“Travel broadens the mind.” Well I really hope that’s true! I had the chance to spend a few days in the Bay area, which gave me another opportunity to continue my favorite activity: urban exploration. As a European, it’s a bit risky to show my own vision of America’s urban environment, and express feelings that could be misunderstood. This time, I had the chance to be guided through San Francisco and Oakland by one of the most talented Canadian street artists, Troy Lovegates, based in San Francisco for the last 2 years, and so have my point of view challenged by an insider of the Bay Area art scene. We left SF for Oakland, went through West Oakland, playground of graffiti writers, reached downtown, with its big murals, passed by Athen B. gallery (where Lovegates was showing in a collaborative group exhibition with Zio Zegler, Jaz and EverSiempre), and ended up in Chinatown. I unfortunately do not have photos of Lovegates’ pieces, as his street art pieces are usually buffed or cleaned super fast. And he still has not had the opportunity to legally paint a wall in the Bay area. But he does not despair! Lovegates had to wait years before getting a wall in Montreal, and finally managed to paint2 murals very late after he left Montreal for Toronto…
Because it’s 1am and I’ve spent the better part of my night scheduling tweets and Facebook posts, I thought I’d just very quickly share this latest piece by Fra.Biancoshock. It’s called #PICOFTHEDAY. Seems appropriate. It can be found somewhere on the streets of Lithuania. And also on the internet, which is all that really matters, right?
One of the most common questions I get from people outside of the street art world is some variation on “How do street artists show in galleries?”
My 30-second answer is that just as painters can sculpt and illustrators can take photos, artists aren’t restricted to just one way of displaying their work. I tell them that street artists often have a studio practice too. I tell them that what the street/studio combination looks like can vary, but sometimes the two can feed off of one another in a brilliant synergy.
That’s a best-case scenario though, overly optimistic, which is fine when I’m being an evangelist for street art, but not quite suitable for a conversation among the already converted. We all know that the reality isn’t so cut and dry. What works for street art, what works for murals, and what works in a gallery setting are rarely the same.
So how do you find that synergy between street and studio? I don’t have a great catchall answer, but I do have a recent example of someone getting it right.
Taking Sides, a new series from Know Hope, is one of a handful examples that I can think of where documentation of street art actually works as a piece in a gallery. It reaches a rare and coveted level of synergy between street and studio practice. For Taking Sides, Know Hope created a series of subtle street pieces in Cologne, Germany and photographed them at just the right moment. In the gallery, he paired each photo with one of the more “typical” studio works that he is best known for. As street pieces, they are solid. As photographs, they take on a new dimension. Paired with paintings, each piece in the pairing informs the other.
This approach won’t always work. That synergy isn’t as simple as putting some photos in a gallery. A photo of a mural next to a print based on that mural is going in the exact wrong direction, even though that seems to be how a lot of art is sold. It works for Know Hope (and also Barry McGee) because the photos capture something that their paintings and drawings can’t, and vice versa. That’s the key. And while I’m focusing on Know Hope today and it’s still not a catchall answer, it remains true even if the street and studio pieces aren’t literally exhibited side by side.
London Kaye, whose work I would usually ignore because it is more boring and derivative than The Cleveland Show, has become an accidental symbol for street art’s role as a gentrifying force. Oddly enough, she seems to be okay with that, even embracing it her newfound position as the symbol of white hipsterdom steam-cleaning the longstanding culture out of Bushwick.
A yarnbomb that Kaye put up on the wall of a Bushwick home has gained national attention because A. She didn’t ask the Salvadorian property owner and resident of the building for permission, B. She did ask the anti-immigrant white guy who runs a flea market in the lot next door for permission, C. Kaye’s piece depicts two little white girls and a boy from a Wes Anderson film, and D. She’s been at best naive and at worst unapologetic and taunting in her response to feedback that her work is rubbing residents and the property owner the wrong way.
The Gothamist has the full story, including an interview with Will Giron, the nephew of the property owner. Giron put the situation most succinctly: “I don’t feel like London was doing anything malicious. I truly believe that from the bottom of my heart. At the same time though, that’s a lack of awareness of your own privilege. If any black or Latino person were to do what London did, we’d have to worry about being bashed by the cops.”
