I’m not a big ZEVS fan myself. In fact, I’ve always found his liquidated logos pretty boring, but it’s not good to see street artists get arrested as he recently was in Hong Kong. Here’s a video interview with ZEVS from Hong Kong that talks about exactly how that arrest happened.
It’s been pointed out that there was something very important that I missed in yesterday’s post about Banksy’s auction results.
WallKandy, on WallKandy’s forums in fact, noted this morning that Lyon & Turnbull, the auction house whose representative is quoted in the original Bloomberg article, kind of had it coming and shouldn’t be suprised that their Banksy pieces failed to sell. Those works were pieces taken off the street and authenticated by VERMIN, not Pest Control (the official Banksy authenticators). Sorry to have written that long post yesterday based on that information, though I guess now my critisism of the article is even more valid as Banksy work hasn’t been doing as bad at auction as some Bloomberg readers now think.
UPDATE: Here is an important correction to this article. In short, many of the Banksy works referred to in this article shouldn’t have sold, as they were street works and not properly authenticated. Sorry I didn’t notice that when I first read the article, and thanks to WallKandy for the heads up.
Bloomberg.com reports that “Works by Banksy are disappearing from U.K. auctions as collectors shy away from paintings by graffiti artists in the financial slump.” Okay, so this isn’t actually so suprising, I’m more interested that it is being covered by Bloomberg. Banksy’s work isn’t selling like it used to at auction, despite some amazing work at both Sotheby’s and Christies (aka, two versions of The Flower Chucker being sold within a month).
This is a good article and should be read in full, but here’s a little sample:
Works by Banksy are disappearing from U.K. auctions as collectors shy away from paintings by graffiti artists in the financial slump.British regional auction houses have canceled specialist sales of urban art in London, while some of their bigger rivals’ catalogs have few stenciled works by Banksy, who was born in Bristol, west England, and keeps his identity a secret.
Falling prices and rising failure rates for Banksy works earlier this year have made sellers reluctant to test the market with higher-value paintings. Auction prices for contemporary artists generally have dropped between 30 and 50 percent with the crisis, according to dealers.
“There’s no point flogging a dead horse,” Ben Hanly, contemporary-art specialist at the Edinburgh auctioneers, Lyon & Turnbull, said in an interview. “The core collectors have been decimated. Young City types don’t want to spend 20,000 pounds ($32,690) or 30,000 pounds on trendy art at the moment.”
There were no Banksy paintings to be seen at Sotheby’s, Christie’s International’s and Phillips de Pury’s evening contemporary-art auctions in London in June, or at Bonhams’s Vision 21 sale on July 1. Meanwhile Lyon & Turnbull and Berkshire-based auctioneer Dreweatt Neate both dropped standalone events.
Five Banksy sprayed-stenciled works, ranging in estimate from 7,000 pounds to 18,000 pounds, failed to sell at Lyon & Turnbull’s April 24 contemporary-art auction in London. The company’s October sale will contain a higher proportion of works by established 20th-century British artists, said Hanly.
One important note that the article does go on to make is that street art, including work by Banksy, has been put into contemporary art auctions recently. Gone are the days of the “Urban Art Auction” and while yes, the market has slowed down, the positive to all this is that Banksy’s is in the same auctions as Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst. Perhaps street artists are going to be taken more seriously as a result of this move.
While this article definitely has some insights and is a good overview of what’s been going on with Banksy’s auction results lately, I do take issue with it on one thing.
Is it really fair to say that Banksy (and, by implication, street art as a whole) is in terrible shape right now? EVERYTHING IS FAILING TO SELL AT AUCTION! THERE WAS AN ART MARKET BUBBLE! Nobody can’t honestly say that just street art or Banksy is in trouble.
If we just look at Banksy for a moment, he has never been bigger, at least in the eyes of the public. According to Google Trends, there have been more web searches for the name “Banksy” in recent months than the term “modern art”. Banksy’s recent Bristol show has put his name in every major newspaper in the country, and only 10 days ago Steve Lazarides, Banksy’s former manager, had a major write-up in The Times.
Yes, art is doing poorly right now, but Banksy is by no means the worst off out of the entire art market, and neither is street art in general.
Yesterday I had the chance to see Urban Angel’s latest group show, The Show Must Go On.
There are a bunch of artists involved in the show, but I’ve just picked a few high (and low) lights to cover here.
As usual, Best Ever is coming out with even better work. These guys have continued to develop their style into something distinctive and just plain cool to look at.
Also some cool work from Remi. Just when I think I’m going to get tired of his stuff, he paints something to get me interested again. The sketch in particular caught my eye.
Ok and now for that lowlight (is that a word?) I mentioned. Mantis. Mantis has done some work that I like. His work at Hackney Wick is not to be missed and I’m sure that if this stencil had been by Banksy, it would be worth a couple hundred grand. But his latest piece by Old Street just doesn’t cut it for me. I get the message, but it’s about 10 months too late and not that great to begin with. And why does he have to turn that image into a print release and an original work after being on the street for less than a month?
