Temwa, a charity working on community-based projects in Malawi, is holding an art auction in Shoreditch next month. Art for Africa will take place on December 4th at Jaguar Shoes in Shoreditch. There’s a long list of artists involved, but some of the highlights for me are probably going to be Mr. Jago, Toasters, SPQR, Will Barras, Eelus and Xenz. Go here for more info.
Photo courtesy of Temwa
As has been whispered around the blogosphere recently, Retna has a solo show coming up in Miami just a few weeks from now. The show, called Silver Lining, will be Retna’s first solo show since being on the cover of Juxtapoz earlier this year. Silver Lining is going to take place at Primary Projects, a new 4,500 square foot space run by the folks behind Primary Flight. It opens on Thursday, December 2nd and will include “paintings, drawings, an installation and an entirely new body of work” from Retna.
I just booked my flight to Miami and unfortunately I’m going to miss the opening, but this will be one of the first places that I stop by on Friday.
As you can see in the above invite though, I’ve got to make mention of something about Silver Lining which will be important for readers to remember whenever I blog about it: The show is being supported in part by The Rushmore Collection, which is basically my parents. While I’m not my parents and my parents aren’t Vandalog, I did talk with them over the phone twice in the past 24-hours and we are part of a family. My dad sparked my interest in art, but I probably introduced him to Retna’s artwork. Just something for readers to keep in mind when I write about this show.
Photo by Thomas Hawk
Some more Roa news: Remember that Roa’s solo show with Thinkspace in LA opens tonight and runs through November 24th. Here are a few pictures of the show getting prepared…
Photos courtesy of Thinkspace Gallery
Here’s a new video of Roa painting his giant bird off of Brick Lane back in April. The video is a teaser for an upcoming documentary about Brick Lane and art.
Roa’s Big Bird on Hanbury Street, Brick Lane, London from Shafiur Rahman on Vimeo.
EL MAC / RETNA / Estevan Oriol – LA Skid Row mural (2010) from ELMAC on Vimeo.
Check out this video of a new mural painted by super duo El Mac and RETNA in LA’s Skid Row.
Chicken Milk (the street artist with the weirdest name since the Neckface, Armsrock, Elbow-toe saga) is an artist that I haven’t covered before on Vandalog, but probably should have. From the simple to the complex, Chicken Milk has been doing some interesting (but sometimes NSFW) and controversial art in California. Keep an eye on this guy.
Photo by Chicken Milk
At the end of this month, Pow will play host to one of the biggest upcoming street artists in the game: Dran. Known for his cheeky socio-cultural illustrative commentaries, the young Frenchman has gained a loyal following both within the street art community an collectors alike. Two separate shows will take place, one in a secret pop-up location in Soho entitled “My Everyday Life” and the second is a print show at POW headquarters in Shoreditch entitled “I Have Chalks.” The pop-up show will center around of Dran’s fictitous characters, Scribouille, who does nothing in life but art. The secret location will be filled with Dran’s sculptures, installations and street work which are rare in solo form (He usually bombs with his crew Da Mental Vaporz)
“My Everyday Life” will open November 26th to the public and the location will be made known soon.
“I Have Chalks” will open at the print shop on December 2.
These are going to be the most talked about shows this winter, so make sure to check out the works of this rising art star. And I am not just saying that because I am a MASSIVE Dran fan.
Images courtesy of Pictures on Walls
A lot of events have been happening this week, most likely so that everyone can make a last minute push in shows and such before the holidays. Then we have nothing to write about. Gotta love when a whole industry shuts down for a month or so.
Anyways, so here is what has been going on:
Dave the Chimp takes a little look at “the buff”, it’s uses and misuses, and where it can head in the future.
I used to live by a small park. Kids walked through the park to take a short cut to school. Drug dealers worked the same route. There was a garage there covered in tags. I had the idea to paint the garage with some friends, covering the tags with a brightly coloured mural. The idea was to make the space a little brighter, a little less like a spot where drug dealers would hang out. I made a fake letter from my local government authority giving me permission to paint the garage, just in case anyone asked, and set to work. This is the result:
One of my neighbours saw me painting and later told me she thought I was doing “community service”, which in England is an alternative to a prison sentence!
ESPO made his own “community service” projects as a way to get his name up, starting with his “Exterior Surface Painting Outreach” program in New York (those infamous shutters), and later with his “Community Service” project in LA, where he buffed graffiti in the way we are all familiar with today (blocks of colour) so that the buff-marks spelt his name.
You can see these projects here and here.
What I like about this latter project is that it uses the anti-graffiti weapon as the weapon, like a martial artist using their enemies’ strength against them. It also sits nicely with the way graffiti is abstracted so that it becomes a code that can only be read by certain members of society. And it’s incredibly amusing.
Here are some photos of some abstract compositions I made earlier this year by adding my own buff marks to a wall that had been buffed, and other buff marks that I added to spell my name, much like ESPO did, though I created huge letters by only painting the negative spaces in the letters. I didn’t think much about this piece. I had a bucket of paint that was left over from another project I was working on at the time, and I just walked outside to see how I could use it, and this was the result. I’m sure with more thought better pieces could be created with this method. Feel free to take this idea further.
