Category: Featured Posts

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Split opinions: Fragments of Faile at Lazarides

Faile shocked their fans and detractors alike last week when they unveiled their newest body of work at Lazarides’ Gallery’s Rathbone Place location in London. The show, Fragments of Faile, features two distinct series. One is pretty much what you might expect from Faile: Familiar trademark imagery, styles and themes, mixed with some small steps forward. As usual, it was the introduction of new ideas into the Faile repertoire alongside the classics. If you’re a fan of Faile, you’ll like those pieces, and if you’re not, well the new twists probably won’t convince you. Most people I’ve spoken with say these are their favorite pieces in the show, and I have to agree. But those pieces are also getting very little attention compared to the completely new body of work that Faile introduced at the show: 100% painted (no screenprinting) portraits of women made up of abstract fabric patterns and bits of Faile iconography on top of very calm and un-Faile-like backgrounds. While there are a large number of people speaking out and saying how much they enjoy this new twist from Faile, among the people whose views I respect, the majority would not hang these paintings on their walls (although some would). Nuart’s reviews seem to best exemplify the reaction that I’m getting most often from those that I respect. Among that group, the new style has been met with general disappointment and confusion, with some people comparing it to a less gritty Bast or derivative of Miss Bugs (of course, Bast and Faile have collaborated numerous times in the past, and Miss Bugs has in the past been thought of as derivative of Faile). Nonetheless, nearly everyone I’ve heard from has also expressed great excitement that Faile have tried something so unexpected. My thoughts and some perspective from Faile themselves after the jump… Continue reading “Split opinions: Fragments of Faile at Lazarides”

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Tubu community project

Painting by Bastardilla

The Tubú community is an indigenous group of families now living in the city of Bogotá, Columbia. Tubu Community is a project to help raise money to build a new home in Bogotá for a Tubú family. To learn more about the Tubú people, you can watch this video or read this info.

A new print from Stinkfish

At their webstore, Tubu Community has begun to sell prints and original art by South American and European artists to help with the effort. 100% of the proceeds from these sales go to the Tubú people. Blu, Bastardilla, Buytronick and Stinkfish have contributed original art and Eine and Stinfish have contributed prints, including a new 7-color screenprint by Stinkfish. Expect more products to be added to the webstore in the future.

Photos courtesy of Tubu Community

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Underbelly resurfaces: The Underbelly Show

Surge, Gaia, Stormie, Remi/Rough and in The Underbelly Project

UPDATE – LOCATION CHANGE: The Underbelly Show has moved to 78 NW 25th Street in Wynwood, Miami to accommodate the large scale of the artwork in this show.

The Underbelly Project is back. Last year, I posted a lot about the project where 103 artists from around the world secretly painted an abandoned/half-completed New York City subway station. After that initial burst of press here and around the web, The Underbelly Project organizers stayed silent. With only occasional vague tweets from a mysterious twitter account and the appearance on Amazon of an upcoming book about the project. Yesterday though, The Underbelly Project announced that they will be participating in this year’s Basel Miami Week madness with a pop-up gallery in South Beach Wynwood.

The organizers of The Underbelly Project and The Underbelly Show, Workhorse and PAC, have this to say about the show:

Workhorse: The New York Underbelly was an important chapter for us, but the story hadn’t been comprehensively told. The Underbelly Miami show gives us a chance to present the broad scope of documentation – Videos, photos, time-lapses and first hand accounts. The project is about more than just artwork. This show gives us a chance to show the people and the environment behind the artwork.

PAC: While the experience each artist had in their expedition underground can never be captured, it is my hope that this show will highlight some of the trials and tribulations associated with urban art taking place in the remote corners of our cities. Too often the practice of making art in unconventional venues remains shrouded in mystery and I hope this exhibition will shine a faint light on those artists who risk their safety to find alternative ways to create and be a part of the cities they live in.

35 of the 103 artists from The Underbelly Project will be exhibiting art in The Underbelly Show, plus video and still footage of the artists at work in the tunnel. Here’s the full line-up: Faile, Dabs & Myla, TrustoCorp, Aiko, Rone, Revok, Ron English, Jeff Soto, Mark Jenkins, Anthony Lister, Logan Hicks, Lucy McLauchlan, M-City, Kid Zoom, Haze, Saber, Meggs, Jim & Tina Darling, The London Police, Sheone, Skewville, Jeff Stark, Jordan Seiler, Jason Eppink and I AM, Dan Witz, Specter, Ripo, MoMo, Remi/Rough, Stormie Mills, Swoon, Know Hope, Skullphone, L’Atlas, Roa, Surge, Gaia, Michael De Feo, Joe Iurato, Love Me, Adam 5100, and Chris Stain.

