Update (May 2011): I’m back in London for a few months and running tours. Just email me to set up one (rj at vandalog dot com).
Big announcement today. I’m going to start running street art tours in London. I’ve done a couple of private ones for family friends and my school, but I’d really like to open these up to more people.
The tours will cover street art and graffiti in East London, and we’ll probably visit a gallery as well. We’ll see work from artists like Banksy, Space Invader, Eine, Conor Harrington, Barry McGee, Sickboy, and many more. The tours should last a couple of hours.
The first tour will be on Saturday May 23rd. We’ll be meeting outside of the Old Street tube station at 11am, and end at the Liverpool Street tube station. The cost will be £10 per person and it will be capped to just 15 people. If you are interested in attending, please email rj(at)vandalog.com with your name and how many people are in your party.
This article from the Mail on Sunday is hilarious. It seems that a film-maker tricked Joan Collins into hosting a dinner party for an actor claiming to be Banksy, and she fell for it. Here’s a snippet of the article:
To Joan Collins it must have seemed an unexpected honour too good to refuse – the chance to meet the world-famous, and notoriously secretive, graffiti artist Banksy.
Not surprisingly, she readily accepted the invitation to host a dinner party for the mysterious artist in a grand country home, with other excited celebrities in attendance to share the unique experience.
But The Mail on Sunday has discovered that the entire story was an elaborate hoax, designed to dupe the Dynasty actress – and the rest of the world.
In reality, the ‘Banksy’ who Miss Collins spent five hours entertaining was actor Bryan Lawrence – whose career includes bit parts in The Bill and adverts for the Corby Trouser Press – not the controversial guerrilla artist famed for his stencilled, anarchist graffiti works that can sell for up to £250,000.
When we told Miss Collins of the scam, she admitted she had been completely taken in.
Asked if she knew that the person she believed to be Banksy was, in fact, an actor, she said: ‘I didn’t. I thought it was [Banksy]. I certainly thought it was. Am I surprised? Well, I still think it might be him.’
The bizarre plot was dreamt up by former Tory adviser Ivan Massow, a colourful character who made and lost a fortune selling insurance to gay men, and a familiar face on the London social scene, who has known Miss Collins for 20 years.
He filmed the charade in the hope of hoodwinking a TV broadcaster into buying the footage, promoting it as the first time Banksy had revealed himself on camera.
All I can say is that I would really like to see this footage.
Recently the Pest Control website (the official organization for authenticating Banksy’s work) was updated and the below message was put on their “What is Pest Control?” page. Note the “sales” section:
So that’s new. Pest Control is now the only organization selling original Banksy work on the primary market. I guess Banksy has finally left Lazarides behind (and possibly POW as well, but that makes no sense). Rumors have been swirling for the longest time that Banksy would be leaving Lazarides, but they usually involved Banksy being picked up by larger contemporary galleries like Gagosian or Opera.
This show goes to show how powerful an individual can be in today’s society even without a large organization to back them up. We’ve seen this sort of self-management in music, with Nine Inch Nails ditching their record label and doing fine, and we’ve already seen it in art with Damien Hirst’s auction. Now Banksy’s giving it a try as well.
You may have already seen this interview with Labrona at Bombing Science, but if not, it’s a nice read and after reading it, I thought I’d find a few photos of Labrona‘s work with his friend Other. They both paint portraits on trains, and although they have very different styles, I think they work well next to each other. For those who aren’t familiar with Labrona and Other, Labrona is on the left in these first two pictures, and Other is on the right.
One of graffiti’s best known female writers, Claw, will be showing at Eastern District in New York next week. I haven’t seen much of her gallery work (I believe she’s done a bit before, though I’m not sure), but given her successful clothing line, I’m sure she knows how to transition to new mediums.
Photo by FW18
The PR:
Claw Money -Solo Exhibition-
May 8th-May 12th
Opening reception
6-8pm Friday May 8th 2009
43 Bogart Street, Brooklyn, NY -Claw Money
“Claw Money is a legendary Graffiti Artist, best known for her signature icon, a paw with three claws. This paw could be spotted all over New York during her days rolling with the prestigious graff crews, TC5, 5C, and her own crew, PMS. Until 2008, she was the Fashion Editor for Swindle Magazine.
