Author: RJ Rushmore

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.
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Rooftop Burner Fund

As you may have heard, Rowdy’s home burned down recently. Luckily, he was not hurt (I don’t think anyone else was either), but everything inside the house has been destroyed. Rowdy is a member of Burning Candy, a hard working artist, a friend that I’ve worked with on multiple projects in the last year and an awesome person. Rowdy’s reputation is known throughout Europe, so when his friends heard that his home and possessions had been completely destroyed, people came together to do something. That something is Steal From Work’s Rooftop Burner Fund. Steal From Work have brought artwork together from an international array of artists for a benefit auction to help out Rowdy. Here’s the press release:

So, there are plenty of charity events, plenty of causes worth fighting for, whole countries at war…. But sometimes it’s just about helping your friends, helping those you love. And here we’re taking the opportunity to help one of our best friends.

If you don’t know, here’s the introduction. Rowdy is one of the longest standing players in UK graffiti, supporting the scene and playing his part in what has now turned into a global phenomenon. He has painted with the best of them, in fact is one of the best of them, always sticking true to his vision, rocking his own style, never selling out his ideas. Recently he walked out of his house, which also served as his studio and when he returned a half hour later, everything had been burned to the ground. EVERYTHING! ID, money, clothes, personal possessions, art, the ability to make art, everything gone!

So, we’re taking this as an opportunity to support someone who has so readily supported us as a scene by auctioning some art to help him get back to a position where he can do what he does best, making art.

It’s a testament to his popularity and reputation that so many artists have donated work to this auction. All work has been personally donated by the artists and the galleries that represent them: Banksy, Paul Insect, Swoon, Sickboy, Hush, Espo, the whole Burning Candy crew and a whole bunch more… So, it’s your chance to buy something beautiful and at the same time help out someone who has helped in his way to make graffiti and street art what it is today.

THE ART

A massive thanks to the following artists who have donated work:
Banksy
Case
Cept
Cyclops
Dscreet
Gold Peg
Guy Denning
Herakut
Hush
LL Brainwashed
Mighty Monkey
Motorboy
Mr Jago
Mudwig
Paris
Paul Insect
Rene Gagnon
Sickboy
Static
Sweet Toof
Swoon
Tek33
Tom Hine
45rpm
Plus more still to be announced

And also huge thanks to the following galleries for donating:
Black Rat Projects
Campbarbossa
Pictures On Walls

THE AUCTION
The Auction will be via e-bay at: http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/stealfromwork

It will commence Thursday 17th June, and we will stagger the items over the next few days so they don’t all end together. The first items will end Sunday 27th June.

Other than Paypal fees & postage costs EVERY singe penny raised will go to Rowdy.

We will only be accepting bids via e-bay.

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Burning Candy updates

Tek33, Gold Peg and Sweet Toof. Photo by Tek33

There are a few little bits to mention today about my friends in Burning Candy. The crew have been keeping pretty busy lately.

  1. The above wall (thanks to Tek33 for putting me up) is the latest in at least 3 large walls painted in London by members of BC in the last month or so. Nolionsinengland has photographed the other two.
  2. Important note: I worked at High Roller Society for one day last week, but it’s not a regular job or something I expect to repeat since I’m moving soon. The crew’s Candy Shop show at High Roller Society kicks ass. It’s a small space, but Burning Candy have really made full use of the gallery. The installation is really fun to explore. There are so many little bits that it’s unlikely anybody noticed every minor detail that the crew had put into the assemblage of paintings, stickers, sculptures, drawings and found objects. There are photos on High Roller Society’s flickr, but I think that this weekend was the show’s last and it is now closed. But double check with HRS I guess, because I could be wrong.
  3. The crew is traveling. Sweet Toof is painting in New York City and a standard Mighty Mo/Sweet Toof has appeared in Amsterdam.
  4. Sweet Toof’s got an interview in this week’s le cool.

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Banksy artworks stolen from Art Republic and Kate Moss

Photo by -paul

Neither of these are the biggest art heist of the week, but it’s been reported that thousands of pounds worth of Banksy artwork has been stolen in two separate thefts over the past few week.

First, the BBC reports that on May 1st, two thieves made off with £16,000 worth of Banksy prints from London’s Art Republic store. One was a Happy Choppers (number 118) print and the other was a Nola Grey (number 15). One of the thieves smashed through the gallery window with a street sign to get inside. So be on the lookout for those numbers if you’re trying to buy either of those Banksy prints in the future.

