Loving this new piece from Biancoshock and Alice Pasquini. It’s their take on UNESCO‘s logo, and despite what UNESCO might say, there’s as much European heritage wrapped up in the current state of Syria as in the Palace of Versailles.
Photo courtesy of Biancoshock
Another fantastic piece by mobstr. Context is king. First of all, how did he install this piece? But also, what a great spot for it! And of course, it doesn’t hurt that the little alleyway it’s on is just off of the heart of Brick Lane, one of the busiest roads in London for street art tourism. Mobstr knows his audience, for better or worse.
Photos by NoLionsInEngland
Don’t Fret has a graduation gift for the class of 2016: A reminder of the crushing debt that will likely follow many of them for decades. Don’t Fret’s latest mural echoes this recent headline from The Onion, envisioning college students as investment products, with the high cost of education driving them into debt, effectively garnishing their wages and making saving made next-to impossible.
Don’t Fret’s piece is part of a new series of murals organized by the Wabash Arts Corridor, an initiative of Chicago’s Columbia College. Most of the other murals in the project, while big and well-painted, are purely decorative. This is the only explicitly political piece, and perhaps the only piece where the artist took location into account. Don’t Fret’s mural is on the Roosevelt Hotel building, which is now student housing.
I’ve got to get credit to the Wabash Arts Corridor and Columbia College for commissioning this mural. It would have been easy to say, “We don’t want that conversation taking place on our buildings,” but you can be damn sure its taking place inside the building. Don’t Fret is an alumni of Columbia College and I’ve only ever heard him say positive things about the school, but the cost of higher education is a systemic issue across almost all American colleges and universities. This mural is a gentle, but important, reminder of that fact.
Photos by Chris Geick
Wow. Ekosystem, probably my favorite European street art blog, drew my attention to this piece on the beaches of Northern France. Réflechir was made by placing pieces of mirror onto a “blockhaus,” a common remnant of World War II. Naturally, the piece is meant as a memorial. The piece was created anonymously, but the artist did create a website and issue a statement about the monument.
There’s also a video:
Beautiful.
Photo by the artist
Goddog is a French artist from Avignon, well-know medieval city in southern France. He started practicing graffiti at a young age, then turned to figurative work that he’s put aside for a moment to achieve more abstract compositions. In time, he began to combine both trends to define a style he calls figurative abstraction. GoddoG takes inspiration from movements like Constructivism, Bauhaus, to create androgynous figures. The narration is never linear, and the dreamlike poetry that emerges encourages multiple interpretations. His hope to allow everyone to build their own story from what he paints on the wall.
The main quality of an artist is to be able to put him always in danger, to be able to renew itself, which GoddoG does successfully again and again. He does not claim a clear way of thinking, socially or politically speaking. He has always painted in order to escape, to dream, to create a comfort zone.
You can see in versatility and passion above the mural he did during the “Cambodia Urban art” Festival in Phnom Penh in March 2016, and following that his work for the French project “Le M.U.R de Bordeaux,” also in March, and a wall painted in Marseille, France, for “la cité des arts”, in February.
Photos by Damien Mauro.
A few weeks ago now, Melbourne was host for the first time to the internationally renowned Meeting of Styles events. Meeting of Styles Melbourne 2016 saw around 300 artists paint all of Melbourne’s legal laneways over four days – as well as a couple of secret spots in and around the city. This was the first time this many lanes had been painted simultaneously.
This event was different to the usual arts events I have attended and posted about in the past, this one focused on graffiti and paid homage to Melbourne’s rich history and still strong graffiti scene.
Apart from the amazing pieces produced and having all of he city’s walls look their best, the vibe over the four days was incredible. Artists and their friends and fans filled the streets – it didn’t feel like we were right in the middle of the Central Busienss Districy of Melbourne at all, which is where many of the lanes are located. Thousands of spectators came to watch and tourists stopped and took hundreds of photos. Check some of the photos out here: #MOSMelbourne
It was refreshing to see some of Australia’s best writers come to town and remind us why Melbourne/Australia has a rich and vibrant graffiti culture, and how much we have to thank graffiti for it’s cousin, street art – also a massive and important part of our city’s fabric and culture.
Locations included, Hosier and Rutledge Lanes, Union Lane, Flinders Court, Croft Alley, Blender Lane, Electric Place, Drewery Lane, Lovelands (next to the Queen Victoria Market) and Whiteman Street and a number of “secret” spots in Footscray and South Yarra.
Check out these great photos by David Russell of the event – more here.
Continue reading “Meeting of Styles Melbourne 2016”
It’s no secret that good placement can make or break a piece or street art or a mural. That can mean picking the perfect place to install an artwork, or responding to the space that’s available and making something that takes that space into consideration. Think of it this way: Site-specific should mean the work is in some way specific to a site, not simply located at a site. And when art is site-specific, it can make a big difference. Recently, some artists practicing good placement have really caught my eye. Here are a few examples:
1. Os Gemeos in Milan (above): Wow. Milan is a lucky city right now, with a spectacular new mural by Os Gemeos, facilitated by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Responding to the shape of the site, Os Gemeos took a drab building and transformed it into a massive subway car. Os Gemeos’ murals are always a treat, but they knocked it out of the park with this one.
2. Invader in London: Simple, but effective, placing his mosaics around a CCTV camera. In some ways, quintessentially London.
