Original Cultures at StolenSpace

As I mentioned last week, Dem, Ericailcane and Will Barras have a show coming up next week at StolenSpace Gallery in London as part of the Original Cultures art and music festival. Since then, a bit more information as started to emerge…

‘Original Cultures – The Show’
Ericailcane, DEM & Will Barras

12.02.10 – 07.03.10

In collaboration with Original Cultures, a new international non-profit cultural and arts initiative, StolenSpace presents an exclusive exhibition of new works from famed European artists Ericailcane (Italy), DEM (Italy) and Will Barras (UK).

This exhibition will form part of the Original Cultures London 2010 event and run from February 12th until March 7th. This will be the trio’s second collaborative project following their work during Original Cultures’ first event in Bologna, Italy, in June 2009 which saw them create an exclusive animation and shadow-based installation. As visiting guests, Ericailcane and DEM will take the lead bringing to StolenSpace a collection of brand new paintings and other media. Will Barras meanwhile will be exhibiting a new animation and associated designs he is producing exclusively for the show. Together these three artists have received worldwide acclaim in recent years, exhibiting from Los Angeles to Sweden via Hong Kong and Eastern Europe.

Exclusive to the exhibition will be the release of a limited edition collaborative screen print by the three artists and printed by StolenSpace, as well as a series of 6 picture discs produced by Original Cultures and featuring art from Will Barras, Ericailcane and DEM and music from Om Unit (UK), Tatsuki (JP) and Tayone (IT), the three musicians involved in the OriginalCultures project. These picture discs, six 10”s, will be framed and sold with a separate 7” featuring two exclusive tracks from each musician. These discs,combining visual arts and music in a rather unique package, are exclusive to the exhibition.

An opening party will be held on February 11th with Will Barras in attendance. Ericailcane, DEM and Will Barras will be present at the gallery on March 4th for a closing party which will feature live painting from the trio in and around the gallery.

Original Cultures London 2010 will take place from February 27th until March 5th, 2010. This is a week-long event that brings together 7 artists from the UK, Italy and Japan and the fields of music and visual arts for a series of activities (workshops, exhibition) in venues across East London. The artists are Ericailcane (IT), DEM (IT), Will Barras (UK) and Hiraki Sawa (JP) for the visual arts and Om Unit (UK), Tatsuki (JP) and Tayone (IT) for music. During this time new and original collaborative works will be created, culminating on Friday March 5th in a one-of-a-kind audio and visual showcase featuring all the art created during the week and performed live. This is Original Cultures’ second such event, following the project’s debut in June 2009 in Bologna, Italy. The London event has support from Hackney Council.

A non-profit project based in the UK, Italy and Japan, Original Cultures connects cultures through modern performing arts, focusing on the fields of music and visual arts. More information, video, audio and a full schedule is available at www.originalcultures.org.

I for one am really looking forward to this show and the live painting event in March.

Fame Festival wrap-up

An overdue post. Fame Festival opened almost 2 weeks ago now and I haven’t properly covered it. There were a few of us who traveled to see the festival (some from as far away as LA), and if you couldn’t make it for the opening, I have to recommend it for a weekend getaway or something. Everybody had a great time. There was good food, good company and good art.

The gallery component of the festival was nice, but the highlight of Fame isn’t the temporary gallery exhibition but all of the street work. Artists have painted all over the small town of Grottaglie, Italy. Here are some of my pictures:

Blu
Blu
Dem
Dem
David Ellis
David Ellis
Vhils
Vhils

While it is great to wander around the town and see so much street art almost wherever you look, the highlight of Fame Festival is the monastery. There is an abandoned monastery where I am told the local teenagers usually go to bunk off school, and it has been transformed by artwork. It also happens to be where the Blu/David Ellis film Combo was filmed.

To enter this monastery, you have to go down a road out of town, walk past what I think was a small vineyard, find the wall that surrounds the monastery and follow it until you see some red drips of paint. Then you climb over the wall by standing on a shaky pile of rocks. The other side of the wall looks like a park that has been left to grow for a few decades. There are a few paths where you can see that plenty of people have walked, and you have to find the correct one to follow. Eventually, you realize that you’re on the roof on the monastery and you have to find your way inside. Once you’re finally inside though, it is immediately worth the trouble of finding your way there. I spent maybe 1.5 hours there and still didn’t see all of the artwork. Here are a few of the pieces I did find though:

Conor Harrington
Conor Harrington
Sam3
Sam3
Limow
Limow
The remains of Combo by David Ellis and Blu
The remains of Combo by David Ellis and Blu
Judith Supine
Judith Supine
Word To Mother
Word To Mother

More photos from Fame in my flickr set