Surely, the message is now completely gone. The way I saw this piece on the street, it is about how people paid absurd amounts of money for Banksy’s work, which is often meant to make a poltical statement about poverty, when instead they could spend that money actually helping some starving African kids. And now I’m expected to buy that image from Mantis. No thank you.
So as to not end on such a sour note, let me say that there is also new work from Mikael Alacoque in the show, and though I could never have one of those dogs in my house all the time, they sure are fun to go and have a look at.
Photos by WallKandy
I’m a bit late on this one, but I think the work that Elbowtoe put up while he was in London recently is really something. He came over as part of a show at Black Rat Press, but I think where he really made an impression is on the streets. Unfortunately, a lot of this work hasn’t survived very long, but there is still one large piece completely untouched just outside the doors to Black Rat Press (as if you needed a reason to stop by that gallery).
Can we all just agree that the very best work at the Cans Festival was Vhils? That would make this whole thing a lot easier. Vhils completely surprised everybody there by literally taking a jackhammer to the walls of Leake Street. So then he released a couple of prints at Pictures on Walls which sold out instantly. They are beautiful and the bleaching technique is different from what anybody else is doing. Occasionally, there would be original work from Vhils available through Lazarides or at a gallery in Portugal. People loved his torn poster portraits and city-scapes. When Lazarides announced a Vhils solo show, it was cause for celebration. That show, “Scratching The Surface,” opened on July 3rd.
Now, I wasn’t in London for the opening, but I made sure to visit the gallery as soon as I got back in town.
The show includes a few different kinds of work from Vhils. First of all, there are his wonderful installation pieces that are carved into a temporary wall that has been installed in the gallery. These are probably his most iconic and identifiable works (check out this cool video of Vhils chiseling them). Then there are his almost as well known ripped poster portraits. These two styles take up more than half of the show. Although I like these works, there are just too many in this show.
The above piece was my favorite of Vhils’ ripped poster style, and I think it was one of only 2 of that style in the room it was in. Maybe it is a coincidence, but I think that maybe this style just doesn’t work well when you see a lot of them at once. They just don’t seem as well. I also like the drips on this one and the way it looks much more like a natural occurrence than some of the other paintings.
Then there were the pieces carved into wood.
They looked beautiful, and there were only a couple, so I’m still eager to see more. I think that’s the way to do it. Now I’m excited to see where Vhils takes this style in the future.
Another style I’m looking forward to more of are the pieces on metal.
They remind me of Vhils’ prints, and have a nice 3D look to them while, ironically, the actually 3d carving and ripped poster pieces look very 2d.
I think that the user “Irony” on the WallKandy forums sums up this show very well: “One of the few examples where the art in pictures looks better than the ‘live’ art. Although I see plenty of potential there (technique, variety of material used, skills), it just doesn’t work well in the gallery. Too clean and deliberate. And the mostly portrait theme of the show doesn’t help either. However one of the better artist out there.”
I like the portrait style, but would have liked to see more of Vhils’ cityscape pieces mixed in, and Vhils definitely has talent, I’m just not sure he quite compares to some of the other artists having solo shows at Lazarides just yet. After seeing the show, I suggested on twitter that maybe it could have been better as a two man show. Maybe I would be more excited about Vhils’ new work if there had been half as much, because then it would have been varied, and only the better half of this show would have been on display, and that better half is definitely worth checking out.
Although this post has been a bit critical of Vhils, I have to say that that some of my favorite new pieces of art for the past year have been Vhils’ prints, and I would urge people to check out his latest print release at Pictures on Walls, which is still available.
I haven’t had a chance to read this book in person yet, so I have to refer to to what Hurt You Bad says about the book. Sounds like a pretty good overview of London’s graffiti scene.
If you’re looking for a copy, the gallery is open from 12-6 on Saturday and from 12-3 on Sunday, or you can order the book online.
The official video for Charming Baker‘s recent show “The Meaning of Everything” has just been released. Normally I’m not one for videos of shows when I could just look at photos that are a higher quality, but kind of like the soundtrack to this video, so I’m posting it.
Charming Baker is one of those few artists who can transition seamlessly from “urban art” to “contemporary art,” in fact, sometimes I don’t quite understand why he is considered an urban artist (then I remember that he has, on occassion, taken guns and shot his paintings). So while his last show was on Redchurch Street and clearly had a bit of an urban art spin to it, this latest project puts Baker up alongside some of the greats in the wider contemporary art scene. The Blank Canvas Project is a charity art project involving artists like Charming Baker, Peter Blake, Gavin Turk, the Chapman Brothers, and Tracy Emin. Each artist creates a tent, and they will be displayed at The Bill Chill Festival to raise money for The Big Issue and Amnesty International.
Prescription Art has given Londoners a reason to take a quick seaside holiday over to Brighton. For two more weeks, “Tales From The Seaside” features work from artists like Pinky, Zeus, Aakash Nihalani, Skewville, and Case.
Here are a few photos from the show:
Today I’m being a bit lazy and just sharing a few links, but I’ve just spent all day catching up on a backlog of emails and RSS feeds, so hopefully I can be excused. A full review of Vhil’s show at Lazarides gallery is coming tomorrow. Most of these things are a bit dated and just events that happened while I was away on vacation but were not covered by my wonderful guest posters.
