The Street Museum of Art has launched its second venture in “guerilla curating” in London’s artsy district of Shoreditch. Like their first exhibition, it’s basically a self-guided street art tour with museum-like wall labels. The exhibition’s title, “Beyond Banksy: Not another gift shop“, is likely a tongue and cheek reference to the commercial attention that street art has received in London these past few years, with Banksy at the forefront of the movement. In all fairness, Banksy has become enough of a household name that he and Exit Through the Gift Shop are frequently my reference points when speaking about street art to people outside this niche community. For that, I am thankful that I get to SMoA advises that the name is not meant to undermine the work of the beloved stencil artist, rather it is to encourage those who have Banksy as their token understanding of street art to the diversity of the other talented artists on the streets. This exhibition highlights works by artists such as C215, Christiaan Nagel, Eine, Mobstr, Pablo Delgado, Phlegm, Roa, Run, Skewville, Space Invader, Stik and Swoon.

The map of the exhibited works are available here and the hours are… well, unlimited.

Photo by Street Museum of Art

Zosen (with Chanoir in the background)

The ARD*POP-UP Festival took place in Oslo this November and was the first iteration of this festival, although the organizers hope to move it from city to city in the coming years. This year, the festival brought Pez, Kenor, Phlegm, and others to the streets of Oslo for some really fun murals, although it does look like they were concentrated in a pretty small area. Here are a few of my favorites:

Chanoir

Phlegm

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Mural by Eduardo Kobra. Photo by Lord Jim.

Let’s do this:

• A Kidult interview on Hypebeast. Has he entered the belly of the beast in order to subvert it from within or has he always been at home there?
• New Yorkers will be getting their first auction dedicated to work by street artists and graffiti writers later this year.
• Neckface has two prints which went on sale last night online and at New Image Art. The show at New Image Art is still running.
• Nychos is in London.
• Ben Valentine asks “What Does Meaningful Engagement with Public Art Look Like?”
• NoseGo, Joe Iurato, LNY and others are in a show at Jinxed in Philadelphia opening Saturday night.
• Phibs and Anthony Lister collaborated on a wall in Sydney.
• Did you know that there’s a giant, colorful and fantastic mural at CERN?
• Sven Davis, the UK director of Arrested Motion, has curated a massive show opening in Portland this September.
• Here’s a video of Phlegm painting during his recent visit to NYC.
• Eine was recently painting in Vienna.

Photo by Lord Jim

It’s been quite a while since I posted much of Phlegm‘s work. Clearly, that’s a mistake on my part. So here’s a portion of what he’s been up to this year in his studio and on the street…

Photos by Phlegm

LNY in Baltimore

Caroline and I were in Baltimore this week checking out Open Walls Baltimore. If you have the chance, definitely make a trip over there. Full posts about Baltimore coming soon. Point is, between Baltimore and moving this weekend, I’ve been lax this week. Things should return to normal on Wednesday or Thursday, but in the mean time, here’s what I’ve been meaning to post about:

• An update on the Kidult/Marc Jacobs situation: Marc Jacobs have turned a photo of the vandalism (or maybe commissioned tag) into a t-shirt that they are selling for $689, and at least one has sold already.
• Barry McGee’s show at Prism (his second, if you include his 2-man show with Phil Frost) has opened and is of course a must-see.
• Okay yes, it’s another Shepard Fairey show with images we’ve seen before, but there are a few gems in there. Specifically, the painted printing plates.
• A Basquiat painting went for over $16 million at a Phillips de Pury auction.
• This piece by Phlegm is one of my favorites from him in a while.
• Tes One and Bask collaborated on this dinosaur-themed mural in Florida.
• This group show at Opera Gallery’s NYC location looks like a top-tier show for being a group show. Anthony Lister, Interesni Kazki, Roa, Mark Jenkins, Bast, Swoon, Faile, so many more…
• Nychos and his crew paint some crazy stuff.
• Afeura, a mural festival in Peru, is using Kickstarter to raise funds for the project. So far, Escif, Bastardilla, Desertor and Jade have signed on to painting at the festival.
• In a move of crass commercialism reminding us that perhaps street art is dead, some artist made a really beautiful mural for the sole purpose of releasing a print of the same image.
• Sonni (the guy who did that crazy boom box in Miami) has a show opening this month in New York.
• Faile released some new prints on their website this week (sold out already of course), and intend to do so much more often from now on.
• The DMV and 1984 crews pulled the crazy stunt of putting on a one-day illegal show in Paris on the day of the French elections.
• Depoe is part of a two-man show opening on Saturday evening in New York. He has preview photos here.

