Animal just released this fantastic interview with Judith Supine. This actually isn’t the first time Supine has shown his face but the video is still great. I love how cheeky and honest he is. For a man who didn’t speak until the age of seventeen, he’s quick to offer his blunt (and spot on) critique of the art world.
His solo show Golden Child opens at Mecka Gallery on March 29th, and he has worked with the gallery on the release of two prints (one which is already sold out, and another which will be available at the opening). For more of Judith’s unbridled banter, check out his other recent interview on 12oz.
Droid has been described eloquently as, “giving punk meaning again.” In the ultimate dream partnership, in my humble opinion, Droid 907 directed, edited, and wrote the video for Japanther‘s new single “Do It (Don’t Try).” The video follows as he writes out the song’s lyrics in his signature style. He then surreptitiously places the stickers around Bushwick while the band belts out “Do Do Do Do Why Fight It?” The juxtaposition of lyrics with illegal art underscore the song’s do or die attitude, one that Droid faithfully lives by.
It is also important to note that the video ends with a shot of a “Droid = Afrika” sticker. This piece pays homage to one of the crew’s deceased friends, writer Afrika.
My first encounter with the Brewster Projects was in June of 2012. In the middle of a sunny afternoon, the heat was relentless. The sun bleached, weed filled center circle drive stood out in harsh contrast to the dark empty windowed towers looming around in a group. On my first trip to Detroit at the time, I was too intimidated to venture any further than the ground level perimeter of the site. I had been told it was a sketchy neighborhood and that there was security. I never saw any and there were no fences, so I took pics of Flying Fortress and Nychos hitting up the bottoms of the towers.
In the summer of 2012 the European graffiti crew JBCB (Juke Box Cow Boys) were in town along with other international artists involved with the Detroit Beautification Project.
By the time I got to Detroit there were only 4 remaining of the big, 15-story towers. There used to be 6, but 2 were torn down in 2003. The towers were called the Frederick Douglas Apartments and were built in the 40s and 50s. This was the housing project where singer Diana Ross grew up and where, in the rec center, boxer Joe Lewis trained. The projects are right across the freeway from Ford Field and downtown Detroit. There were other low rise apartment houses there too, but they have been removed in pieces over the years.
Juke Box Coy Boys, June 2012Nychos, June 2012Nychos and Flying Fortress, June 2012Flying Fortress and Nychos, June 2012Nychos and Flying Fortress, June 2012
I moved to the Detroit area in the fall of 2013 and made it back to the Brewster towers in October of 2013 determined to check out the inside. On that trip I made it to the top of one tower. In the 15 months since I’d last been there, tons of graffiti had been added to the towers. The bottoms were now grilled with tags, throws and pieces. More noticeably, 3 epic 15-story top to bottom rollers had been executed. In addition, Gats, Feral Child, and Ghost Owl had done rollers at the top of another tower, prominently placed and visible to highway traffic heading south into downtown Detroit. As I climbed I noticed preparations for demolition, but didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. There had been ongoing delays and interruptions in the effort to complete the removal of the projects.
Aerub, October 2013Feral Child, Gats, Ghost Owl and more, October 2013
UPDATE March 29th: BNE has updated his website and posted a statement claiming that Banksy and he had communicated about a shirt release, but that BNE decided to announce the shirt and make it available for sale before getting confirmation from Banksy that the collaboration was on. That logic is about as reasonable as me emailing Banksy and asking him about doing a solo show in my bedroom, and then announcing the show without hearing from Banksy. Because, why wouldn’t Banksy want to do a solo show in a college dorm in suburban Philadelphia?
BNE continues to resist the use of the word “scam” to describe what he did, but he fails to acknowledge the numerous lies that he told over the course of this “product launch,” from saying that he was collaborating with Banksy, to saying that he hadn’t sold people something that he presented as BNE x Banksy t-shirt, to saying that this whole thing was a “social experiment.” BNE doesn’t seem willing to acknowledge that at best he messed up by jumping the gun and then he flat out lied, and at worst he orchestrated a massive scam.
He also claims on his site that nobody who picked up on this story requested a comment from him. That’s not true, which I know because I emailed him and requested an interview. Maybe he missed my email, or maybe he ignored it. I don’t know.
But now BNE is offering refunds for those who request them (although I’m not sure how that will work since his PayPal account is frozen). I hope this time BNE gets my email, since I’ve emailed asking for a refund. I’ll be donating a portion of my refund to Living Walls and Give Directly.