And then this second report is maybe a bit less reliable. It comes from the Daily Mirror which recently claimed that Banksy was painting a mural in Kate Moss’ home for £150,000 and that Moss was only getting the mural painted so that she could increase the value of her house, a claim which sounds pretty absurd. Now the Daily Mirror says that a thief broke into Moss’ house on Thursday night and stole three artworks, including a Banksy worth £80,000. I wonder what the painting looked like… A Kate Moss portrait perhaps?

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Willoughby Windows v2.0

Skewville

Daryll Peirce sent me these photos from Willoughby Windows v2.0, the latest version of Ad Hoc Art’s Willoughby Windows project (the first event took place last June). Willoughby Windows v2.0 brought together 15 artists to fill 13 vacant storefronts in Brooklyn with artwork. C.Damage, Chris Mendoza & Pablo Power, Daryll Peirce, Faust, Hellbent, Jef Aerosol, Joe Iurato, Laura Lee, LogikOne, Ron English, Skewville and Thundercut participated in the project this time around. Here are some of the installations they created:

Ron English
Daryll Peirce (finished piece in his studio, later installed in a storefront)
C. Damage
Thundercut
Hellbent

Photos by Daryll Peirce

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The Muse of Street Art

NeSpoon‘s latest project is pretty clever. It’s called The Muse of Street Art and here’s how she describes it:

Saski Garden (Ogród Saski) – former king’s garden in the center of Warsaw, since 1727 open for public.
Main attraction is the group of 21 baroque sculptures – allegorical muses of human’s creativity and science. One of them was an orphan, with no allocation. I adopt her 🙂

The two photo above were taken before NeSpoon’s modifications. The next photo is an example of the label that most of these statues had, but not the one that NeSpoon has modified.

And here’s what NeSpoon did:

Photos from NeSpoon’s Behance page

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Armsrock – Drawn Towards the Present

Yes. Armsrock has a solo show coming up in London. This is going to be fantastic. Except, for some reason, it sometimes feels like I’m alone in thinking that Armsrock’s work is brilliant. Hopefully this upcoming solo show will change some people’s opinions. Drawn Towards the Present opens at Signal Gallery on June 3rd.

Here’s the press release:

The Danish artist Armsrock, is one of a handful of artists on the Urban/Street art scene whose work reaches out beyond the confines of the genre. The quality and unique nature of his work, both on the street and for the gallery, has made him stand out in that talented crowd.

Armsrock’s work consists of delicately drawn figures, which he pastes on walls in urban settings. Mostly life-size portraits of humans on the edge of society, the character and placement of these pieces make them feel, sometimes, as if they have been tattooed to the wall. At other times, they can appear transitory – as if they had just arrived at a scene and are about to move on. More recently, he has developed an analogue projection technique that enables him to combine his magical drawn figures with light. This has the effect of making the images even more fragile and fleeting, almost like ghosts.

His new show in Signal Gallery is called ‘Drawn Towards The Present’. The show will be built around an installation that will consist of monumental charcoal drawings on rice paper. The imagery represented in the drawings is based on press-clippings from the artist’s archive, which have been reworked to create a fragmentary representation of contemporary history and a glimpse into our future hopes and fears.

Armsrock, was born in 1984 in Copenhagen and graduated at the Hochschule Für Kunst in Bremen, Germany. The quality of his art has been recognised internationally and has been seen in streets and public spaces across Europe and the United States. He has also shown his work extensively in traditional art institutions, such as museums and galleries. This is a young artist whose passion and commitment to his craft has won him supporters and buyers wherever he has shown his work.

Unfortunately, I’m going to be in Italy when this show opens, but I expect it’s going to be quite something to see. And make sure to get down to the gallery quickly, because the show only lasts from June 3rd until the 19th.

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Huge new(ish) mural in Vancouver

This mural by Titifreak, Peeta, Indigo and Faith47 was painted last month in Vancouver. I love how it turned out, especially Titifreak’s bit. The wall was painted for a certain event there, but since I have nothing good to say about the manipulative group that organized the mural, I’m not going to give them publicity by linking them up or naming the event. The art looks good though.

Faith47
Peeta
Titifreak
Titifreak, Peeta and Indigo

Photos by S.Vegas, who has a whole set of photos of this wall