Speaking of Advertisement and Street Art, Ad from Skewville apparently always has the last word. Photo credit to the wonderful Rebecca Fuller
– Gaia
Ericailcane at FAME
Artival
If you’re in London next Saturday, head on down to the Queen of Hoxton for Artival, an art festival to support SHP, a homelessness charity.
Here’s what the Artival people are saying:
Artival is a one-day arts festival to promote social inclusion and prevent homelessness in London.
The event is hosted by homelessness charity SHP to celebrate use of the arts’ to develop confidence and enable expression. It is the climax of an urban arts project involving Matt Small, Carrie Reichardt and other leading urban artists who have been using their skills to include clients who are usually excluded from opportunities to create and be heard.
Artival brings together leading musicians, painters, mosaicists, performance poets, comics, dancers and a host of other artists, all of whom recognise that art is a vital tool for empowering and including marginalised people in our communities.
The festival will be buzzing from 12-6pm, so arrive early to make sure you get in. There are four floors of art and performance to explore, as well as a BBQ and the extensive Queen of Hoxton bars.
- Basement: Urban art cave
- Floor 1: London’s leading musicans and comedy stars
- Floor 2: Launch of a youth led social enterprise supported with very special surprise DJ guests.
- Roof top terrace: live painting and mosaic sessions, Jerk chicken BBQ, chill out
The Line Up:
Musicians: Speech Debelle, Rubicks, Betty Steeles, Floetic Lara
Artists: Matt Small, Carrie Reichardt, Mark Wydler
DJs: Gael la Gosse, DJ Slasher
Animation and film: Unballanced, Jemal mahamed
Comedians: Barnaby Thompson, Anthony Miller, Daniel James, Kenny Campbell, Danny Hurst, Jonny Melamet, Boyce Bailey, Max Turner, Jenny Lockyer, Gwilum Argos, Brad Zimmerman, Pete Hall, Aaron Shakespeare
Story Teller: Craig Jenkins
About SHP
SHP was set up 30 years ago to support vulnerable homeless people in London. Today we work with more than 2,000 people each year, providing a wide range of accommodation and support services to help those facing homelessness and chronic social exclusion.
Our clients’ needs are diverse and our work reflects that.
Working across 13 London boroughs, we provide support services to some of the capital’s most vulnerable people including substance misusers, offenders, those with mental ill health, care leavers and other young people at risk.
For more about SHP visit http://www.shp.org.uk
Street art and advertising
There is often a very fine line between street art and public advertisements. They are both on the street, and often times they are both illegal. When that line gets very blurred though is when street artists start putting up advertisements as artwork or vice versa.
There are numerous examples of artists who put up wheatpastes or flyposted advertisements when they have a show about to open, but they also aren’t what I want to address today. I want to focus on a few more recent and blatant examples of street at as advertising and advertising as street art.
First, there is Kaws. He did some work for Kanye West’s new album, including this piece in Times Square:
For a guy who started as a graffiti writer and transitioned to a street artist who subverted (or at least changed) advertisements, he sure has come a long way. I’m not going to say it’s good or bad that Kaws is doing advertisements. I’d probably rather he didn’t, but I can’t blame him for wanting to make some money and get up in Times Square. People change, and I don’t think he’s shy about how he has changed. There isn’t a false front there. Kind of like Kanye himself.
Rappers don’t usually start out their careers by saying “I really want to rap and get a connection with fans and spread a message.” The stereotypical rapper justs comes right out and says “I wanna get really extremely rich.” By comparison, your average rock start has to worry about “selling out” and staying true to their originals and all that. Inside, that rock star is probably thinking “I really want to buy a mansion some day,” but they’d never be allowed to say that out loud.
Kaws doesn’t claim to be this anti advertising subversion king at all, so more power to him I guess.
And the important thing to keep in mind here is that Kanye’s record label paid for that ad. It’s not like that billboard is a wall which would have otherwise been taken and used by street artists or graffiti writers.
More after the jump… Continue reading “Street art and advertising”
Untitled II: The Beautiful Renaissance
One of my favorite street art books is Untitled, so upon receiving the sequel, Unitled II: The Beautiful Renaissance, in the mail last weekend, I couldn’t wait to read it and see if the sequel could live up my expectations.
In short, it does. For £19.95, you can get a well printed hardcover art book just shy of 200 pages long that could easily retail for more than that in high street shops.
Most of my favorite artists are included in Untitled II: My all time favorite Gaia image is on the cover, there are some cool shots of Banksy’s work, Swoon, Mark Jenkins, PosterBoy, Roa, WK Interact, Judith Supine, Blu and many many more.
