As you can read in the latest issue of Very Nearly Almost, Burning Candy is a crew in the midst of upheaval right now. Nonetheless, the remaining members of the crew have a show opening this week in London at Tony’s Gallery (just off of Brick Lane). Sounds like A Fist Full of Paint is going to be a madhouse, but what else would you expect from Burning Candy? BC hit the front of the gallery last week with a fire extinguisher full of bright red paint, and extinguishers are due to play a large role in the show itself too. Two members of BC held a showdown with extinguishers in the gallery, and part of the show will be an installation of the aftermath of that fight, as well as a short film depicting what went down. The show will also include some more traditional work from members of Burning Candy and more new footage from Dots, the film the crew have been working on I posted footage from about a month ago. That said, Burning Candy shows always seem to come together and evolve at the 11th hour, so there’s just one thing that can be said for sure about A Fist Full of Paint: Expect the unexpected.
The show opens on Thursday and runs through August 21st.
On July 21, Moniker will be opening a show at Blackhall Studios in Shoreditch entitled Gossip Well Told. Featuring the likes of artists Swoon, Eine, Dabs and Myla, Case and Herakut. There will also be some great street art photos from Cheryl Dunn that I am really looking forward to seeing as well. Below is one of her photos from the Twist/Barry McGee mural on Houston Street in New York City.
Last year, the Wide Open Walls project brought a number of street artists to The Gambia to paint in local villages. Subsequently, the project was criticized as a sort of “slum tourism” for artists as well as anyone who viewed photos of the project, with the artists taking advantage of the communities they were painting in. This year, Wide Open Walls brought more artists to The Gambia and made a point of examining the issue of responsible tourism. After all, part of the goal of Wide Open Walls is to encourage tourism to these villages.
For this round of Wide Open Walls, the artist line-up was curated by Write on Africa and include Bushdwellers, Roa, Know Hope, Remed, TIKA, Freddy Sam, Selah, and Best Ever. The artists spent two weeks painting in The Gambia.
Remed
While the people involved directly in Wide Open Walls seem happy that they were responsible, made a connection to the communities they were in and made a difference or are in the process of doing so, it’s more difficult for me to post these photos without feeling that I’m participating in the sort of voyeurism that Wide Open Walls is trying to avoid. I wasn’t there, so I don’t have a personal connection to these villages or the people there (although some of the artists and other people on the trip have posted their reactions on the WOW website, which is something). Instead, I’m looking at the photographs and part of me is smugly thinking, “See, street art can make a difference. Yep. Smiling kids. People having fun in front of art. A building that looks cool now. Here’s proof that street art is a good thing.” And that makes me pretty damn uncomfortable.
Best Ever
What Wide Open Walls is doing can probably be compared in some ways to what JR has done working in the slums of Brazil and Kenya. Except that with JR, he makes a point of telling the stories of the people he is photographing, and he helps to improve their situations (like how in Kenya he fixed up people’s homes by printing his photos on water-resistant material and putting those prints on roofs). Wide Open Walls hasn’t really done anything like that yet beyond painting murals. I don’t know the stories of these villages and there isn’t much of a way to support the project or the people in these villages. Eventually though, that will change. There are plans for a book and an exhibition of photographs to help raise money for the villages. In the mean time, many more photos from this year’s Wide Open Walls can be found on Facebook.
Barry McGee’s latest show, simply titled New Work, opened this week at Stuart Shave/Modern Art in London. While not the craziest show Barry McGee has ever done, pretty much everyone I spoke with came away thinking this show is one of the best things they’ve seen recently (except for maybe the Miro show at Tate Modern, apparently that’s going to be a difficult one to top). As usual, McGee straddled the worlds of graffiti and fine art, high-brow and low-brow, concept and aesthetics.
This is a close-up of a table full of zines and sketches by McGeeA number of pepole I spoke with said this was their favorite pieceBut this was my favorite
New Work is on now at Modern Art through August 13th. For more photos, checkthesephotosets.
Swoon isn’t just in New Orleans now for her installation at NOMA, she’s also been working on a crazy new outdoor project there. As we mentioned back in November, she has been working on constructing a musical sculpture that will be built in New Orleans. And yes, musical sculpture, that looks like a house. Visitors will be able to play the building. Kind of like David Byrne’s Playing the Building project, but with a Swoon vibe. I could write something about how a bunch of sound artists are going to be working on this or how local residents will be able to play the instrument, but you can read all of that here. Basically though, this is fantastical musical architecture, which sounds beautiful to me.
This project is being funded through Kickstarter, so Swoon and her crew are looking to raise $12,000 from members of the public over the next 20-some days. So far they have over $5,000 in pledges. Like most Kickstarter projects, a pledge to help fund Swoon’s sculpture comes with a variety of goodies from a handmade thank you card on old wallpaper to a stunning handpainted screenprint based on Swoon’s Ice Queen image (the one in her installation at Art in the Streets). This Kickstarter campaign won’t be funding the house itself, but a musical laboratory for sound artists to experiment and develop ideas for the eventual construction of this sculpture.
One thing that is missing from the work of too many street artists who also work in galleries is an element of whimsy. Well I think this project has a hell of a lot of whimsy. And what’s better than a boatload of whimsy?
Herakut are the next artists to take over One Thirty 3, a project space in Newcastle. As usual with shows at One Thirty 3, the focus will be an installation throughout the gallery and the show will only be open for one night. Additionally, there will be one painting for sale and a print with an edition size of 33. This show will only be open from 6:30-9:30pm on July 14th, but the prints will be available online on the 15th.
So I got the latest issue of Juxtapoz in my inbox today (I have a digital subscription), and realized that I still haven’t read the last issue yet. D’oh. So while I get on that, here are a few links to keep you busy.
This is perhaps a controversial statement, but Faile’s print show in LA looks great. I barely mentioned the show here before it opened because I didn’t have high expectations and the print release seemed silly, but damn was I wrong (about the show, still big on the print release). Faile get a lot of crap for their prints, but when they are on, they are really really on.
Lois has beenposting on Vandalog about Ad Hoc Art’s Welling Court mural project, and the photo at the top of this post is from that project as well. Obviously I’m a fan. So here’s even a bit more from Welling Court, over at Brooklyn Street Art.
This show over in Milan with Futura, Os Gêmeos, Delta and more looks great. Especially the Futura pieces.
Someone, possibly associated with Banksy and possibly not, tagged this Banksy piece at MOCA. There has been work put up inside MOCA by uninvited artists, both in the bathrooms and throughout the McGee/James/Powers Street installation, but Banksy has also been changing up his section, so either option is definitely possible.
Stolenspace Gallery‘s summer group show opens next week, on July 7th. All the work in this show, prints and originals, will be new. The artist lineup includes D*face, Dan Witz, Eine, Miss Van, Ripo, San, Shepard Fairey, Word To Mother and a number of others. Check out the full artist list on Stolenspace’s website. Here’s a great little piece from Dan Witz that will be there:
Dan Witz
The show runs from the 7th of July (opening from 6-9pm) through July 31st.
Based in Berlin, Clemens Behr crafts ephemeral sculptures and installations from recycled materials. Often exhibited in galleries, this one was spotted this past weekend on Second Avenue in NYC’s East Village.