What’s happened to Kaye could happen to almost any well-meaning street artist these days, but I have no sympathy for her. Of course, gentrification is a process that takes place (and in which I am a participant in my own neighborhood), and it’s not Kaye’s fault that graffiti writers are sent to prison and people of color are beaten and killed by police, she is literally dancing in the street after using a nailgun on someone’s home without permission. Kaye seems almost gleeful in the way that she has embraced her role as a symbol for white privilege and an active participant in claiming Bushwick for a gentrifying community. It’s an embarrassment to the potential of street art. Caroline Caldwell hits the nail on the head: “London Kaye is so up her own ass with the idea that she’s beautifying the world through street art that she’s missing the larger context of her work.”
Of course, you might say that Kaye was just doing some illegal street art, and should be applauded in a culture of muralism. Illegal street art is one thing, but what Kaye did here was ask permission of the white guy in the room, ignore the property owners, and then defend her actions while taunting her critics.
Kaye completely deserves her inevitable future selling a “street art inspired” clothing line on QVC alongside Paula Deen.
Melbourne has always had a healthy and organic sticker culture, whether it be writers with their slap tags, or the little street art characters and slogans adorning the backs of street signs, rubbish bins; actually anything with a surface that takes to a sticker.
I think stickers are an awesome and important element of graffiti and street art, giving artists a way to quickly and less incriminating way of sharing their work. Stickers, slaps, slap tags – whatever you call them are a worldwide culture, pretty much every city in the world I’ve been to – there are stickers everywhere (I’m currently writing this article while in Tokyo – which has been well and truly slapped, so to speak).
I’ve enjoyed watching new stickers appear over the years as existing artists evolve and new ones appear. Although, I can’t recall anyone that’s caught my eye as much Goon Hugs. Goon’s stickers are not only unique, they’re also prolific and often cover entire shopfronts, abandoned spaces and objects, even a drunk person passed out in a shopfront in one instance haha. This guy is out of control. His stickers are mesmerising and somehow beautiful.
I also love tags and mad hand styles. As I always tell the non beleivers (generally the “I love that street art, but i hate those tags” type people, tags are beautiful. They represent some major dedication to an art form, they are an individual’s own font, typeface, style. I’d much prefer to see a full window of tags rather than a dull, drab abandoned and unused space, or horrible generic advertising.
Not only is Goon Hugs a sticker machine, he also has a massive interest in all things stickers, tags and throwies, which he continues to document in his zine “Goon Pizza”.
Check out some photos of his work below and also make sure you follow him on Instagram to keep up with his latest escapades.
I caught up and had a good chat with the Goon himself, and this is what we talked about.
LM: Generic question, I know, but what does your name mean? It fascinates me, considering goon is one of my most used words haha.
GH: I got my name from when I used to drink goon and do bongs as a filthy teenager and when ya mix that with emotions you just wanna hug everyone. Simple as that. It’s a fun name with good and bad references that people can relate to.
Note from Luke – Goon is an Aussie colloquialism for cheap wine.
LM: How did you get into what you do?
GH: I first got attracted to stickers back in 2007 when I did graphic arts in the city everyday. I was turned on by seeing tags & little characters on stickers on signs in alleyways, that I lost my shit. I just wanted to be part of this very underrated scene. Took me a while though to become as consistent as I am now.
LM: Your tag looks (to some) like an alien text. Where does it come from? I love it!
GH: I’ve always been into tags that have a really clean, fast flow. So I tried for years to perfect this. I got inspiration from the Thai language as they have a lot of loops in their letters. I don’t think there’s ever a time when your tag stops evolving. Mine is always evolving as the flow gets faster and I start to add organic lines and curves to create the ‘interest factor’. Which I think is something you gotta have in a tag. Some line to make it go POW!
LM: You clearly are one of the most prolific slap taggers in Melbourne I’ve seen for a long time. How many slaps do you reckon you’ve put up?
GH: Wouldn’t know to be honest. I’m a gentleman. It would be arrogant of me if I knew though. But every now and then I see an old sticker and I have no recollection of when I put that there. To be honest, I feel like I haven’t done enough.
LM: Are all your slaps hand done, or do you photocopy some of them? Doing so many tags looks therapeutic, is it like that for you?
