Some of our favorite NYC artists have been busy. We came upon these cool new walls in Bushwick yesterday.
Continue reading “New in Bushwick: ND’A, QRST, Veng, Bishop 203 & Never”
New in Bushwick: ND’A, QRST, Veng, Bishop 203 & Never
[Spoiler alert] Film Review: How to Sell a Banksy
Okay, so you’ve seen Exit Through the Gift Shop, right? You probably laughed at those IDIOTS paying boatloads for Mr. Brainwash pieces, the ridiculousness of MBW’s operation, and the complete sheep that art-lovers can be. Because YOU ARE SMART. You don’t like MBW. And you’d never fall for something like that. Exit was safe, and that made it entertaining.
But the real world is not safe, and as it turns out, you probably aren’t safe either. How to Sell a Banksy is the unofficial Banksy movie. The film tells the relatively honest (as far as I can tell) story of Christopher Thompson’s efforts to try to sell one of Banksy’s street pieces that he ripped down off a wall in London back in 2007. The piece at the center of the film are some very poorly salvaged scraps of paper that were once a poster of Banksy’s smiling cop in Shoreditch. Thompson starts out with a pretty limited knowledge of both Banksy and the art world, but since he hope to sell his scraps of paper for tens of thousands of pounds, he sets out to learn. Continue reading “[Spoiler alert] Film Review: How to Sell a Banksy”
Zéh Palito’s BAKUM(favela) project
Zéh Palito has been working to brighten up two favelas in Recife, Brazil for his BAKUM(favela) project. These are a few of my favorite pieces from the series, but there are many more on his flickr.
Photos by Zéh Palito
BMD around New Zealand
The BMD collective has been painting some great walls in New Zealand. Very cool.
Photos by Blake Dunlop
Sti(c)kman in all his glory at Brooklyn’s Pandemic Gallery
A huge fan of Sti(c)kman, I made it over to Williamsburg’s Pandemic Gallery yesterday to check out “20: CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF PLAYING WITH STICKS IN THE STREETS.” The exhibit — comprised of endless variations of my beloved character in different media — is the perfect celebration. Here are a few images:
The exhibit continues through April 6 at 37 Broadway in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and is definitely worth checking out if you’re anywhere in the vicinity.
Photos by Lois Stavsky
Weekend link-o-rama
So I’ve been working a lot lately on Re:Humanities, a symposium of undergraduate work in the digital humanities. It’s taking place next week at Swarthmore College, just outside of Philadelphia. I hope you’ll come check it out if you’re nearby. I’ll be speaking about how the internet has changed street art, and there are a bunch of other great topics up for discussion for anyone interested in the digital humanities. Okay, that’s my personal announcement for the week, now onto the news:
- Conor Harrington, Dscreet and Ronzo collaborated on this wall over in Dalston.
- Sweet Toof and Paul Insect have also been painting some fantastic walls in London.
- Okay so this video of a piece by Verbo isn’t the best quality, but the piece is pretty awesome and very different from a lot of what is out there. I wish I could have seen the animation in the flesh and I hope he continues to work with this combination of mural and digital projection.
- 2 Many Printers is a cool little clothing brand with t-shirts by Husk Mit Navn, Ian Stevenson and others.
- This mural is probably my absolute favorite piece of public art that I’ve seen related to the Egyptian Revolution.
- Glad to see I’m not the only one who thinks Anthony Lister’s “Planet of the Apes” mural was problematic and a disservice to the art community.
- C215 has a show in Paris of stained glass windows based on his imagery.
- Shepard Fairey is involved in a possible new film version of 1984. Could be cool, although it’s a bit ironic since Fairey was involved in trying to rewrite history himself when he submitted doctored evidence in a court case.
- Niels Shoe Muelman has a show opening this week at 941 Geary in SF.
Photo by Jade
Kid Zoom returns to thoughts of needing to escape
Ian Strange aka Kid Zoom‘s installation, Home, at last year’s Outpost Festival in Sydney was, from what I heard, the highlight of the festival. We covered Home last year, but now the video aspect of that installation is available online. It boils down to 5 minutes of explosions and destruction of property, which is always fun to watch. Strange explains the installation as “a work reflecting on my origins in the Australian suburbs I felt that I needed to escape when I was younger,” so I’m thinking of the video as a high-definition expression of teen angst and the dream of running completely wild in the boring suburbs. Anyone have other thoughts? Here’s the video:
‘HOME’ an exhibition by Ian ‘Kid Zoom’ Strange from KID ZOOM [Ian Strange] on Vimeo.
China Style Wednesday!
Being that I just got back from China, I decided to do this week’s Wild Style Wednesday with the graffiti and street art of the Chinese city of Shanghai.
Legal Team? Whatever that means.
Photos by Kersavond and MyJediLightSaber
Adam Void – an American Dream at MICA
Avoid pi aka Adam Void‘s latest solo show, an American Dream, opens this week at the MICA Decker Gallery at MICA in Baltimore. It’s always difficult to predict just what you’ll see at an Avoid pi show, but he says that the show includes work on themes including homelessness, evangelical religion, freight hopping, protest culture, surveillance and urbanization.
an American Dream opens on Friday from 5-7pm and run through April 1st.
Photos by Avoid pi
New in The Vandalog Shop – Special edition Underbelly Project book
Rizzoli recently published the official book documenting The Underbelly Project, We Own the Night: The Art of The Underbelly Project. If you haven’t heard of The Underbelly Project, check out my firsthand account. Basically, over 100 artists were taken down to an abandoned subway station beneath New York City to put up artwork and explore hidden depths of the city. Artists involved in the project include Revok, Roa, Anthony Lister, Faile, Ron English, Dan Witz, Gaia, Know Hope, Haze and many others.
In December, a collector’s edition of the book was sold at The Underbelly Project’s show in Miami. Until now, that show was the only place to pick up a copy of this special edition of We Own the Night. The collector’s edition version includes a hardcover copy of the book, nine photographic prints from the project, and comes in a handcrafted and laser-engraved oak box. This package is an edition of 100, plus 10 APs, and a handful were held back in Miami to be sold later. Now, the remaining collector’s editions are available online for the first time exclusively at The Vandalog Shop.
The Underbelly Project is one of the most fascinating projects to ever happen in the street art or graffiti worlds. While there are photos all over the web showing what the project looked liked, reading We Own the Night is just about the only way to get a sense of what it was actually like to participate in The Underbelly Project. I saw The Underbelly Project in the flesh, but hearing other people’s stories shed new light on it even for me. I’m extremely pleased that The Vandalog Shop will be selling the collector’s edition of We Own the Night, giving people who couldn’t make it to Basel Miami a chance to pick up a copy. My copy of We Own the Night was the best thing I’ve received under a Christmas tree in years, and I hope other people will enjoy the book and the photographs as much as I do.
Here are a just a couple of the photographs included in the set:
Other images include work by Roa, Anthony Lister, Skullphone, Kid Zoom, Revok, Ceaze and Jeff Soto.
Only a few of these collector’s editions are remain, and The Vandalog Shop is the only place you’ll find them online. They are available for $250.
We Own the Night is also available in a regular paperback edition.
Photos by Ian Cox, Emile Souris and The Underbelly Project