RJ Rushmore has been involved in contemporary art as a writer, curator, photographer, arts administrator, and fan since 2008. With a focus on street art, graffiti, and public art, RJ facilitates and promotes catalytic and ambitious art outdoors, in galleries, and online. He founded the street art blog Vandalog and has worked at The L.I.S.A. Project NYC, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and Creative Time. Currently, RJ is Co-Curator of Art in Ad Places.
Found a few walls worth mentioning today, from a variety of artists, so I’m throwing them all together here. Above is one of Eine‘s murals in San Fransisco, painted as part of his show at White Walls Gallery.
Skewville are getting busy on the streets of London. Here’s one of the shop roll gates they’ve painted:
Skewville. Photo by High Roller Society
This is the first thing I’ve seen from Canvaz, but I’m liking it:
Canvaz. Photo by Canvaz
And finally this is by Weah on a vacant building in Houston, Texas (see more from Weah here):
Claudio Ethos sent over these photos of a few new walls in Amsterdam and São Paulo. Loving them as usual. Ethos also has a new blog where he’ll be posting photos of his latest artwork.
A collaboration with Onesto. Click on the image for a view of the full wall.
This week is spring break, so I’ve been enjoying some relaxation and watching too many films on Netflix, but in the mean time, there were of course some stories that slipped by me. Here are some of them:
Some of my favorite photographers in the UK have put together a graffiti zine.
That cool-looking film about the guys who illegally buff graffiti, Vigilante Vigilante, is almost done but needs a bit more money for editing, so they’ve got a Kickstarter campaign started.
Looks like The Leonard Street Gallery saga from a few years ago isn’t quite over.
Skewville, my second favorite street art twin duo (Os Gemeos kind of takes the cake in that category), will have a solo show next week at High Roller Society in Bethnal Green. Skewville make some of the most fun art around, both indoors and outdoors. This show, Slow Your Roll, will involve both new and old work, including some of their crazy sculptures. The opening of Slow Your Roll is going to be the place to be for art fans next Friday, March 18th. Don’t miss it. I’m also hoping that while Skewville are in London, they will get up to some trouble outdoors as well, but I haven’t seen anything yet.
Elbow Toe aka Brian Adam Douglas is/was in London this week for the launch of his new book, Paper Cuts, and the opening of his show Due Date at Black Rat Projects. While in town, Elbow Toe put up a few street peices. Most of Due Date was recently at the Warrington Museum (photos here), but there is one major addition the version now on at Black Rat: A massive 5×7 foot collage called The Memory Of You Is Never Lost Upon Me.
The Memory Of You Is Never Lost Upon Me (click to view large). Photo by Elbow Toe
Due Date is open at Black Rat Projects now, but I’m not sure when it closes.
Here’s Elbow Toe’s latest image for the street, which looks like it is up along the canal in Hackney:
El Celso isn’t the only artist who is experimenting with Peru’s unique Chica style of posters, a style pioneered by the Urcuhuaranga family in Lima, Peru. In Miami, Primary Projects have a group show opening this Saturday in homage to Chica posters. For Para Mi Gente, more than 50 artists have contributed designs to a Chica-style collaboration. Shepard Fairey, El Celso, Tristan Eaton, Skullphone, Posterboy, El Tono and others have sent designs to the Primary Projects crew who will combine all these designs by hand painting them throughout the gallery. The artists have little control over how their designs will look on the walls, where they will appear, or next to what. This sounds like a pretty unique and risky show. It should look cool, and it will definitely mess with the standard notions of what gallery art should be and look like.
Here’s the flyer with all the critical info you may need:
This crazy wall at Moda Hotel in Vancouver is a collaboration between Scott Sueme, Joker, Remi/Rough and Augustine Kofie for the Unintended Calculation show, which opened last week.
ATG, the graffiti crew/party throwers/clothing makers from London, have relaunched their website and brought out a new line of clothes for spring. My favorite thing from the spring line has to be the above t-shirt with this sweater coming in a close second. For more, check out their shop and their website.
It seems that there is more to say about Banksy‘s recent piece, This Looks A Bit Like An Elephant, which was removed and is now for sale. Until as recently as September of 2010, a man had been living inside the water tank that Banksy painted. Tachowa Covington aka Rollerball has lived inside the tank for about seven years. In fact, it’s probably a good guess, although I can’t say for sure, that Tachowa was still living in the tank when Banksy painted it, given that he shows up in the video that Banksyelephant.com (the folks trying to sell the tank) have posted on their homepage and says that he saw Banksy paint the tank.
There have been a couple of short films made about Tachowa:
Melrose and Fairfax wonder if maybe Banksy was unaware of Tachowa’s story or that maybe he was aware of Tachowa but was doing a favor for a friend who wanted the tank removed (local residents had been trying to get the tank removed because it disrupts their view of the landscape, and if it weren’t a home, I’d probably agree with them). They also point out that whatever Banksy’s intent, the consequences seem to have left Tachowa homeless.
I’m not so sure about that(edit) that Banksy was unaware of Tachowa though. Given that Banksy has dealt with the issue of homelessness before (including tangentially during the same trip to LA when This Looks A Bit Like An Elephant was painted), it seems possible that this piece was about homelessness (the elephant in the room) and that Banksy was aware that the tank was Tachowa’s home. If that’s true, the meaning of the piece becomes mutli-layered and more than a quick joke about the shape of the tank.
Either way, the questions are now: Where is Tachowa now, how is Tachowa doing, will Banksy help him out and has Banksy done so already?