GH: When I bomb windows, I usually print them off ‘cus its fast ,easy & for me free and then I use wheat paste to put ‘em up. But for general get-up most are hand done stickers/duck tape. I can tag stickers at my desk all day long, listening to mad beats with no breaks, so it definitely is therapeutic. You could call it my day job. Unfortunately it doesn’t pay too well.
Goon House – Photo by Goon HugsGoon Stop – Photo by Goon Hugs
LM: You don’t just put your slaps up, you completely take over spaces, which I love. Is this just a sign of your prolificness/obsession or do you do this for another reason?
GH: When I first started I just thought why stick one behind a sign or on a poll when you can stick a few hundred in one spot and get full impact from the pedestrian traffic. I don’t ever think for spots where the sticker will last. To me it’s about getting ‘ridiculous’. Literally a sticker bomb. Using up all my supplies so I go home empty handed and enjoy a nice goon sac or two. Someone’s gonna notice something that’s over saturated no matter what. Most of my true fans are Real-estate agents and the Yarra & Darebin councils.
LM: How do you feel about advertising? I’m guessing you’re not a big fan?
GH: To me everything is advertising and we’re all advertising ourselves to an extent. But for some who got the big dollars they can put their shit on anything for as long as they want. Sometimes I paste on advertising spots like bus/tram shelters. To take the focus away from the one light box ad they have, I paste my fluoro tags over all the glass panels. I’ve had hundreds of stickers on a ‘for lease’ shop front window for over a year. I mean that’s basically the same as a billboard except it’s free. The average Joe won’t have a clue as to what it means, but the name ‘Goonhugs’ already has quite a cult following.
LM: What’s with the Japanese references in many of your slaps? I can read it funnily enough, and it always gives me a good laugh.
GH: I just like how Japanese typography looks. Sometimes I camouflage my tag onto flyers in Japanese to paste on polls/walls. Also the translation doesn’t always work and it gets random and funny.
Japanese Goon – Photo by Goon Hugs
LM: AS.250? Is this your crew name? Are there any other members, or just the Goon?
GH: AS.250 stands for ‘Adhesive supasta’ and 250 is the bus route outta the ghetto. Not part of any clan, just me the wondering goonsman, although if I did have a wing person shit would be a lot easier to do and Melbourne would have one of its biggest litterers on a rampage.
LM: When do you do your work?
GH: Depends on certain spots I got planned out. Sometimes in peak hour traffic, sometimes from 3am to 8am. I sometimes only bomb shop fronts during peak hour as people just wanna get the fuck home and have their dinner so not many people will hastle me plus there is not many cops on patrol. Also, Rainey evenings are a good easy cover. Summer is the worst. People will not go home.
Goon Taxi – Photo by Goon Hugs
LM: How do you procure your materials?
GH: If I told you my main source I’d be out of the job. But usually, most shops that sell adhesive products will let you take a free sample guaranteed, as long as the product can fit down your pants or in a green bag.
LM: Have you done any collabs?
GH: I’ve done some off the mill quick collabs with a few mates but nothing really spesh.
Goon Pizza – Photo by Goon Hugs
LM: Tell us about your Zines. How many have you done what are they all about?
GH: My zines(GoonPizza) are up to its 5th issue. They’re just a quick documentation of graffiti bombing around the northern areas of Melbourne. I find there’s a lot of stuff on instagram but eventually it all gets lost and forgotten. But having a homemade publication that you can produce and distribute online and through mates is a good way of preserving that time when that person got up or remember when this crew was fuckin shit up. My most popular zine was a super thick sticker zine of stickers all over Melbourne that got sold very well and had to make a second edition.
LM: You’re clearly a massive fan of slaps, tags and throwies; so who inspires you and why?
GH: The crazy Japanese bombing scene, it is off its rocket. Absolutely nuts! The Melbourne locals getting around and getting up hard inspire me too. Can’t go wrong with BTM, AC, PAA, TGF, ID, CI, CME, RPG crews. The list goes on I love ‘em all really. Also, a little cute shout out to Mio and FELON!
LM: I’ve been loving your little dioramas you’ve been doing of mini shop fronts etc, how do you make these?
GH: I just make these out of foam and cardboard just as an off the clock thing to do. Trying to capture local buildings but in a grimy, abandoned, graffiti bombed kind of way.
LM: What else do you have planned for 2015 and into the future?
GH: I’m not into talking myself up, but I hope to be the longest serving sticker bomber in the universe. Definitely gotta put the CBD on goonhugs lockdown at some point. The streets are too clean. Otherwise, keep doing what I do best. It makes me happy and I’ve met a lot of fans when I am out and about which totally bamboozles me as for me it’s just simply putting up a piece of paper. How can people like this? Shits real cray!
Goon Hugs – Photo by Goon HugsGoons for lease – Photo by Goon Hugs
Check out more of Goon Hugs’ photos on his Instagram page here.
As the leading American street artist and one of the country’s most recognizable graphic designers, Shepard Fairey himself needs no introduction. But these are strange times for Fairey, and a refresher might be in order. His latest exhibition, On Our Hands at New York City’s Jacob Lewis Gallery, is set to open on Thursday evening. The show tackles the influence of money on politics, the way that legalized bribery has corrupted our democratic system. His new book, Covert to Overt, is due out later this month. The book tackles the influence of money on Fairey’s art, the way he’s fed his ever-growing fame and commercial success back into the work he’s always been doing. He’s on top of the world, or at least the art world. Except that Fairey also standing trial in Detroit for some wheatpastes that the city calls “malicious destruction of a building,” and he could wind up going to prison. So the next few months could really go either way.
Fairey has left an indelible mark on American politics and culture. No matter what happens next, I suspect he’ll continue on that path in one way or another. As he prepares for the opening of On Our Hands, we had the opportunity to ask Fairey a few questions about his career, his place in the art world, and his politics.
RJ Rushmore: As your own fame has grown, as you’ve gone from covert to overt, how have you learned to strike a balance between using your fame for positive change and simply enjoying it?
Shepard Fairey: There are pros and cons to being known whether you call it famous or infamous, but I definitely try to leverage my higher profile to push socially conscious and sometimes provocative ideas. I have a large audience now, which I view as a tremendous resource but also a group to be considerate of and responsible toward. It may sound trite but I take my situation seriously as, for lack of a better word, a role model. I try to provide strong justification for my actions and my viewpoints and I think one of the reasons many of the doors have opened for me that have, is because I’m community and socially minded, not only with my work but with the organizations I support and the activism I engage in.
Today, I want to highlight two recent murals by Hyuro that I am completely in love with. In both murals, space is as important as content, and the two are intertwined. It’s been a long while since we’ve covered Hyuro on Vandalog, but she’s one of my favorite European muralists for her unique mix of anger, struggle, and beauty.
This first mural from is back in July. It was painted on what Hyuro describes as “a third age care center” in Poggibonsi, Italy for DOTS Festival. Kudos goes in part to the curators at DOTS for this one. The wall in a prime location, facing traffic on what looks to be a curved road. You can probably spot this mural for blocks. Potential wall-hunters, look out for locations like these. Of course, not every artist could do something worthy of such a wall, but Hyuro did.
Photo by Marco Tani
Rather than pulling out a random page from her sketchbook and turning it into festival-friendly muralvomit, Hyuro painted something specifically for that wall and that building. On a spot that could just as easily have been turned into a massive billboard for a naked woman to sell Coca-Cola (brief aside: That joke doesn’t work if you’re stealing it to sell it), Hyuro’s highly-visible mural honors the building’s residents, a group who are all too often ignored. And yet, that message isn’t overbearing. The mural is, first and foremost, a quiet moment for meditation.
For this mural, Hyuro factored in the setting around her wall and on the other side of it, the whole environment. Hyuro responded intelligently and skillfully to the unique space and the opportunity presented to her. Isn’t that supposed to be a core tenet of quality street art? And yet, work like Hyuro’s is all too rare.
Photo courtesy of Hyuro
And then there’s Espacios de empoderamiento, which Hyuro painted just a few weeks ago for Fate Festival in San Potito Sannitico, Italy. As the subject for a mural, a group of women standing around and talking is already notable (a Bechdel-Wallace test for street art and muralism is long overdue). Hyuro takes things a step further by playing with scale. Even the side of a building cannot contain these women. This space for empowerment extends beyond the wall, up into the sky and out onto the pavement. Such a simple tweak took what would have been a good mural and made it great.