Untitled II feels like the compiler (Gary Shove) really just sat around one day and said, “here’s some stuff that I’m really digging at the moment” and turned it into a book. And I mean that in a good way. The whole thing feels very holistic and it doesn’t seem like he’s tried to cram in certain artists just to say “yeah this book includes a photo of X’s work.” There are a few sections which are generally organized, like the section on New Orleans or the one on Norway, but really it’s just pictures that look nice together. And the quality of the photos is top notch. I just pulled a half dozen street art books out off my shelf to compare, and it is clear that the guys behind Untitled II have spared no expense in printing or finding the best photos.
But the truth is that pictures are only half the story with Untitled II. The text alone is reason to buy this book.
Too many people in art take themselves too seriously. Not so in Untitled II. The end of the book carries this disclaimer: “None of the words and spaces contained herein have any relevance to any of the photographs. They are only included to keep the pictures company and make us look cleverer than we actually are.”
You know how Banksy includes little bits of text in Wall and Piece? Think that sort of thing but taking up way more space. The text either proves that the writers are geniuses, or, much more likely, very good at BSing like geniuses. And those sort of texts are always fun to read when you know there is a bit of a humerous conceit to the whole thing.
Untitled II also includes a DVD called Storytelling. It has a few short films on it like Spending Time with PosterBoy plus Living Decay, a film about street art in Norway.
This isn’t the book you want if you’re looking for a serious book about street art, or if you’re just getting introduced to the genre, but for people who already know the street art scene well, this Untitled II deserves a spot on your bookshelf.
Untitled II is available on the Untitled website or at FUSShop.
New Work in DC
Thanks to
Jonas Angelet and the guys from Words, Beats and Life for letting me roll through and give a little workshop. Need to come back to DC to hit more spots!
– Gaia
Magkinetic Drawing with Aakash Nihalani… and Us
Aakash Nihalani just released a project website in which some of the shapes and motifs that he employs in his gallery and street work can be altered and transformed. He has entitled this piece Magkinetic Drawings, and here is the explanation provided:
“One of the key elements of my physical street-level art is that it engages the viewer, making them more than just a viewer but rather an active agent in the artwork itself. The photo documentation of my work shows how the installations transform with each individual’s reaction and interaction with them, so it’s not just one piece of art but infinite. In an effort to translate that very personal unique interaction of human and art, I have begun to explore interactive digital artwork that can be experienced via the internet, from anywhere in the world. Integrating the visual and experiential concepts present in my tape installations into this digital medium, I present Magkinetic Drawings.”
Check out the website at http://www.magkinetic.com/
– Gaia
Blu at FAME
While Blu is working an animation for FAME festival with David Ellis, he also painted this wall (or maybe it’s part of the animation, I’m not positive). Amazing amazing amazing. I just love it.
And here is the story behind the wall, just as interesting as the art itself (via the FAME Festival blog)
If you’re new to FAME festival, you probably dont know that Grottaglie is 10 minutes far from Taranto. if you’ve been in Taranto, you probably remember that the city has a massive ugly factory called ILVA (one of the biggest steel factory in europe).this factory is destroying the territory and killing a lot of workers ’cause of its big lack of security measures and high environmental pollution. the direct consequence is that Taranto has one of the highest rate of death by cancer in italy.
As a plus, the smartest politicians from Grottaglie’s town council allowed, back in ‘96, the construction of a very filthy special wastes dump right outside the city. they did not inform the people, they did not ask anybody’s opinion, they just did it. i wish i could wonder WHY they did it.
this said,
i usually like to think that every piece of art can have different meaning, depending on who is looking at it and from wich perspective he is looking from. this time, i prefer to think that we’re all looking at a mere mirror of the actual situation we’re living in.especially for our mean local politicians, none of them excluded. i hope that they can recognise themselves in these huge faces and feel disgusted for what they’ve done to their people.
Via Unurth
Nothing to see here
It should come as no suprise that Banksy took every step possible to prevent The Bistol Museum from revealing his identity or very much at all about his show Banksy Versus The Bristol Museum. Banksy’s lawyers (yes, even street artists need lawyers) crafted a seemingly airtight contract with the museum, and now a Freedom of Information request regarding the show has revealed almost nothing.
You can read the full results of the request online, but in short, here’s what was learned: Banksy was paid £1 for the exhibition, pretty much all the CCTV footage is destroyed after 30 days (so if you want to rob the Bristol Museum, just make sure whatever you steal can go missing for a month before anybody notices), and that Banksy really wants to keep his identity a secret.
So really, who cares?
Invader – Low Fidelity photos
I’m just headed out the door right now to see Invader’s show “Low Fidelity” at Lazarides Gallery but Ian Cox just sent me some great images of the show so I thought I’d post those before going to see it myself.
Photos by WallKandy/Ian Cox. See more at Ian’s flickr