BNE also says that he’s working to start a company that will sell a variety of basic necessities like sustainably made shampoo and t-shirts, with a portion of the proceeds going to charity. That sounds like a great idea for a company. If I still trusted BNE, I would probably support that business. But it also sounds like a B-Corp, and there are plenty of B-Corps that I’m willing to put a lot more trust into than whatever BNE comes up with.
Saturday was supposed to be a great day. BNE, a graffiti writer who has been raising money for water-related charities (primarily Charity:Water) through BNE.org since late 2011. Most of the money raised has been through the sale of products like t-shirts, lip balm, original artwork and stickers. Earlier this month, BNE released t-shirts by Invader, Shepard Fairey and Faile, some of the biggest names in street art. Shortly after all of those sold out, BNE announced that “a surprise from Banksy in support of our efforts to end the world water crisis” would be unveiled on BNE.org at noon on March 22nd, and that people who helped spread the word of the announcement beforehand would be entered “to win a collaborative gift from BNE + Banksy.”
Well, that was all a lie. BNE was not working with Banksy, and the t-shirts (which cost $92 including shipping to the USA) that were released at noon on the 22nd on BNE’s website just a few pixels away from a large Banksy logo were not done in collaboration with Banksy at all. It was all a ploy, or as BNE called it “a social experiment,” to raise money for Charity:Water, relying on the idea that people would be more likely to contribute to charity if they get something like a t-shirt in return. People were understandably outraged when they discovered that they had not in fact bought the Banksy t-shirt that they thought they had paid for. There’s a lot more to this story and it’s all a bit crazy, but Animal New York have done some great reporting on it, and I highly encourage you to read their post about what happened.
As a fan of BNE’s charity work, someone who has supported in some small way just about every fundraising campaign BNE has organized and a victim of this trick, I’m pretty upset. I’m all for pranks in art. Hell, I’ve even fallen for some before and the responsible thing to do is laugh at yourself. But this was no prank. This was BNE turning on his supporters. He’s lost my trust, and I won’t be supporting his projects in the future (if he manages to get anything off the ground after this fiasco).
It’s unclear at this point what is going to happen to the money that BNE got from his con. BNE donated the funds to Charity:Water almost immediately after the 500 t-shirts sold out, but it’s not clear that Charity:Water will be accepting his donation. At the same time, BNE promised Animal that he will be refunding every single buyer whether they specifically request it or not, but BNE’s PayPal account has been frozen.
While everything is in limbo for now, assuming that those of us who bought a shirt get our money back, I hope that a lot of it goes right back to charity. It’s easy to donate directly to Charity:Water, who were not involved in BNE.org and are only the recipients of BNE’s donation, and if you do want some great art in return for helping to fund a water-related charity, try this auction that Juxtapoz is involved with. This might also be a good time to mention the current fundraising campaign for the 2014 Living Walls Conference, which includes a matching grant from Atlanta’s Office of Cultural Affairs so that your donation goes even further.
Mike Ballard, perhaps better known to graffiti and street art fans as Cept, is one of the UK’s most fascinating artists or graffiti writers. His artistic output includes oil paintings, video art, sculptures, screenprints, graffiti, murals and highly conceptual installation projects.Tim Hans met Ballard at his London studio earlier this year for our continuing series of photo-portraits of artists by Tim, and I asked Mike a few questions over email.
RJ: What are you working on at the moment?
Ballard: I’m working on a new series of paintings in oil, a new future primitive series, darkly psychedelic baroque hip hop with cosmic nomad overtones. They will form part of a new installation with video and sound, hoping to show it next year, as there is a lot of work to do.
RJ: What is the separation between Mike Ballard and Cept?
Ballard: The work I make under Mike is more patient and considered, it’s the opposite end of the scale from the work as Cept. The work on the street is instant, mostly made up on the spot and executed within a couple of hours, I’ve painted so many pieces, it’s like I’m on auto pilot most of the time, I rarely think about what colours i’m using, unless doing characters, I let the letter pieces flow and see what happens, I rarely draw outlines these days and have started to go straight in with the final outline first. Cept is very impatient, get it done, let’s go to the pub and look at the photos, whereas with my studio work I’m in for the long haul, using brushes and oils, mixing colours, it’s a world away from graffiti, the work on canvas is a lot more considered, it’s a new world to me painting with oils, so I’m learning all the time, new techniques, different pigments, it’s like getting into graffiti again, I’m super buzzing about it, want to know everything. The studio work allows me to expand my artistic ideas beyond graffiti, but maintaining a sensibility that comes from my years of painting on the street.
