. Marina Galperina over at AnimalNY agrees with me, and so she asked Bergia about that possibility. His response: “Fuck yeah. As long as I can pay the rent, I’m doing it.”