Attempting to walk that tightrope which keeps corporate sponsorship of art cool and not simply corny, Cirque de Soleil has recently gotten interested in street art. Their Safewalls project begins this week in London with a launch even at High Roller Society. At each stop on the Safewalls tour, artists from that city will be designing alternative posters for Cique de Soleil shows. In London, Jon Burgerman, Glenn Anderson and Sweet Toof (see above) have designed the posters for a show called Totem. I love what Sweet Toof has done for this project.
The posters and prints will be for sale online today and there will also be a launch even on the 17th at High Roller Society. The posters will be limited to 300 copies and screenprints of the same designs will be limited to an edition of 50. I’ve got to say that I love the idea of posters. As far as I can tell, posters are basically the same printing technique at giclée prints, but they are on a material that is better suited to the ink instead of some archival heavy paper that makes so many giclée prints look terrible. Plus, I’m guessing the posters will be more affordable that a similar giclée print would be.
A series of videos have been made interviewing the artists involved in the event. The first one is below, and here are links to the next two:
SAFEWALLS | LONDON 2011 (1/3) from SAFEWALLS on Vimeo.
Photo courtesy of Safewalls