Well, while I had myself more or less locked in a library underground for the better part of last week, the art world did not stand still. And so we have this special Tuesday edition of the typically friday event – the link-o-rama:
Banksy has loaned a sculpture to a museum in Liverpool. Meh. Another artwork that just as easily could have been seen at any urban art group show, but it’s by Banksy so the BBC and the rest of us should apparently care. What is this? It’s not just with Banksy. Bloggers in particular, we seem to have this urge to always be the first to say “Yeah, I saw that girl’s work first and said she was cool” and a fear of being caught in a situation where everyone except us thinks that some artist or artwork is great. And now I’m rambling…
Knock Knock is a new online magazine with a lot about street art and graffiti in Australia.
Kunle Martins aka Earsnot aka the founder of the infamous IRAK crew participated in Wynwood Walls this year alongside Jesse Geller aka Nemel. Martha Cooper has shots of what they got up to and then the Wynwood Walls video series has a great episode on them. For some people, it may be hard to avoid comparisons to this wall by Barry McGee. 12ozProphet says “The building painted by IRAK for Wynwood Walls is inspired by Barry McGee’s tag-filled murals… Earsnot and Nemel build on Barry McGee’s tag wall concept by filling the wall with a variety of monochromatic shades of overlapping tags creating the illusion of depth.”
Lush is up to his old tricks at Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne, where he had his first solo show last year. Another shithouse “art” show opened earlier this month with a bang: At the opening, Lush held a “death match” between Jesus and Satan. And yes, it was captured on video. If you’ve been following Lush’s flickr lately, you’ve probably seen the sketches he has been putting up. Those are on display at the show and have turned into a zine that Backwoods is selling online.
Here’s part 1 of the fight videos, a bit of an introduction to the fight:
And here’s the fight itself (and yes, it’s violent, so be warned):
Just a heads up in case you don’t like murals, unless I get really into procrastination through blogging (which isn’t unlikely), the blog will probably continue to be pretty Miami-centric for the next week or so as I’m bogged down in finals. Now that you’ve got fair warning for that, here’s what I’ve missed covering over the last two weeks in art:
Gotta love this abstract piece in Hollywood that’s been made out of colored tape.
Here’s a video interview with Zevs without a mask and saying his name (it’s Aguirre Schwarz). It’s in French though, so if anyone wants to offer up a translation of the interesting bits…
The car company Fiat settled a potential lawsuit with NYC’s TATS Crew after the company used one of TATS Crew’s murals in an advertisement. If you’re interested in the issue of copyright concerning public art, here’s one place to start.
Wynwood Walls is a noteworthy mural program in the Wynwood District of Miami. It has brought a number talented of artists to Miami to paint walls, and I’m under the impression that these artists are rewarded handsomely for their work. So far, so good. The project was started by Tony Goldman, a real estate developer. For this reason, Wynwood Walls has always been a bit controversial. To put it simply, Goldman is banking on commissioned murals by street artists and graffiti artists/writers to help quickly gentrify the neighborhood of Wynwood, where his company has significant property holdings. Okay, so that’s going to be controversial, but personally I think both sides of that issue have some good points. While Wynwood Walls has made me uncomfortable in the past with their high-culture and very dollar-sign focused take on murals, at the end of the day Wynwood has more walls painted by great artists because of Wynwood Walls and the neighborhood is on the upswing. But I’m digressing with history and politics before I even get to my main point: Wynwood Walls was not the first mural project in Wynwood, nor the largest, nor the most important. Before Wynwood Walls came along, the district was known in the street art and graffiti worlds for Primary Flight, quite likely the largest mural festival ever held with over 250 participants since 2007. While Primary Flight is not going to have quite as strong of a presence this year as it has in years past (both festivals are held over the first week of December), Primary Flight has undoubtedly been the superior festival to Wynwood Walls in size and the locations of walls in the past. This year, Wynwood Walls has ramped things up and Primary Flight has slowed things down, so it remains to be seen which will be the bigger festival, but the idea of Wynwood as a mural district certainly stems from Primary Flight’s work. Wynwood Walls took a version of Primary Flight’s idea, added their personal spin to it and started up a few years later in the same neighborhood as Primary Flight.