For this show, the space will be transformed into an environment imitating the tunnel where The Underbelly Project took place, right down to playing sounds recorded in the station while The Underbelly Project was happening.

If you absolutely cannot wait until February to get We Own The Night, the book documenting The Underbelly Project, a limited number will be available at The Underbelly Show in a box set with 9 photographic prints and the book all contained in a handcrafted oak box. Additionally, you will be able to your book signed by the artists participating in The Underbelly Show.

The Underbelly Show will take place at 2200 Collins Avenue, South Beach, Miami 78 NW 25th Street, Wynwood, Miami. There will be a private opening on November 30th, and the space will be open to the general public December 2nd-5th, with a general opening on the 2nd from 8-10pm.

Photo by RJ Rushmore

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Vhils at Woolfest (yes, wool)

Vhils recently chiseled a wall in Covilhã, Portugal for Wool, an urban art festival in a town which has been closely tied to the wool and textile industry since the industrial revolution. The organizers of Wool say “With this piece VHILS wants to talk about the desertification of the interior of Portugal, which appears to be irreversible and portray the reality that we live in a territory with a population growing older, ‘where the cuts and the current measures are felt even more hardness and where most of young people are future opportunities and are forced to seek them elsewhere, either on the coast or abroad’.”

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Stormie Mills curates “For, Against, the Truth”

Three pieces by Jordan Seiler

Stormie Mills asked some of his favorite artists to paint three self-portraits from different perspectives. The result of that brief is For, Against, the Truth, a show opening this week at Linton & Kay Contemporary  Art in Perth, Australia. The show includes Vandalog regulars Remi/Rough, John Fekner and Jordan Seiler, as well as Kenton Parker, Jaybo Monk, Matt Doust, Marco ‘Pho’ Grassi, Jade Palmer, Amanda Lynn and Darren Henderson.

Photo by Jordan Seiler, flyer courtesy of Remi/Rough

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Moniker Art Fair opens today

Back again this year at Village Underground in London, the Moniker Art Fair is opening today and will be open through Sunday. In contrast to the Frieze art fair (also on this weekend in London), Moniker is free and focuses on work by street artists and low-brow artists. This year, galleries exhibiting at Moniker include Stolenspace, Scream, LeBasse Projects, Shea & Ziegler (Frankie Shea of Moniker/CampBarbossa teaming up with Tina Ziegler) and Andenken Gallery.

The program at this year’s fair is packed, so make sure to check it out before heading over, as there are a number of special events like print releases and artist talks going on. Hooked Blog is running tours of the fair and the surrounding street art on the weekend, something I had a lot of fun doing on a more informal basis last year.

In addition to gallery booths, the fair includes project spaces for individual artists. This year, Matt Small, Beejoir, Best Ever, Peeta, Dabs and Myla will be showing work in the project spaces.

Photo courtesy of Moniker Projects

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Nearly perfect: OX for Bien Urbain

This is one of the most perfect ad disruptions I’ve ever seen. OX did this takeover at the Bien Urbain festival in Besançon, France. Here’s why I think it’s nearly perfect:

Pros –

  • It’s site-specific.
  • It’s possible to not notice it. The piece can fade into the background of the environment (not just because the billboard matches the sky in this photo, but because it doesn’t try to grab your attention).
  • For the people who are familiar with the billboards and do notice the change, the takeover is something for them to think about.
  • It’s photographed well for online distribution.

Con –

  • The billboards themselves aren’t at ground level.

Now, that last pro and the con might not make immediate sense. In the case of billboard takeovers, I think that many of the best ones make it clear to viewers that they too can do exactly what the artist has done; that it’s not only OX who can or should cover up public advertisements. So on the pro side, this takeover is beautifully photographed and people who see this photo are probably more likely to be inspired than it it were a quick snap from OX’s camera-phone. As for the billboards not being a ground level, this sort of take over would probably have required a ladder or a long pole. Those aren’t particularly difficult things to get, but ground level billboards are even easier to disrupt, so photos of those takeovers might inspire more people to take action themselves than a more difficult billboard takeover.

Some of these thoughts about what makes a good ad takeover are based on similar ideas by Jordan Seiler, so definitely check out his site as well if this is interesting.

UPDATE: Jordan as actually posted his own thoughts about this piece over at his own blog.

Photo by OX

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50% off t-shirts by Gaia, Faro and Troy Lovegates aka Other

Last year, Vandalog released a series of t-shirts with designs by Troy Lovegates aka Other, Faro and Gaia. Since the last of those shirts are taking up some valuable space in a box under by bed, they are now on sale at 50% off at the Vandalog online store, making them just $15 each. Unfortunately we’ve sold out of mediums in every design, but small, large and XL shirts are still available. You can buy a shirt here.