Another body of work utilising the buff was the Toasters‘ Bluff Buff, which inserted the shape of their toaster into areas of buff, as a comment on the inaccurate colours used to cover graffiti: here and here.
I painted characters so they looked as though they were behind areas of buff in Berlin and Hamburg, and turned the actions of the buffer into comedy:
And in this case, the original piece was buffed for real, so I pulled out a marker and turned the buff into fog:
Earlier this week we saw a piece by Mobstr which became a game, with his opponent being the buff man. Comments posted suggested further ways to play the game.
Banksy took a shot at New Orleans famous buffer Fred Radtke AKA The Grey Ghost when he visited the city:
Mr. Radtke has taken it on himself to buff, with grey paint, any graffiti he sees, and even got himself in trouble with police by buffing a legal mural.
He is featured in an upcoming documentary, along with other buffers such as the “Silver Buff” from Berkeley, California, who believes there is too much “visual noise” on the streets. Watch the trailer here. Something I found interesting is that one buffer in the movie talks about how buffing makes him feel “in control” of life. This suggest that the actions of graffiti and street artists can make people feel like they have no control, making them victims. This is something to consider next time you hit the streets.
The buff itself can also be seen as art. Artist Cody Vanderkaay recreates the grey shapes left by buffers in the streets as “black boards” for people to draw on.
Photographer Chris Brennan documents the layers of colour haphazardly applied to the city walls to cover up layers of colour that were made with more thought. His photos often look like the work of abstract artists. One of the photos we see at that link puts me in mind of the work of Mark Rothko, though I doubt the buff in the street can ever be as effecting as being in a room with one of his huge, deep paintings.
Another weapon in the buffers armoury is the pressure washer, that cleans off graffiti. It can also be used to clean dirt off of walls, a fact ZEVS put to great use. Other versions of “clean graffiti” can be seen here. I’m sure we’ve all seen advertisers use this technique too, usually to place logos on city sidewalks.
It’s not unusual to see advertisers use street art techniques, just as it’s not unusual to see street artists fight back against advertising.
I like these pieces by the Thought Police member Eric Pentle, who will happily cut out your carefully constructed copy, or simply paint your whole billboard black. Unlike other artists, such as OX, that use advertising space as their canvas, there appears to be no clever message in Pentle’s billboards. He simply removes their ability to be effective. He is reacting to the lack of control he has in a world full of messages constantly being shouted at him, and thus makes his environment quieter. This is much the same as the Silver Buff does with graffiti. I find this very interesting, as I live in a country where I understand little of the language, and so advertising has no effect on me. It creates a more peaceful daily experience to not be told what to do all the time. See Pentle defuse more advertising here.
As we can see, the buff is nothing to fear. In fact, let us embrace the buff, and see where we can take it. Let us use this negative energy and turn it into a positive force.
One of the advantages of the buff is that, with a little effort, you can get the materials for the job for free. Try ESPO’s technique and tell the city you want to cover the graffiti in your neighbourhood, and are willing to work for free if they give you paint. Failing that, many cities have “paint recycling depots” where unused paint is taken to be disposed of. My friend Ekta in Sweden gets most of his paint for free by going to his local recycling depot and simply asking for the paint. Also keep your eyes open to see where legitimate painting work is happening. Brushes and rollers are often thrown away as people don’t want to make the effort of cleaning them. Soak them in water and the paint soon comes off. Or if they use an oil-based paint and you don’t want to mess around with turps trying to clean them, just wrap them in a plastic bag, they’ll be good for a few more days. Free brushes and rollers! Sorted!
As buffing requires little skill, this fun activity is open to everyone. No need to spend hours cutting stencils, screen printing posters, or learning how to draw – just grab your roller and a bucket of paint and make your mark in the world. The streets are a playground for everyone! I would suggest though that you have an idea before leaving the house, otherwise your efforts will be as destructive and unattractive as The Grey Ghost and his friends.
So come on kids, lets get buffing! Maybe by employing the buff as one of our weapons, applying it liberally around town, we can confuse city authorities so much that they start employing artists to paint art over all of the ugly buff marks in our cities. They can pay us to do what they paid themselves to undo.
Photos by Dave the Chimp, Eric Pentle, eastcolfax and lacraig819
GroundedTV has a great series of photographs from a recent visit to Toronto. Sometimes it feels like certain cities (New York, London, San Fransisco…) have multiple people who are obsessively photographing and documenting the street art and graffiti while other cities with plenty of street art don’t get nearly that much attention. There’s some great art in these photos, but I hadn’t seen any of it before. Although maybe I just wasn’t looking for it. Either way, it says something about a flaw that seems apparent in much of the street art community. I was speaking to somebody at Haverford recently about street art in Atalanta. He told me that there is a significant street art scene there, but I’d only ever connected street art and Atlanta after the Living Walls Conference, which consisted mostly of artists from outside of Atlanta painting there.
If you live in a city or town that has a street art scene that isn’t getting much attention, let me know by email or by commenting on this post. I’d love to see some art from the many cities that I haven’t spent enough time learning about.
Photo by GroundedTV