Keeping up with Claw these days is no easy task. Between maintaining her eponymous clothing and accessories line, which has a celebrity cult following (M.I.A., Kayne West, Amy Winehouse, Santo Gold, Pete Wentz, and Cameron Diaz, just to name a few) and writing furiously for her irreverent fashion blog Blogue, Claw still somehow finds the time and energy to inject major brands like Nike, Calvin Klein, Boost Mobile, K2, Ecko Red, and Colette X Gap with some of her legendary street cred.
Some of Ms. Money’s recent projects include Doug Pray’s 2006 graffiti documentary Infamy and her first monograph, Bombshell: The Life and Crimes of Claw Money, published by PowerHouse books. The 2007 book, which archives a collection of graffiti, high style, and wild times, is already in its second edition printing. Most recently Claw has been on a world tour promoting two collaborative sneakers with athletic giant, Nike. The two styles, a peacock feather-adorned Vandal and lace-infused Blazer are Nike’s first artist releases for women by a woman, setting a new precedent for female streetwear collaborations in an extremely male dominated market segment. In 2009, she has collaborated with jeweler Gabriel Urist to create a range of peacock feather earrings and pendants, the demand for which has been unprecedented. What’s next from Claw Money? That’s anyone’s guess, but stay tuned and she surely won’t disappoint.”
Nice preview video of Luna Park and Billi Kid’s group show “The Great Out Doors” has popped online. Some really cool doors in this show. Personal favorites are the pieces by Imminent Disaster, Deeker, Royce Bannon, and Infinity.
Here’s part two of my video interview with Matt Small. It’s from his recent show, “Youngstarrs” at Black Rat Press in London. The show is up for another week, so you can still catch it if you haven’t seen it in person yet. There’s some really beautiful work which Viddler’s image quality does not show off properly at all. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can check out Part One of this interview as well.
The audio is poor, so there is a transcript below the video.
RJ: So how do you choose who to paint?
Matt: Well I got my film camera…
We talk about how I only brought a cheap video camera.
Matt: Yeah so I film people with a video camera and I do it at a nice discreet distance. So in a way it’s a bit naughty, but what you’re doing is you’re getting them unaware and you’re capturing them in their own natural way of being. You know what I mean? [inaudible] Because I film them and people assume an identity. We all do that. We all… I’m doing it now. So we all assume an identity, and we stop being ourselves as such. We put out what we believe we want people to see. I bypass that by filming you, without you knowing. And then I can just go through that and find ones that I believe in [inaudible] and I’ll get that person. So there are all just like kids on the street. And, as sinister as that might sound, that how I’ve got them. One of the kids here, he was from a place called [inaudible] estate in North London. He’s sitting there, and I just filmed him. He had that beautiful look about him. [Inaudible]. I just that was very telling of the kids that are growing up in that particular area. They’re growing up in a tough estate and [inaudible] and who knows what lies ahead.
RJ: What’s the process to paint one of these, the actual painting though, once you have the image?
Matt: Once I have it? Well I’ll film, sketch, and then I’ll build up the sketch on metal and I’ll use oils and use that to build up tones and then I use [inaudible] I’ll get loads of emulsions paints which you see [inaudible] different tones of paint that I use and then I scratch it on. And I’ve got a little tool that I use to smear the paint around and it creates a sort of collidial process where all the paints mix and it’s like being in a realm of chaos because what I’ve just done is before I painted a very conventional painting: a very nicely done picture. Every time I do that it’s me protesting against traditional portraiture. It’s me saying “damn the way that [inaudible].” And it’s quite liberating. I’ve just destroyed this picture that [inaudible], and then I’ve got to try to get it back. The way I [inaudible] to bring it back as a different picture. Almost like it’s been reborn into something that I would like to think is progressive and it’s saying a bit more than that picture before. What it was before was something that doesn’t represent me or what I’m trying to say about art and about the world. And when I destroy it and bring it back, it is something that is me and it does speak about the world. I think that’s what makes it really interesting personally. Because each time I do one of these paintings, there’s a little story behind it. And it’s a story that sort of speak about me as well as a person. I think that, as an artist, if you’re an artist then you really want to make sure that a picture is coming from you, and it’s you talking and that’s there in these pictures.
If you live in London, you’ve probably had a hard time avoiding to police department’s latest advertising campaign for volunteer police: “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.” In light of Ian Tomlinson‘s recent death at the hands of the London Police, some people are having a hard time believing the London Police always have the people’s best interests at heart. The Space Hijackers have done a very powerful project on this issue.
