Here’s the latest spot organized by Murals around New York/MaNY. As you can see, it’s in NoHo in NYC, right by the entrance to Bleecker Street Station. The gate on the left was painted by Radical, and the gate on the right was painted by Veng.
Here’s a timelapse of the painting process:
Radical x Veng – Lafayette / Bleecker St, NYC from MaNY Project on Vimeo.
Photos by Udom Surangsophon
This Friday, Metamorphosis opens at High Roller Society in London. It will be Ludo‘s first solo show in London, and certainly something his fans (like me) have been looking forward to for quite a while. I’ve been a fan of his Nature’s Revenge series for at least two years, but rarely have I seen what Ludo is capable of when he moves indoors. The work in this show includes, in addition to prints and drawings, some of Ludo’s sculptures, which might just be the most underrated things he makes. The opening for Metamorphosis doubles as a book launch for a Ludo book, Opus #23, with an introduction by Marc and Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective.
Image courtesy of High Roller Society
Opening tonight at the East Village’s Dorian Grey Gallery is CLUB 57 & Friends featuring some of the early pioneers of the 1980’s East Village art scene and the CLUB 57 performance space. Both original works and legendary photographs are on display. Here is a small sampling:
Martha Cooper‘s latest book is, on the surface, a bit different from what she’s best known for, but really it’s not so strange at all. Continuing with Martha Cooper’s tradition of capturing authentic and unorganized expressions of creativity, Remembering 9/11 is a book of photographs that Martha took of the street memorials that popped up around New York after 9/11. In addition to the paperback version, Remembering 9/11 is also available on iTunes as an ebook (which means you can read it on an iPhone, iPad or iPod). Most days, the ebook will be available for $5.99, but on September 11th, it will be downloadable on iTunes for free. In addition to photos, there is also an essay by Martha Cooper.
Photos by Martha Cooper
Vexta, originally from Sydney, is another of Melbourne’s favourite street artists. Vexta’s neon drenched street paintings, paste ups and stencils can be seen in and around the suburbs of Melbourne. Her stencils are filled with carefully selected bright colours and are intricately cut, they lighten up any dark alleyway in Melbourne.
Vexta has traveled and painted around the world including Paris, Berlin, London, Sydney, Brisbane and Bogota. Her recent show “Across Neon Lights” at Goodtime Studios In Carlton (Melbourne) was beautiful, showing off her renowned neon colours and detailed mix of painting and stencil print skills.
I caught up with Vexta to talk about the upcoming show in SF, Young and Free, and her art in general.
LM: You must be excited about ‘Young and Free’. What do you think about this amazing opportunity and the impact it will have on the awareness of Melbourne, and Australian, street art and artists?
Vexta: I can’t wait to get over there, I really love San Francisco so its super exciting to be showing there. San Francisco has such a rich history of street art and murals and 941 Gallery is a massive warehouse space so it’s going to be lots of fun for all of us to hang out and make work there. It’s a total honour to be showing alongside so many fine Australian street artists as well. I think Young & Free will help to show that Australian street art is just like other street art from the southern hemisphere, in that its just as great as what happening in the north of the world.
LM: Tell me about your background. How did you get into street art?
Vexta: Well, I was doing quite a lot of travel in the early 2000s. After an massive trip traveling across the Australian outback and SE Asia, I arrived back in Melbourne just when street art was beginning to boom. I guess from traveling I was really aware of landscapes and the interplay of elements in our physical environments so the art just jumped out at me. I loved the stencil aesthetic and so I started creating my own pieces, wandering the back laneways of the city late at night, painting. From there I met other street artists and we started doing shows together and going out painting together. Emptyshows were the best – where a group of us would take over an empty/disused building, install art and hold an illegal exhibition.
LM: What does your name mean?
Vexta: It’s just who I am, it’s a bunch of nicknames put together. A good friend use to call me “vex” when we were teenagers growing up together. Adding a “ta” or “ka” to the end of a name is a Czech tradition, My father came here from the Czech Republic so I’m use to my family doing that.
LM: What do you enjoy most about the whole street art process? The creation, the night missions etc?
Vexta: I just love making art in the street. The streets are the heart of any city… it’s the truly free space. It is the space of the people. It’s the place where ideas and interactions happen. I love making work that is free for the people of the city and to be found unexpectedly. Right now, I’m into making work that is more gentle and subtle than the advertising, signage and modern architecture that surround us in our modern cities. I also like leaving these small pieces of art that connect together into a larger story when put them together later in exhibitions. I also have a bit of a thing for underground spaces. I love all of it. Making work in the studio, painting on walls in the sunshine, drawing on walls in the dark of night, driving around wheat pasting, stickering…
LM: Who or what inspires you?
Vexta: I’m inspired by a lot of things – art, music, science, nature. In particular I’m interested in winged creatures, dream states, hallucinations, the night, taking photos and pattern/repeated painting. My friends constantly inspire me with their support and the work they make, people like Kill Pixie, Tai Snaith, Al Stark, Miso not too mention all the Y&F artists…
LM: Which artists are you into at the moment? Local and International.
