Recently I’ve been posting some videos here from Babelgum.com. This week was the launch of my show there, RJ’s Street Art London. About two episodes will go online each week. So far I’ve interviewed Luc Price, filmed Roa painting, given tours of The Thousands and wandered around numerous art openings in London.
You can visit RJ’s Street Art London at www.babelgum.com/rj
Oh, and thanks to Jon Hammer aka ELATE for painting the logo.
It looks like the whole Vandalog team will be together in Miami in a few weeks for the art fairs.
Congratulations to Gaia, a fellow blogger here on Vandalog, for not only being included in SCOPE-Miami with Irvine Contemporary, but also for getting the opportunity to create a 40 foot long mural the the fair’s entrance.
Elisa Carmichael will also be at SCOPE at the Carmichael Gallery‘s stand where they will have artwork from Boxi, Hush, Mark Jenkins, Nunca, Simon Birch and Sixeart.
And I will be in Miami to check out SCOPE, Basel, Primary Flight and all the other events and fairs.
Happy birthday to Vandalog. October 15th is the 1st birthday of Vandalog. In the last year, there have been 600-some posts from 7 different writers (not including the Great in 08 series), the addition of Gaia and Elisa Carmichael as contributing writers, interviews with artists like Veng and Matt Small and a bunch of other bits. Well over 1000 people are reading Vandalog every day, and next week I’ll be launching an internet tv series. Basically, it’s grown a lot this year and been extremely fun to write.
Enough self-congratulations. I really want to thank everybody who reads Vandalog and has been supportive of what I’m trying to do with it. And if you haven’t emailed me before, please know that I’m pretty good about responding to just about any email within 24 hours, so if you need any street art related help, do not hesitate to ask. Interaction with the art community is why I post here.
Here’s something from Hera for you to think about:
I’ll be back from FAME Festival on Monday.
PS, I can’t wait to see what Herakut paint for The Thousands.
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.
If you’re reading this, I’m probably not in London anymore. My friends and I are taking a trip through continental Europe, and I won’t be back until July 13th. We’ll be visiting Amderdam, Berin, Prague, Bratislava, Zagreb, Venice, Rome, Bacelona and Paris, so if you have any suggestions of things to do while we’re in those cities, feel free to let me know.
Luckily, Vandalog won’t be completely dormant while I’m on vacation. I’ve got a few amazing people lined up to do guest posts while I’m away. I won’t give away any names, but two of the guests live in LA.
Here’s new piece by The London Police in Amsterdam. I’ll definitely be on the look out for it while I’m there.
Vhils is a street artist really taking it to the next level. His portraits and city-scapes actually involve taking a jackhammer to the wall. He’s just put online this beautiful video called “Scratching the Surface.” It shows how he creates his work, and is well worth watching.
For more work from Vhils, check his website. Also, he has work in the current show at Lazarides Gallery (and a solo show coming up there later this year), and he’ll be at the Fame Festival in Italy.
Update (May 2011): I’m back in London for a few months and running tours. Just email me to set up one (rj at vandalog dot com).
Big announcement today. I’m going to start running street art tours in London. I’ve done a couple of private ones for family friends and my school, but I’d really like to open these up to more people.
The tours will cover street art and graffiti in East London, and we’ll probably visit a gallery as well. We’ll see work from artists like Banksy, Space Invader, Eine, Conor Harrington, Barry McGee, Sickboy, and many more. The tours should last a couple of hours.
The first tour will be on Saturday May 23rd. We’ll be meeting outside of the Old Street tube station at 11am, and end at the Liverpool Street tube station. The cost will be £10 per person and it will be capped to just 15 people. If you are interested in attending, please email rj(at)vandalog.com with your name and how many people are in your party.
Last week I had the chance to spend 2 days in New York City. New York is where modern graffiti and street art originated (yes I am aware that Cornbread was from Philadelphia), so it was a trip I had been looking forward to for a while. I crammed as much art into my visit as a possibly could.
First, before getting to New York, I was in Baltimore for a day. While there, I had lunch with Gaia. One of the topics we spoke about, the perception of street art as a democratic process, turned into a post on his blog, and soon (probably after finals are over) I think I’ll be doing a similar post.
My first day in New York, I made sure to see a number of galleries. I’m sure I’ll forget to mention somewhere I visited, but here’s a summary.
First I went to the Jonathan LeVine Gallery for their Phil Frost show. I’m not the biggest fan of Phil Frost. I own one small piece by him, and I really like it, but for the most part, I just don’t get his work. I had never seen more than 2 or 3 pieces together at a time though, so I thought that maybe seeing an entire show would convert me to a fan. It did not. I’m still pretty indifferent to his work.
Next, I made a quick stop at the Doma Café and Gallery for a show by Erik Otto. I’d never heard of Otto, but it was recommended by Hooked. I was in a rush, so I only browsed the show quickly, but it was pretty impressive for artwork in a café, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for Otto in the future.
Naturally, Deitch Projects was a place I had to stop, and though I originally had little interest in Ryan McGinness’ show there, a few pieces definitely caught my eye.
After popping in at Glowlab and then seeing the amazing wall where the above video took place, I was headed to Williamsburg, the heart of NYC’s street art scene… Continue reading “Vandalog Visits New York”
I am headed to Cairo in a couple of hours for a family vacation and then to the states to visit a few universities, so I expect have only limited internet access for the next week and a half or so. I’ll get in a couple of updates in that time (including 2-3 interviews), but they will probably come in spurts and I definitely won’t be posting daily.
One place I’ll be headed is New York City. I’m going to be looking for things to see there (art and otherwise), so if you have any suggestions please email me – rj(at)vandalog(dot)com.
In the mean time, here’s a few things I’ve been meaning to post:
Photo by mediageek