Photo by Tim Hans
RJ: In mainstream contemporary art, there seems to be this idea that the writers who get into highly conceptual art leave graffiti behind and “graduate” from writing, but artists like Barry McGee and yourself keep a foot in both worlds. What continues to appeal to you about your work as Cept that you don’t get from your work as Mike Ballard and vice versa? Is it a false dichotomy to position writing and conceptual painting, video, sculpture and installation art as different things?
Ballard: Once you’re really into graffiti, I feel there is no stopping, serious writers don’t give up, it goes in waves, sometimes I’m painting a lot outside and sometimes not, but never falling out the game, I’ve been painting for too long to ever stop or turn away from graffiti, what I’ve seen of late in London is a lot of people claiming to be street, coz they done a couple of roller pieces in the wick, painted on the street for 2 minutes then claim to be making some big transition from street to gallery, these are just people who make money not art, and have no integrity in what they do, it’s simply to be famous and get some money, they don’t graduate from writing, they use it as some kind of badge to make them seem cool, and have no presence on the street anymore.
Graffiti is a massive part of me, it is who I am , how I grew up and the friends I have made, I get a lot of satisfaction painting graffiti, it’s instant, in your face, burners all over the place, the whole action of painting a huge piece, it can’t be beat, it’s a feeling like nothing else, where as completing a painting on canvas is a different feeling, it’s again one of satisfaction and challenge, but more personal, a bit more shy and reserved, a whole different context of making stuff, bipolar.
I think it’s how you pull these things together and again in what context you experience them, I incorporate all these elements into my installations, it’s not that they are different things, divisions but whether they have the artist’s style and ideas running throughout the different mediums, to form one big piece of work from many elements.
Photo courtesy of Mike Ballard
RJ: What is the riskiest artwork you’ve ever made?
Ballard: Riskiest in terms of shocking? or riskiest as in most crapping myself? If it’s the latter, probably doing a back jump on the New York subway.
Photo courtesy of Mike Ballard
RJ: What’s the strangest dream you’ve had recently?
Ballard: I always have strange dreams, but telling them to people is like looking through someone else’s holiday photos, a bit boring, you can’t convey the feeling of the experience…
Daniel Lynch aka Junky Projects is and has always been one of my favourite Melbourne street artists. The reason is simple, because he’s different. Junky’s creations are a breath of fresh air in Melbourne’s street art scene. With his red hair and awesome taste in fashion, Junky is also one of the most interesting characters in the scene.
Junky describes his work on his website: “Essentially I create sentinels from junk and install them in strategic positions around the place to help remind passers by that if they continue to create so much waste in their lives one day it may come back to haunt them.” I find this idea fascinating and I love finding new characters around the city staring down at me from lamp posts and walls. He also makes amazing sculptures much greater in size than his street work.
Junky has a show coming up on the 21st of March at Dark Horse Experiment called Wasted. I’m looking forward to seeing what he creates for the show. You can see more of his work via this Flickr pool.
I recently caught up with Daniel and this is what we talked about…
LM: Where did your name come from?
JP: I had been toying around with the junk medium for a little while and using old tags that I had been using previously for straight up bombing, but it didn’t seem right. At the time there were a lot of artists popping up with really unusual names, and I dug that straight away. The old kinda more traditional tags were sorta flashy and 80’s sounding. When I heard tags like ‘RotGut’ Or ‘Snotrag’ I thought these were the kinda tags that stood out for me and sounded different. Because I was using recycled waste materials in my work I decided ‘Junky’ sounded like a nice brutal tag and straight away it stuck. But that was when it was all more anonymous. There is a certain luxury in the anonymity which means you can call yourself whatever you want. But then some dickhead Melbourne “Art Critic” took it upon himself to announce on the internet my real name and tag, so I had the problem of people coming up to me at shows calling me Junky, which can be awkward in certain situations. So I added the ‘projects’ part to kind of try and separate the person from the work a little, So that I am Daniel Lynch and these are my ‘Junkyprojects’.
Junky Projects. Photo by AllThoseShapes.
LM: Where did the idea for your characters come from? How did you come up with the idea?
JP: Coming to Melbourne from a smaller town like Newcastle can be a pretty intimidating experience. I had been making art, working a bit of graphic design and getting really involved in the graff scene for some time and of course Melbourne is the place to be if your into that stuff, so down I came. But once your here there are so many big personalities and crazy painters doing their thing everywhere, and doing it well. I just felt like my old approach to getting up was pretty much just that, old. I had seen some work by some guys around the world installing plaque’s and mosaics, even ‘Fuckin Revs’ steel welded sculptures, and I decided to have a crack at something like that. The junk aspect came naturally. I’ve always collected weird crap that I find, this just gave me an outlet for it. Once I put a few up they were really well received so I kept at it. Now its just a snowball I can’t stop.