Vexta: Ah there’s too many to list! Right now I’m hanging out to see Mike Mills’s new film, I love his work. Bjork’s Crystalline app is pretty exciting in the way it mixes art, music and science. Shida is making beautiful work on the local street art front.
LM: Where do you work from and what is your studio space like?
Vexta: At the moment I’m making my work on the fly, travelling for a while. I have a small space in Melbourne and I’m in the process of fixing up a shack in a bit of remnant forest at my family’s house in North Sydney as a studio space and I’ll probably set one up for big work in the inner city for the summer too.
LM: What is always in your “toolkit”?
Vexta: Depends what I’m doing but I always seem to have stickers, markers & caps in my bag….other that – spray paint, acrylic paint, blades, brushes and a glove that I’ve been wearing for about 5 years to keep spray paint off my skin are fairly essential items… oh, and my ipod.
LM: What has been the highlight (or highlights) of your career to date?
Vexta: Probably painting the Cans Festival in London, and painting in the streets & in the slums of Bogota, Colombia.
LM: Your recent show “Across Neon Lights” featured some of your best pieces yet, it was a great show. Tell me about the show and your recent work, I noticed your recent stuff features lots of feathers and butterflies/moths.
Vexta: Thanks, Across Neon Nights was pretty site-specific in some ways I really liked installing the works down in the basement of Goodtime Studios, it was great to use a different space that’s not a traditional gallery for a show. The paintings focused on an ongoing exploration of dreams, hallucinations, nights and the way we relate to the dark…our subconscious states, sex and night creatures like bats & moths. Making the light sculpture, bone installation and the sound loop was super fun. I want to do more of that.
All photos courtesy of Vexta
As we mentioned the other day, Roa and the French Da Mental Vaporz crew (Blo, Bom.k, Brusk, Dran, Gris, Jaw, Kan, Sowat), as well as others, were recently in Copenhagen painting for the Galore Festival. Here are some photos of the festival by S.Butterfly, mostly of DMV’s wall. You can find more pictures from her on flickr or her blog.
First though, this is a video by S.Butterfly of DMV working on their mural…
Da Mental Vaporz at Galore DK from Butterfly on Vimeo.
There’s actually an interesting story behind the mural. S.Butterfly explains, “The mural is a satyrical reference to unscrupulous people who are willing to deface street art walls for profit. The DMV also incorporated a tribute to Kase 2 (RIP), as well as Copenhagen landmarks, including the infamous Christiania market, where you can find anything.” So the crew painted segments of the mural on removable panels, which they then moved to the end of wall and hung next to the “street art shop” (pictured above and below). In place of those panels, they painted windows to other places, as if the wall itself had actually been removed.
And the entire mural is huge and super wide, so the best way to view large it is by clicking here.
Photos by S.Butterfly
Here’s a sampling of some wonderfully vibrant Toronto walls that have been recently shared with me:
Photos by MKP
This documentary about street art in Buenos Aires, Argentina gives a great sense of the scene, the people and the culture that make up their street art community. It includes interviews with a number of Argentinian artists, including Jaz and Ever. I liked the video, but if that description doesn’t sound like your thing, just skip ahead to 10 minutes in, because the story of José Carlos Martinat Mendoza’s time in Argentina is one that you definitely have to hear.
Paredes Robadas from Ian Moubayed on Vimeo.
Photo by Other
Space Indavers is a collection owned by the National Gallery of Australia featuring street art, stencils, posters, paste ups, zines, stickers and graffiti from the last 10 years from across Australia.
The exhibition is like a time capsule containing some of the most well known pieces from the last decade or so.. So many memories! 🙂 There are far too many artists to mention, so have a look here. The exhibition explores the movement from the street into the gallery as many of these pieces signify the explosion of the scene in Australia and also the start of many of these artists gallery based careers.
While the show is running, RMIT is also hosting a number of interesting discussions including ‘Vandals or Vanguards?‘, discussing the political, social and artistic aspects of street art and zines. Nice work RMIT!
I went down to the opening last week to check it out. Enjoy.
Photos by Luke McManus
Thanks to Endless Canvas for turning us on to this story.
It seems that police pressure in Portland has resulted in The Railyard gallery being evicted from their location. The Railyard opened earlier this summer with an installation-based show where dozens of artists (including Swampy, Feral Child and Gats) painted on the walls of the space. Portland police claim that the gallery is responsible, through that show, for bringing artists to Portland who then painted street art and graffiti illegally while they were in town. On the one hand, this whole thing is ridiculous: The Railyard is not responsible for what artists do in their spare time, and the work that The Railyard is responsible for was painted legally (and looks pretty good too). On the other hand, I’m surprised that more police around the world don’t try this tactic. Probably because a. it’s a difficult case to prove and b. it makes the police look like uncultured jerks. Shutting down art galleries isn’t exactly a popular move. Although in this case, it sounds like the police just used intimidation rather than actually pressing charges, so there’s really nothing that would have to be proven in court.
Get the full details on this series of events here and here.
Best of luck to The Railyard. Hopefully they can move to a new space where the police will leave them alone.
Photo by Nuclear Winter
Via Endless Canvas
