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.
This is part of Vandalog’s “Great in ’08” series, which will be running every day for the rest of the month. Check out previous posts here. Street artists from across the world have been given one post to give away to an artist (or two) who they feel has been doing great work recently. Today it’s Klone‘s turn (you can check out Vandalog’s recent Q&A with Klone here).
Who is one artist doing really great work right now?
Klone: Anthony Lister comes to my mind immediately. He is a great artist, one to follow for sure, that’s all agreed, but there’s more to my appreciation of Lister. It’s the fact he came from Australia, disconnected from the rest of the world and having to put more into getting himself out, I know the feeling exactly as Israel is like an island, sea on one side and rival countries on the others; now how you get yourself recognized outside of the island?
Here’s the first post in Vandalog’s “Great in ’08” series, which will be running every day for (nearly) the rest of the month. You can check out the other parts of the series here (once they are posted). Street artists from across the world have been given one post to give away to one artist who they feel has been doing great work recently. Today it’s Veng‘s turn.
Who is one artist doing really great work right now?
Veng: The artist that is doing some really good work now, I feel is Elbowtoe. Looking at his work, you can see the level of detail he puts into each brush stroke or each cut into a piece of linoleum, however beyond the details on the surface it’s the level of attention that goes into each piece’s story that makes them great works.
The film for Asbestos’ Boxing Club show in Belfast has come it. It’s a really cool looking show, and watching the process behind only makes the work more powerful.
Update: Check out the other posts in this series here.
Unless you live in a strange world where time does not exist, we’re coming to the end of 2008. As my contribution to street art’s end-of-year/Christmas/Hanukkah/winter solstice activities, I’ve organized a series of posts which will run from tomorrow until the end of the year.
What’s so special about these posts? I’ve asked a number of street artists one question: “Who is one artist doing really great work right now?” and given them the chance to respond and “gift” a post to the artist or artists that they’ve chosen.
Starting tomorrow, and continuing for the rest of the month (or at least until Boxing Day), I’ll be posting one of these responses every day, along with photos of work by chosen the artists.
Here’s a small selection of the artists who will be sharing some of their favorite artists with Vandalog readers in the coming weeks:
Mike Marcus has started a great new project where he’s painting red dots on pieces all around London (galleries put red dots next to pieces that have been sold).
Photo by Sandrine Plasseraud
Here’s an excerpt from Mike’s blog post on the project, which makes some very valid points on the state of street/urban art:
Like many fine artists eventually do, I have reached a point where I want to devote myself to my practice full time. In order to do this, I need to make enough money through public funding and print sales to cover my needs for rent, food, art materials and the occasional beer. Obviously the urban art scene is a good place to target because so much money is being spent. For this reason I devoted much of the past month to marketing myself in this sector.
As this period draws to a close, I have to say that I have been left a little disappointed. Of the long conversations I have had with collectors and dealers, I have come to the conclusion that the scene wants to consume (both commercially and intellectually) safe art. Because of the supreme lack of imagination shown by its aficionados, todays urban art seems to be a retrospective of yesterdays street art, a parody of itself.
What happened to the radical movement where we could say what we wanted without being moderated by galleries? Weren’t we meant to be subversive? These days it seems that we are more conservative than the art establishment which we reacted against. Somewhere during the change from “street” to “urban”, the movement lost its passion and subsequently its message.
I think Mike is right about this (to an extent). His work is certainly on the controversial side, and I think some of his most controversial stuff is his best. Unfortunately, it also gets ripped off the walls after 30 seconds and I don’t know many street art collectors who would want to put such controversial work in their homes.
Mike has decided to push the boundaries, and street art says he’s pushed too far. Isn’t that the point of street art? Are street art fans getting complacent and boring?
Anybody go to Pictures on Walls today? I enjoyed it, but after reading Mike’s post, I’m starting to see it differently. What boundaries were being broken? Isn’t that what attracted us to street art in the first place? Artists were tearing down the art establishment by giving away their art, now they are trying to become the art establishment.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love street art, I just think we need to be careful. Street art needs to remember what it is supposed to be. I love that street art took over the Tate Modern, but the Tate needs to adapt to us, we shouldn’t adapt to suit it.
I went on a street art walk through Shoreditch today with gofindit.net, which is an campaign for the new Ford KA. The website isn’t really about the KA though, it’s meant to be about how you can discover new things by just opening your eyes and looking around. While I’m not the biggest fan of car companies co-oping street art because it’s “hip” and “cool”, the website does have a few cool bits.
First, they’ve put together a great video of Shoreditch graffiti:
Second, remember Space Invader’s QR codes? Well Ford’s made some really sick ones for this campaign that they’ve been sticking around Shoreditch. Once again, we have the question of is it okay to think something that Ford is doing is cool, but I think you’ll agree, these are, at the very least, cool technology. Besides, maybe some street artists will pick up on this idea… Check out the video of Ford’s QR codes below. I got to play with these a bit today, and I have to say, really fun.
Zeus recently made one of his trademark arrows (seen at Cans Festival and NuArt, among other places) for Al Gore’s television station Current TV. I think it turned out very well. Those little slots in it are used for storing books.