Given that history, I at first found it surprising that a recent docuseries about Wynwood is telling such a different story: Here Comes The Neighborhood. The series is described as “a Short-Form Docuseries exploring the power of Public Art and innovation to uplift and revitalize urban communities,” and supposedly tells the story of how Wynwood has been improved by murals. Unfortunately, the series is not at all what it claims. Tony Goldman, the man behind Wynwood Walls, is the executive producer of Here Comes The Neighborhood. When you know that, it becomes a lot more clear as to why the video series is, so far, a bit of a circle-jerk of Wynwood Walls participants talking about how great the project is, save for about 20 seconds mentioning Primary Flight and Gaia’s joke that the main Wynwood Walls complex might be “where art goes to die, to a certain extent.”
The Wynwood Walls website and the Here Comes The Neighbordhood website are even worse, with absolutely no mention of Primary Flight or the graffiti and street art in Wynwood that preceded either festival. Of course people and companies can say what they want about their projects so Wynwood Walls and this video series could just tell the story of Wynwood Walls and not mention Primary Flight, but I do take issue with them claiming to tell a history of art in the area and practically writing out the organization responsible for the majority of Wynwood’s murals. Based on a quick estimate, the Here Comes The Neighborhood trailer includes at least 6 of the murals affiliated with Primary Flight rather than Wynwood Walls, as were 8 artists affiliated with Primary Flight rather than Wynwood Walls, 9 artists shown who worked with Primary Flight before Wynwood Walls and 1 who worked with both Primary Flight and Wynwood Walls during her first trip to Miami. So clearly the makers of Here Comes The Neighborhood like and know about the murals for which Primary Flight is responsible, but have for some unknown reason neglected to give Primary Flight due credit for their contribution to Wynwood.
So with their twisting of history in mind, here’s the trailer for and the first two episodes of Here Comes The Neighborhood, which at least does show some great artwork if you can get past their gross distortions:
Sweza is an artist who consistently thinks outside of the box with his art, showing time and time again how surprisingly small the box of street art can be. Last week, Caroline challenged anyone to top her post about Cassette Lord’s work in Brighton (technically she challenged anyone to beat her lame pun, but whatever). Earlier this year, Sweza utilized QR codes into his street art into a not-lame way, which is seems pretty difficult for most other street artists. Here’s what he did:
El Mac is the latest artist to paint a wall on the Montana factory in Barcelona. As usual, El Mac’s mural is big, beautiful and instantly recognizable as an El Mac creation. Watch El Mac paint the wall in the above video, and then you can go over to Graffuturism for more photos of the wall plus information about and photos El Mac’s latest print release, which will be dropping today at Moon Editions.
There are two new Kickstarter projects that look very worthwhile for the graffiti and street art worlds. Kickstarter is the website where people can crowdsource funding for their ideas. Both of these projects are looking for about $30,000.
Shepard Fairey's first billboard takeover, done in 1990. Photo by el-pablo
The second film is a new one, but it also tells a true story from before I was born: Julian Marshall is a filmmaker currently attending RISD, the college that Shepard Fairey attended. He would like to tell the story of Shepard Fairey’s early career. Julian’s film will focus on Shepard’s first billboard takeover, pictured above, the idea for which came from a class assignment at RISD. It’s kinda like The Social Network for Shepard Fairey (so less coding and more bombing). Here’s what Julian has to say about his film:
Each of these films only have about 3 more weeks to reach their funding goals on Kickstarter. Any contributions or help spreading the word could make the difference that these ideas need to see the light of day. To support the Style Wars outtakes project, go here. To support the authorized OBEY origin story film, go here.
Back in August I posted about Basick and his partner in crime Physe getting up in London. Now back in Lima, Peru, Physe has set about producing a couple of cool little videos. The first is about their experiences in London and the second is a documentary about the DA2Crew to which they both belong, and showcases street work from Basick, Physe, Prms and Deks. Despite you needing to speak Spanish to understand the interview in the second video, it’s definitely worth watching just for the nice shots of Lima and the crew’s work. Enjoy.
This week just keeps getting better. Looks like we’ve got a bit of NYC coming to Philadelphia with a show curated by Matt Siren. Here’s what I meant to blog about this week:
