The walls are talking in Puerto Rico, as over a dozen first-rate artists are busy gracing the walls of the Santurce district of San Juan. Organized by local artists Celso Gonzalez and Alexis Diaz of La Pandilla, along with Emil Medina of Buena Vibra, “Los Muros Hablan” marks the Carribean’s largest urban arts festival. Not only are we seeing some of our favorite artists at work, but we are also meeting many whose works is new to us. Here are just a few images we took today — many more to come:
Roa at workAryz at workLocal artist Bik-Ismo at work
Sponsored by Coor Light, “Los Muros Hablan” continues through the 14th.
Photos of Roa by Lois Stavsky; photo of Aryz by Dani Mozeson and of Bik-Ismo by Lenny Collado
Most of the sticker collectors I know take pride in their collections because they have some sort of personal connection to the individual stickers. The interest is not the stickers themselves, so much as how these collectors obtained them. For Martha Cooper, it means using a secret recipe to weaken the adhesive and collect stickers that were put up illegally on the street. For some collectors, it means going to art shows with a black book and bumping into the right people. For others, like Philadelphia’s family-like network of sticker artists, it means trading stickers between artists to save or frequently to collaborate. For these people, a book of printed stickers lacks the intrinsic value that comes with compiling a collection through unique experiences.
Stacey Rozich and Yonil
My favorite book (of any book, not just my street art books) is DB Burkeman’s Stickers: Stuck-Up Piece of Crap because it is an encyclopedia of sticker styles and artists. However, when Laurence King Publishing sent me a copy of one of their latest publications, StickerbombMonsters, the immediate dissatisfaction I felt forced me to reflect on what exactly makes a sticker collection special. Stickerbomb Monsters is a book of 250 monster-themed stickers designed by a number of current illustrators, street artists, and cartoonists such as Numskull, Sheryo, Iain Burke and others. To an experiential/sentimental sticker collector, this sort of thing might be similar to a printed autograph book. To be fair, there are people who would appreciate that, and to those people, you can purchase Stickerbomb Monsters here.
If you are a sticker collector, does aesthetic take priority over sentiment, or is your collection based off your personal relationships with the stickers?
Rome’s 999 Contemporary gallery suggested that I have a look at the work of Borondo, and I’m glad I did. Definitely reminds me of Guy Denning, and a few others, but on the street. Here are a few of his walls from the last year.
It’s Frieze week and London is in full swing with pompous art enthusiasts and decrepit rich men buying art and prostitutes all around the city. While most people get excited about the Fair itself, here at Vandalog, we like the satellite events happening that let the galleries go all out and give us a break from snobbery that encompasses Frieze. So besides Moniker and Lazarides’ Bedlam, Imitate Modern is joining the ranks of outsider shows with Just Be You Tiful – a solo show by Rich Simmons.
While most of our readers know Rich as Opera Gallery’ poster boy for commercial street art, this guy has really come into his own in 2012. While he may get a bad rep from all of the publicity that Opera threw at him, Simmons is one of the most hardworking artists I have had the pleasure of knowing. Always willing to lend a helping hand and constantly scrutinizing his own work, Simmons is his own worst critic (not the naysayers on the Banksy forum).
For Just Be You Tiful Simmons has been locked in the studio producing an entirely new body of work to showcase during Frieze at Imitate Modern. Known for its sold out Stik show last year, Simmons has impressed the gallery with his own brand of stencil and collage works. The master of the exacto knife, these intricate multi-layered canvasses are sure to turn a few heads when they find out this is Simmons’ new style especially the Sailor Jerry homages and naked pin-ups. Ooh La La!
Tiger in Sydney. Photo by BadDogWhiskas.Hope, Credo, Sow and Nesk in Sao Paulo. Photo by Credoum.Rude 3HC Vitry. Photo by Spam Crew.Soker in Bristol.Peeta in Italy. Photo by Herbilizer.Takt by Spam Crew.BGB, Cap and BGBS in Italy. Photo by Herbalizer.
In my second post about Nuart 2012 (part one here) I’ve finally got some finished pieces to show. While Nuart is known for the outdoor work that they organized, the artists probably spend just as much time, some of them more, on the indoor installation component of the festival. This year, work was installed in a series of old beer halls at Tou Scene, a venue in Stavanger that Nuart has used a few times. These aren’t all the installations that Nuart had this year, but here we have the finished installations by Eine, Jordan Seiler, Saber, Ron English, Aakash Nihalani, How and Nosm, and Sickboy. Thanks to Ian Cox for all of the great photos coming out of Nuart.