Photo by RJ Rushmore

Jade in Ecuador

It’s still technically the weekend for a few hours, so writing this is the perfect procrastination tool before I get down to doing homework. Hopefully you can take advantage of these links in a similar fashion:

• Phlegm has a new print available. Quite a beauty.
• A Love Letter For You, a film related to Steve Powers‘ project of the same name but also not the standard documentary you might expect, will be released soon. Here’s the trailer.
• It’s definitely NSFW but also definitely worth checking out: F*CK ART at the Museum of Sex.
• I’m guessing Vandalog will cover this in more detail with a full post and not just this tiny mention, but here are a boatload of shots from Os Gemeos’ show in LA.
• Unurth happened to post cool optical illusion pieces this week by e1000ink and Rub Kandy.
• Few things I’d rather see on a truck than a horse by Reminisce.
• High Rise Murals is sort of a new project from Monorex. It organizes all of their murals (read: massive painted outdoor advertisements) under one banner. They launched High Rise Murals in two ways: By having INSA paint a mural and painting a massive Coca-Cola advertisement over some great graffiti. After someone very publicly shamed them, High Rise Murals selectively buffed the advertisement to make it look intentional and not about the massive tag (HW stands for the location of the advertisement, Hackney Wick). Over Twitter, Monorex said that they “are now in phase 2, re commissioning wall with artists.” This phase is also known as phase oh crap, we really screwed the pooch on this one and it’s time to backpedal. Monorex claim that phase two was always the plan, but I don’t see any reason to believe that. Artists need to get paid and painting advertisements can be a lucrative way to do that, but I think we can all agree that painting over graffiti and street art to replace it with advertising is not cool. Let’s hope High Rise Murals have learned from this experience and stop going over murals and art with advertisements.

Photo by Jade

El Decertor

Thanks to spending the weekend in NYC for Skewville’s show at Factory Fresh (on now and great), I am late with this week’s link-o-rama. Nonetheless, here it is:

• When David Choe painted Facebook’s offices back in 2005, he was given two options: He could either take a couple thousand dollars as payment, or stock in the company. He chose the stock. Assuming that Choe has held onto that stock, the New York Times estimates that Choe may be worth $200 millions pretty soon. So of course, Choe ended up on the front page of the NYTimes and is being written about all over the web, but he is also a talented artist. Here’s some of what he painted in Facebook’s offices (he just painted their new offices as well) and here’s what Choe and a few friends got up to in Denver recently.
• Eloquent Vandals, a film about the Nuart festival, is now streaming online.
• Ron English has two great new sculptures that are well-worth checking out: Fat Tony (the tiger) which will be for sale as a toy and Hulk Obama, which looks like a customization by Ron that may or may not ever be for sale.
• Another great wall by Phlegm in Sheffield.
• Dabs and Myla have a touching Christmas tradition (now let’s get a fun discussion going in the comments about the ethics/humility of making a video about that tradition).
• This collaboration between Reka, Ghostpatrol and TwoOne turned out really nicely.

Photo by El Decertor

Bananananas by Dal

Well, the internet went a bit crazy this week, but it looks like we’re winning. Thank you to anyone who noticed that Vandalog was offline on Wednesday in protest of SOPA and PIPA and took the time to contact their representatives to voice objections to the bills. But enough about politics. This is an art blog.

• This Mark Jenkins exhibition in Berlin looks awesome. The show has new sculptures, but it is also the launch of his monograph with Gestalten.
• In a subway station a bit like the site of The Underbelly Project, a number of Russian street artists painted this installation.
• Here’s a beautiful new piece from Phlegm.
• Above has a bunch of new photos on his website.
• The Toasters’ film launches in London on Tuesday.
• Barry McGee will have a show this year at UC Berkeley’s art museum. The show is made possible by a $100,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation.
• Leon Reid IV‘s latest project is pretty different from what we’ve come to expect from Reid. It’s a series of posters depicting recent world events. Hrag Vartanian spoke with Reid about the series.
• Looking for something great to do on Saturday night in LA? Try this – New Image Art and The Hole have teamed up for a party with some DJs and musicians plus installations by Retna, Anthony Lister and Drugs Crew.

Photo by Dal

David Choe and DVS-1

This year, Vandalog hasn’t been covering the Nuart festival in Norway nearly as closely as we should. Some great work has gone up by a bunch of artists over the last few weeks. Between Nuart’s flickr page and the coverage at Arrested Motion though, the festival has been covered extensively elsewhere. Check out Arrested Motion for Nuart contributions by Lucy McLauchlan, Dan Witz, Phlegm, Herakut, Vhils (including what may be my new favorite piece by him), Escif, David Choe and DVS-1 and Nuart’s flickr set for even more images.

Photo by CF Salicath

Photo by Hooked

One of my favorite British street artists now, Phlegm, has been around London recently putting up some great pieces. His latest is on the Zetfield House in Shoreditch courtesy of Signal Gallery. More pictures can be seen by Mark over at Hooked who was there to watch the artist paint.

Below are two new pieces Phlegm did on The Foundry in Old Street a few weeks ago. I walked past on one of my street art tours and was more than excited to see these here. I also have a feeling no one is going to mess with them for awhile. They look great next to ROA‘s squirrel, older Invader and Ben Eine x Part2ism collaboration. After so much work buffed on that building, it is nice to see it turning into a go to spot for street artists once again and aren’t just painting in the parking lot behind it.

Photo by Street Art London

Photo by Street Art London

Photos by Hooked and Street Art London