Mr Penfold has been rather busy recently. Firstly here are a couple of his new fantastic pieces in London.
And secondly, Mr Penfold and his fellow Berlin Bandits, Billy and Low Bros, are teaming up at the end of the month to put on an exhibition of paintings at NeonChocolate. So if you are in Berlin, or fancy a weekend break, then make sure you hit the city between October 29th and November 4th and check out the show. It should be (to quote Billy’s favourite word) RAD!
Photos by Mr Penfold
Based in Tabriz, Iran, Icy and his younger brother, Sot, began crafting stencils in 2006. Since 2008, their stencils have graced not only the walls of their city, but galleries in Iran and abroad. Particularly appealing about their work is their focus on human rights issues, particularly child labor. Here’s a sampling:
Images courtesy Icy and Sot
This weekend I’ll be in Boston. If you have any ideas for what I should get up to, leave a comment. I’ll definitely be checking out Swoon’s installation at the ICA Boston. Here’s what’s been going on in street art while I’ve been locked in my room studying all week:
Photo by Abode of Chaos
Last Saturday in Union Square, Leon Reid IV‘s latest temporary public sculpture existed from dawn until dusk, and then was dismantled. For Tourist-in-Chief, Leon attached some new accessories to Union Square’s sculpture of George Washington. It was part of this year’s Art in Odd Places festival. It’s in the same vein as his True Yank piece from a few years back. As Banksy said, “If you have a statue in the city centre you could go past it every day on your way to school and never even notice it, right. But as soon as someone puts a traffic cone on its head, you’ve made your own sculpture.”
Check out more photos over at The Street Spot.
Photos courtesy of Leon Reid IV
Photos by Lois Stavsky
The subject of a photo shoot, Brooklyn-based artist Aakash Nihalani kept resurfacing throughout the day in North Williamsburg. We loved observing him in action:
Just received word from jestonorama about this new project. The scale and concern with local dilemmas always remains inspiring. From his blog: “i asked several friends what their feelings are about the sacred mountain slated to receive artificial snow made from reclaimed waste water. with the help of raechel running, stephanie jackson and rey cantil, their words were written or painted onto their faces and the final images were wheat pasted.”
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 –
Con –
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
Expect next week’s link-o-rama to be a big one. It’s mid-term week at school. Speaking of school, I’m organizing an artist residency for young artists at my college. If you are between 18 and 24 and could use $350 to do something creative, I hope you’ll consider applying for the Haverford College Undergraduate Artist Residency. Here’s what has been going on this week off Vandalog:
Photo by Erik Berglin