There are a lot of reasons to like what Hyuro does. Maybe you like her skills with a brush, which she has in spades. Or you appreciate her politics, which are underrepresented in street art and contemporary muralism. But, with these two murals at least, it’s her appreciation of space that any artist working outdoors can learn from.
In this era of monumental murals, it can be easy to forget that bigger isn’t always better. In a series of new wheatpastes, WK Interact has taken to the doors of New York City. These life-size pieces are bursting with WK’s trademark energy, and they pack more of a punch than murals ten times their size.
These wheatpastes remind me of an old story from Richard Hambleton, although I can’t remember quite where I read it. It goes something like this… Hambleton was once standing on a New York City street corner, preparing to paint one of his shadowmen. Only, there was a man across the street who just seemed to be standing there. Hambleton kept waiting for the man to leave so that he could begin painting. Eventually, Hambleton crossed the street and walked towards the figure, only to realize it wasn’t a man at all but one of his shadowmen painted on the wall!
True, WK’s figure’s are black and white, but Hambleton’s were just silhouettes. Surely a few passersby are going to catch these pastes in the right light and out of the corner of their eye and mistake them for the real thing. That’s an experience that a megamural can rarely deliver. Not to mention these pieces are probably perfect selfies.
WK Interact can work big, but this series is a great reminder that he doesn’t have too. These new wheatpastes are better because they are “small.” You can find them on the streets of New York City. Happy hunting.
Two of the most provocative murals painted in New York this summer come from Nemo’s, an Italian street artist on his first visit to NYC. Both pieces can be found in Williamsburg, a neighborhood where murals function as billboards and billboards masquerade as murals.
First came 1 Gram (which happens to be the weight of a dollar bill). Brooklyn Street Art notes that the piece faced a bit of censorship, in that the wall owner didn’t like the penis on Nemo’s character and the artist agreed to remove it. But it seems a bit silly to quibble over castration when the penis was a relatively minor component of the mural and it’s overall message is already so bold and potentially controversial.
Stocks – Pillory by Nemo’s. Photo by Jaime Rojo.
Nemo’s followed that up with Stocks – Pillory. At first, the mural might seem a bit cliché: Another critique of the TV entertaining us with the public shaming our latest victim. Except that it’s not quite so simple and cliché. The victim isn’t trapped. The key is just around the corner, and the “prisoner” could probably reach it if he tried. Or, better yet, he could just back right out of his prison. The hole of the pillory are much larger than his head and his hands. But instead of slipping out to freedom, he maintains his clearly painful television existence. And we watch on. Entertained.
Actually, in both murals, the men are there by choice. In Stocks – Pillory, the man rests in the faux-pillory, and in 1 Gram, he feeds himself into the meat slicer. All it would take to stop the agony would be for them to take a step back to examine their lives. But we all know that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. And so the torture of contemporary society continues.
No matter how you read them, neither mural is decorative, the dominant trend in “street art muralism” lately. You’d be hard-pressed to find many street artists painting such provocative murals, especially in New York City. Unless of course, the mural is actually just an ad. When street artists are judged by their murals and those murals get them gallery shows and print releases and larger murals and corporate-commissioned murals, when “street art muralism” is a career path, decorative sells. Why mess with that?
So many street artists are like Nemo’s men: seeing no viable alternative, they sacrifice themselves to the entertainment, advertising, and real estate industries. But the biggest names in Italian street art buck the trend. Nemo’s follows in the tradition of Blu, Ericailcane, and Ozmo, as well as the notoriously rebellious attitude of FAME Festival.
What makes these Italians different? I don’t have a good answer. It could be nothing more than accepting nothing less than their true vision. The power to walk away. When Blu’s mural was buffed in LA, he left town rather than paint something else. When Blu’s murals were being used as as marketing tools in the gentrification of Berlin, he buffed them. When Ericailcane painted a mural critical of Mexico’s president, he painted his ideal mural and then faced a destructive act of censorship rather than self-censoring from the start.
But that’s just a negotiating tactic. It doesn’t explain why other street artists stick to decoration, or why mural festivals tend to work with those artists. So maybe they shouldn’t. The alternative isn’t an impossibility. Take a page of Nemo’s book. You can step back from the pillory and you can stop slicing off your face.
