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.
Posted on

Work To Do in Brooklyn

In what looks to be the mother of all group shows, perhaps the MuTATE Britain of Brookyln (yes, I’m a bit prone to hyperbole, but so are most blogs), Work To Do is a show opening March 26th at 112 Green Street Studio in New York. Work To Do has work from a few dozen artists including Royce Bannon (the show’s curator), Robots Will Kill, Stikman, Hush, Aiko, Matt Siren, Bast, Ellis G., Cake and many more.

Perhaps the coolest thing about Work To Do is that the show is not a traditional gallery exhibition with lots of work for sale but instead every artist involved will be painting the walls of the space, and only some will end up selling any work.

Work To Do Flyer

For slightly more information, check out The Combine’s website

Posted on

The Free Zulu Project

A few weeks ago I posted about The Treatment Rooms. In that post, I briefly mentioned the Angola 3 and Kenny Zulu Whitmore. They are prisoners in Angola Prison who have spent over 30 years in solitary confinement. Their stories are really terrible, and you can learn more on Wikipedia or Zulu’s website.

The Free Zulu organization is trying to get justice for Zulu and raise money for his legal defense fund (currently, Zulu doesn’t even have a lawyer). Their efforts are largely funded by art projects. Right now they have “OBEY” style tshirts for sale and some tiles from The Treatment Rooms. Later this year, Matt Small will be painting a portrait of Zulu, and hopefully more artists will get involved in the future.

These are the sort of things that make me really glad I’m involved in street art and really upset that I’m from America, but at least we can do something to help.

Posted on

PosterBoy Show Next Month in NYC

Some pretty exciting news from New York. One of New York’s newest art galleries, Eastern District, is having a show with PosterBoy opening April 3rd. Information is limited at this point, with just a few lines on Eastern Districts website. The show is presented by Public Ad Campaign, a really cool blog. This show is going to be one of my first stops when I visit New York next month. I bet it is going to be amazing. Other than the piece photographed below, these should be PosterBoy’s first works in a gallery.

The Neocons

Photo from PosterBoy’s flickr

Posted on

Herakut and War Child Reception at Philips de Pury

Click the image to see it larger
Click the flyer to read it larger

Tuesday night is the opening reception for the Phillips de Pury Saturday Sale featuring a brand new work by Herakut which will be sold with proceeds going to the charity War Child. And of course, the auction is on Saturday and has work from all the usual suspects in street art plus a couple of cool toys.

Posted on

Anthony Lister Solo Opens in Italy

Anthony Lister Wall

Nine times out of ten, Anthony Listers’ work leaves me absolutely blown away. That’s why I was so pleased to hear that he has a solo show called “The Pain of Feeling” opening tomorrow at KGallery in Italy. The above photo is from a wall that he’s painted at KGallery.

KGALLERY
IS PROUD TO ANNOUNCE
“THE PAIN OF FEELING”

THE ITALIAN SOLO EXHIBITION
OF ANTHONY LISTER,

FROM MARCH 7 TO APRIL 11, 2009
The show will present new, unreleased works by the artist
Born in Brisbane 30 years ago, based in New York for 3 years, Anthony Lister comes back to Italy with new works.

After the 2007 edition of Allarmi in Como, the group exhibition entitled Kick off at KGallery in 2007 and the solo exhibition “God’s got a plan to kill me” in April 2008, the new Lister’s exhibition entitled “The Pain of Feeling” open in KGallery, Legnano, on March 07 (until April 11, 2009).

Anthony Lister, indeed one of the most sensational contemporary artists, paints on large canvas taking inspiration from street art as well as ordinary life. Superheroes are revisited and deformed through an almost minimal style. A style that becomes absolutely individual and recognizable, 100% original despite the overexposure of the icons. “The work is about sexual content online – Anthony Lister says about  “The Pain of Feeling – and the drive for young women to behave like their misguided rolmodels”

Lister’s solo exhibitions in the past months, scattered all around the world, from London to New York, from Melbourne to San Francisco, from Miami to Los Angeles, have made some of his works true relics, at the center of discussions in the world  of collectionism.

ANTHONY LISTER

The Pain of Feeling

07 March – 11 April, 2009

Legnano (Milan), KGallery

piazza Europa 15

Opening hours: from Thursday to Saturday, from 16.30 to 19.30

And on appointment

www.kgallery.it

More preview images after the jump.. Continue reading “Anthony Lister Solo Opens in Italy”

Posted on

Last Night’s Openings

Last night my friends and I made it to four gallery openings.

Pam Glew Flag

We started at Pam Glew‘s show at Stella Dore. There are a few pieces that are pretty cool and her bleeching technique is interesting, but I think I’ve become a bit jaded by street art. I couldn’t keep from thinking: “portraits from a one-layer stencil” And of course, those seem to be everywhere these days. My friend who doesn’t obsessively follow street art didn’t have that same bias, and really enjoyed everything. Continue reading “Last Night’s Openings”

Posted on

Skewville’s Bushwick Project

Trust Art has been described as “a stock market for art projects” but it’s also about cultural renewal. The basic idea is that investors can fund projects proposed by artists and after a year the resulting artwork is auctioned off an the investors split the proceeds 50/50 with the artist. In the mean time, the art project not only produces art, but helps to build up a local community.

Skewville, the New York artists best known for throwing wooden shoes onto power lines, have propsed one of Trust Art’s inugural projects: The Street Art Urban Revitalization Program. Their project proposes to find 10 rundown and ill-maintained buildings in Bushwick that can be covered in murals by local artists. The project is meant to promote the local artists and make the local buildings look nicer, since right now there are a good number of abandoned or poorly maintained buildings in Bushwick.

At the end of the project, there will be work sold at auction, which is where the investors have the potential to make their money back.

Definitely a cool project. Hopefully Skewville can raise the $65,000 they are looking for.

Posted on

Help Bring Holli Home

From the guys at Black Rat Press:

This is a friend of a friend if anyone feels to donate would be amazing.

Help Bring Holli Home
Bay Area artist Holli Hawthorne recently traveled to India to visit her boyfriend and was involved in a horrible motorcycle accident last Tuesday when a motorcycle in front of her with three passengers skidded out, and she either swerved to avoid them or ran into them. She was wearing a helmet at the time. Her friend Harrison was on the scene to give her CPR until the ambulance arrived. She has been in a coma with a serious brain stem injury since. Stanford Medical Center has offered to take her in for free as she has no health insurance. That’s the good news. The bad news is that she’s still in India thousands of miles from the hospital and needs $200,000 for the medical transport from India to Palo Alto. Her friends and family are reaching out for donations.
http://friendsofhollis.blogspot.com/