How and NosmAakash NihalaniSickboyBen Eine and Jordan Seiler
A note from RJ – This guest post is by my friend Shafiur Rahman, whose films I’ve posted about several times on Vandalog. Shafi is an interesting figure in the London street art community. Yes, he can be seen wandering around Shoreditch looking at work or at the gallery openings, but he isn’t just a street art fan boy. He is interested in street art, but his film company makes films about a wide range of social issues. On a few occasions, he’s been able to bring a bit of politics back into street art and muralism by involving street artists in his other film projects. What he writes about here is just one such instance.
In 2010 I started filming a film about apartheid in South Africa. After conducting several interviews, I realised I had interviewed – unwittingly – various members of the Picasso Club. These were activists who used to paint anti-apartheid slogans in the dead of night in the city of Johannesburg in the 1960s. Some of the members of the club are still alive and they have led very distinguished lives – everything from 26 years of imprisonment to holding high office in the post-apartheid government of Nelson Mandela.
These Picasso club guys gave me an idea. It dawned on me then that I could use street art meaningfully in my film. A kind of sloganeering too because I had in mind to paint giant portraits of those who had died in the struggle and who were now fading from memory. Fading both in terms of being easily recognised and in terms of the spirit they embodied: selfless struggle and sacrifice, I think is the phrase here. So the art would question the viewer – who is this you are looking at and why here. I had in mind to paint people who had died in the struggle and were intimately connected to the places where they would be painted. It could be where they worked or where they lived or where they were killed.
So Ben Slow painted Ruth First. She was a white Jewish woman, a communist party member and a dedicated fighter against apartheid. The apartheid regime killed her with a letter bomb. We painted her at a spot not far from a place called Kliptown. This was the place where the Freedom Charter was adopted by the many organisations fighting apartheid. Over the years the Freedom Charter became the central document outlining an egalitarian vision of South Africa. Ruth First helped draft that document. We painted her in a community which has experienced much violence and continues to do so. The building we chose was big enough to paint the 4m mural. Surrounding it are other smaller dwellings with no electricity or running water. They are simple one-roomed tin shacks. The legacy of apartheid is still evident in 2012. Sadly the values Ruth embraced and fought and died for are less evident in today’s South Africa. That is the general feeling. Picasso Club members despite their loyalty and polished diplomacy betrayed similar feelings in their interviews.
The people of Nomzamo park loved the mural. Some had a notion of who Ruth was. Most did not. One guy who knew of her kissed Ben’s hand and said he loved him for painting her.
This year’s edition of the Moniker Art Fair opens in Shoreditch this Thursday. This year, Moniker will be more focused than ever before on installations rather than traditional art fair gallery booths. Actually, the show will be entirely installations. Niels ‘Shoe’ Meulman, Ludo, Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada, C215, Remi/Rough, Ben Slow and others will be there.
Moniker opens on Thursday from 7-9pm, and will be open Friday and Saturday 11-7pm and Sunday 11-5pm.
From the Crimes of Passion show at the Royal Academy of West England in 2009
Bristol holds a special place in the UK’s graffiti culture. Distinct from other cities it’s laid back attitude and independent spirit has been in part responsible for producing a number of pioneering artists since the 1980’s such as 3D, Inkie (who now organises the huge See No Evil street art festival), Nick Walker, Sickboy, Mudwig and of course Banksy. Over the last two decades one collective who have been representing Bristol at graffiti jams across the world with their impressive and progressive work are the TCF crew. Which brings me to the main subject of the post – Acerone aka Luke Palmer, a key member of TCF, has his first London solo show this week. Although Bristol has a number of galleries that support street art and graffiti sometimes its necessary to make the trip to the capital to step things up a notch…
ACER piece
This is exactly what Luke has done for his upcoming Where is Iron John? show. For some years Acerone has been experimenting in combining photographic techniques with painting. This mixing of media comes together in atmospheric murals that feature the inner-city at night with bursts of light and canvases that are inspired by double-exposure and motion blur while he also works with photographic prints and installations.
“2 Lovers”
Where is Iron John? is a new body of work which is inspired in part by the iconic Grimm Brothers ‘Der Eisenhans’ fairy tale. Luke uses his own photo shoots of London’s classical statues combined with painting to “explore representations of serenity and the complexity of modern masculinity and its links to the male of yesteryear”. It is certainly an interesting notion to look at the heroic statues that are fixtures of our historic cities against the fast pace world we live in and compare those effigies to our own complex lives and the pressures of the modern male. In subject matter and in innovative techniques this show looks set to be something out of the ordinary from Bristol’s extraordinary street art scene…
Opening night Thursday 11th October 6pm – 10pm
Then open Friday 12th October – Sunday 14th October 10am – 7pm