Junky Projects. Photo by AllThoseShapes.
LM: How long have you been doing what you do? How did you start? Have you always been into art?
JP: I grew up loving art. Art galleries were always amazing beautiful special places for me as a young person. Somewhere to go think and reflect. Very early on I decided that I wanted to be an Artist, but as it goes everybody around me told me that it was a silly pursuit for Bleeding hearts and hopeless romantics, fraught with poverty and woe. Of course I paid no mind and went ahead with it anyway. I did a Visual Communications Degree at Newcastle uni and came out a qualified Graphic designer, but I hated the idea that it was now my job to help the advertisers of the world sell crap to the public that they shouldn’t buy and don’t need anyway. So I decided to use my powers for good instead of evil. I’ve been working as Junkyprojects now for about eight years.
Junky Projects. Photo by AllThoseShapes.
LM: Are there certain materials you like to use the most?
JP: I love the look of old rusty steel. For my street work that’s the best. I also love using old timbers because they have such a rich history. A block of wood was once a tree, then maybe a carport, then maybe get thrown around for a dog to chase, then washed out to sea, makes its way back onto shore and into one of my sculptures, I like those possibilities. Theses days though im really enjoying building sculptures with polystyrene packaging. Its such a disgusting oil based waste product which is available in such abundance if you just look. But it’s also really light and quite strong, and I love the shapes that are inherent in the forms already when I find the materials.
Junky Projects. Photo by AllThoseShapes.
LM: What do you always carry with you on the street?
JP: Hammer, Extra Nails, Stickers, Sunglasses.
LM: Tell us a little about the process. Do you make these characters at home or in the studio and then attach them to things? Or do you make them on the fly?
JP: Usually I make them at the studio, I’ll collect up all the crap I need and the assemble a heap all at once then go out and install them, easy. Sometimes if I’m out somewhere having fun installing work and I run out of pre made pieces, I might make some there on the spot with whatever I can get my hands on. That’s where the spare nails come in.
LM: Aside from your street work, tell us a little about your larger sculptures? Where can we see some of these?
JP: The larger sculptures are just a natural flow of the work I guess. The street pieces are just quick tags for me so I like to put some more time and effort into larger work sometimes. And sometimes I install the larger stuff out and about. There are still a few around Brunswick I think, but because of the ephemeral nature of art out in the streets and because I’m kinda making it all up as I go along, a lot of the bigger stuff has disappeared. But keep your eyes peeled for more to pop up soon. Also the best place to see my larger sculptural work is at my exhibition on Friday.
Junky Projects. Photo by AllThoseShapes.
LM: Do you dabble in any other forms of art? Like aerosol for example?
JP: I’ve always painted aerosol. I love the freedom and the social aspect of painting with a group of mates. It’s good to keep those skills and stay up. And Graffiti will never die.
LM: Apart from your art work, how else do you contribute to Melbourne’s street art culture?
JP: Well I’m a tour guide for starters, so I take tourists and school students around to check out all the amazing art in our alleys and laneways, that keeps me busy. I also do a lot of workshops with young people and disadvantaged youth. Those are great. We really get to engage a wide cross section of kids who are all facing different issues. Art can be a great outlet for these kids and being able to do something creative often really makes a difference to their lives.
Junky Projects. Photo by AllThoseShapes.
LM: Tell us about “Wasted” your latest exhibition at Dark Horse Experiment? What can we expect from the show?
JP: Wasted is a collection of sculptures, collage, assemblage and installation which for me are all to some extent about magic and myth. All these materials have a life force and a spirit and when we turn materials into waste that spirit is broken down . When I create artworks from these wasted materials it feels like I am creating a new life force and a new spirit for that object. The work I have created seeks to harness this mythology and manifest it into real objects.
LM: What else is coming up for Junky Projects in 2014 and beyond?
JP: Who knows. I’d really like to get out and do some serious traveling over the next few years, maybe some artist residencies here there and everywhere. I’m also really interested in going out into regional areas and partnering with some of these communities to create public artworks made from local waste products. Basically I just wanna get out there and make much more art in many wide and diverse places. Have hammer, Will travel.