3. Biancoshock in Milan: This series form Biancoshock seems to have really caught people’s attention on social media. I’ve been seeing these photos posted everywhere, so if you’re reading this, they probably aren’t new to you. But why are they so popular? Yes, I have a tiny apartment and can appreciate the joke too. But I think it’s more than that. Placement is an essential part of these pieces. If Biancoshock had made small rooms as sculpture for a gallery, or painted a tiny apartment on a wall, it wouldn’t have worked quite so well. It’s that he took a space and make work inspired by the location that simultaneously transformed the location.
4. Elian in Ostend with Exercise Of Anamorphosis #2: What happens when you get to a mural festival and you’re told that you aren’t painting a flat wall, but rather two walls of a building without a lot of flat surfaces? For some artists, this could trip them up. Or they could still treat the surface like they are applying wallpaper, and it would probably work out okay. But Elian went a step further, creating an optical illusion that messes with your perspective. He took something that could have been a weakness (an odd wall), and he made it a strength.
5. eL Seed in Cairo, for his Perception series: eL Seed painted this mural across dozens of buildings in Cairo, Egypt. It’s painted in a marginalized neighborhood in Cairo, where the residents are written off by the rest of the city as dirty because many of them are trash collectors. eL Seed’s text reads, “Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first.”
Photos by eL Seed, Butterfly, Biancoshock, Elian
Are you feeling the Bern? Artists definitely are. On Saturday night, Bernie Sanders stopped by The Hole in NYC to check out an art exhibition inspired by his campaign. Artists are also taking their love of Bernie to the street, with pro-Bernie murals popping up in Philadelphia and NYC (and probably other cities too, so let us know if you’ve seen others). Here’s a bit of what’s been going up…
Nick Kuszyk has painted two murals in Brooklyn. One (above) welcoming Bernie back to his hometown in anticipation of the New York primary (takes place on Tuesday!), and one highlighting Sanders’ commitments to criminal justice reform.
In Philadelphia, things started small. Brooks Bell painted a modest pro-Bernie mural on a candy store back in December. And then last month, Conrad Benner of StreetsDept brought together Old Broads and Distort for a huge mural that has quickly become a local icon.
And now, with just days until New York’s primary, a team of street artists, muralists, and graffiti writers came together for a bold Bernie mural in the Bronx. The piece was organized by Garrison Buxton and Alan Ket, designed by Noah McDonough, and painted by Garrison Buxton, Ces, DOC Tc5, Ewok One, John Fekner, Alan Ket, Noah McDonough, Queen Andrea, Part One, Python, and Rath.
New York’s primary is this Tuesday, April 19. Get out and vote (for Bernie)!
Photos courtesy of Nick Kuszyk and Garrison Buxton, and by Brooks Bell and Conrad Benner
Spring has sprung in Philadelphia, and the local street art community seem to be celebrating with new ad takeovers in the city’s bus shelters. Thanks to Jordan Seiler / Public Ad Campaign’s Public Access initiative, opening the advertising kiosks in the vast majority of Philly’s bus shelters is a breeze. Just this week, Joe Boruchow and NDA, both of whom we’ve recently shown at LMNL Gallery, replaced a few ads with their own artwork. NDA’s pieces were both collaborations with Hellbent, who promises similar work in New York City soon.
Jordan Seiler was the first artist in recent memory to bring ad takeovers to Philadelphia, back in 2010. And until last summer, that’s about all there was, until Seiler made the Philadelphia infinitely easier to open up by producing a “key” that matched their custom security screws. Vandalog contributor Caroline Caldwell was probably the first to test out a Philadelphia key. Since then, the tools have reached a handful of artists in the city.
Unfortunately, it looks like this new-found street art surface may be short lived in Philadelphia. Hundreds of the city’s bus shelters are being replaced with an upgraded model featuring electronic billboards. With that in mind, for those with keys, here’s to making good use of them while you still have a chance.
Photos by Conrad Benner, Jordan Seiler, and Thomas Buildmore, and courtesy of NDA and Hellbent
Pow! Another mural. Wow! So beautiful. But those decorative canvases-on-walls by globe-trotting muralists have been clogging up all my feeds lately. They have their place, but I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. For my small attempt to counter the barrage, here are a few pieces that I’ve come across lately that don’t fit that fly-in-fly-out festival paradigm.
First off, there’s Icy and Sot, who installed a series of ad busts during a recent visit to Los Angeles. Sometimes it feels like ad busts, explicitly political or not, are the only way that street art can still retain a spirit of resistance.
Here’s something I’m going to miss about Philly: Coming across Amy Orr‘s “graffiti totems,” collections of wire, beads, and miscellany that Orr attaches to metal signposts around town.
Pairing nicely with Orr, the boys at Brooklyn Street Art recently came across a series of miniature street pieces by Patrick Picou Harrington. For more photos and the full story on these beautiful little installations on electrical poles, check their blog.
Also at BSA, Vermibus has been in New York City to install a series of ad-takeovers for Fashion Week. I caught one of these on the street the other day, and they are definitely worth searching out in meatspace. Happy hunting.
Finally, this Toni Spyra piece in Vienna is some of my favorite site-specific pieces of street art in a while.
So there you have it. Not another mural.
Photos courtesy of Icy and Sot, Amy Orr, and by Brandi Fitzgerald, Amy Orr, and Jamie Rojo, and found on Ekosystem