The most spellbinding urban exploration I ever experienced in an doomed place…walking down the streets of this town, the heavy silence all around you, and all the amazing art everywhere on the walls trying to bring back to life the so desperately abandoned and empty houses… Doel is a small town close to Antwerp, in Belgium. Despite a rich history build over several centuries, the government decided in the 1970’s to erase Doel from the map in order to make way for the extension and widening of Antwerp’s port. Despite decades of protests, the residents had no choice but to leave their homes. Some residents proudly continue to resist, but you can presume that the game is over. It’s this mix between human tragedy and beauty of art that made this place so attractive to me. I had a vague idea of the art I would find in the streets, Doel is now an urban art legend, but I never expected to be affected like this! And even if the most of the art has suffered from the passage of time and vandalism, it has been a blast! Here is the work of ROA, Santos, Resto, Psoman, Rotti, Koekoes, Asep, Lastplak, Jiem, 0331c, Show, Bue, Amigo, Reab, Topo, Steaz, Wacks. And more from Doel here.
Artist unknownROAPsomanRotti, Koekoes, AsepROA, Resto, OX- Lastplak
Lek, Sowat, Liard, Larbi Cherkaoui and Nour Eddine Tilsaghani. Photo by Louis Brisset.
A note from the editor: I expected some people to object to my recent post about The Wa, but I’m glad that Sowat used it a chance for discussion. He emailed me after reading my post to let me know about a recent show of his where he, Lek and Arnaud Liard tried to bring of bit of graffiti’s spirit to a gallery setting. I thought his argument and the whole idea of the show was interesting, so I asked him to contribute this guest post about the project. – RJ
A few days ago, one of RJ’s post titles made me cringe. Documenting The Wa’s work, he wrote, “The Wa brings the street inside, but not in that cheesy ‘I’m a street artist painting on canvas, therefore I’m bringing the street inside’ way”
I was just back from a three-week residency in Marrakech with Lek and Arnaud Liard, organized by David Bloch Gallery. Except for Soccer slogans, Graffiti and Street Art, let alone muralism, seems to be relatively new in Morroco, which in itself was exciting. In addition to painting murals in the Medina and New Town with Local artists Larbi Cherquaoui and Nour Eddine Tilsaghani, we had put together a show with Lek and Arnaud Liard, called ‘Contraband’. Despite our own harsh views on the subject as teenage graffiti writers, most of this show was constituted of canvases… Had we done something cheesy?
Sowat on the left and right. Liard in the center. Photo courtesy of Sowat
Just like a lot a artists around us, from day one, our main motivation in accepting David Bloch’s proposition, was to find creative ways to keep in touch with 20+ years of writing freely around abandoned buildings when transitioning to the coded atmosphere of a white cube. How could we apply what Graffiti had thought us in this brand new territory?
This week The L.I.S.A. Project NYC invited Jerkface to Little Italy to paint a door on Mulberry Street at the corner of Mulberry and Hester. Since last July, this door is where one of my favorite pieces by ND’A had been, but it was time to change things up. I love how, even though this spot is a bit recessed into the wall, Jerkface’s piece, titled The Jerk of Steel, really pops and still manages to catch people’s attention as they walk by.
Jerkface has this to say about the piece:
My work, when broken down, is a simple game of color. The proper distribution of color can generate various emotions from the viewer. When using iconic characters in my work, I try to minimize their facial expressions so that the more obvious mood generated from the face does not override the subtle mood created by the color play.
I’m happy to finally share this project with Vandalog. Completed in late February, Hosier Inc’s 1st project “Paint UP”. It’s been a long time coming and lots of hard work by the members of Hosier Inc, a not for profit community association made up of anyone that loves Hosier and Rutledge Lanes, the community, residents, local businesses, and artists themselves. (Formed in order to oppose the installation of CCTV cameras in the lanes).
Not to mention the amazing piece itself by Adnate! Painted over 3 days using a swing stage to access the canvas, conveniently available while the building owners repaired the damaged wall. Not only is it a beautiful piece, it also has real meaning and a real affinity to the location.
The project was called Paint UP; a simple play on words; extending access to artists to the untouched walls (never painted before) above ground level in Hosier and Rutledge lanes, 2 of Melbourne’s most recognised street art locations.
From Hosier Inc: “Six artists were invited by Hosier Inc to submit a concept for a large-scale image to be painted on the rear of McDonald House in Hosier Lane. The successful proposal was to demonstrate a rationale and a design that showed an affinity with the location of the wall & building. Members voted and selected Adnate’s submission”.
Adnate’s submission was a portrait of an indigenous boy looking over the lane way & out towards Birrarung Marr – a sacred indigenous land mark in the centre of the city.
I’ve always thought we are missing one vital element as a recognised street art city, more giant murals in the city itself. This is a good addition to the few we have in central Melbourne and I hope there are many more to come!
The reaction to the piece was also very welcome. Two major newspapers ran the story, as well as every Melbourne news station the evening the piece was completed.
This great video by Michael Danischewski gives you a glimpse of the piece being painted over 3 long days, as well as these awesome photos by David Russell.
