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Know Hope in a UK group show

I don’t know much about this JaffaCakesTLV show, but Know Hope is involved, so I’ll be checking it out.

Here’s the press release:

Very little of the groundbreaking art created in Israel in the last decade responded directly to [the political unrest], either because artists felt powerless to change a harsh reality, or because they chose to adopt a universalist stance in an attempt to rise above the purely local.” (Amitai Mendelsohn, Real Time: Art in Israel: 1998-2008, 2008).

The first ever exhibition in the UK devoted to contemporary art from Tel Aviv will open on April 16 as a pop-up exhibition in Kenny Schachter’s Rove Gallery. 33-34 Hoxton Square. Examining one of the most interesting, yet unexplored, groups of practicing artists today, JaffaCakes TLV will showcase works by seven artists who are inspired by the diversity and vibrancy of modern-day Tel Aviv. Although artists from Tel Aviv have started to gain attention in the United States and Europe, they have not been shown as a group in the UK until now.

Entitling the show after the well-loved biscuits is a play on words. Its familiarity provides the perfect combination of mundane and mischievous, yet it references a geographical location. Jaffa, one of the oldest ports in the world has become the centre of Israel’s fringe culture; it is youthful, daring and avant-garde. Like Tel Aviv-Jaffa, a city of contradictions, the works in JaffaCakes TLV are beguiling; a multitude of layers slowly reveals an underlying sense of mystery and fantasy.

The exhibition is inspired by renowned short story writer and Camera D’Or winner Etgar Keret. His stories “fuse the banal with the surreal, shot through with a dark, tragicomic sensibility and casual, comic-strip violence.” (The Observer, 13 February 2005). Within the recognisable streets and neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, Keret depicts conventional modern life with injections of irregularity that lead its viewers to question their preconceived notions of reality.The catalogue will feature a short story by Etgar Keret while the artists on show explore and reflect this notion of the uncanny in their work.

For more information, images and artists CVs please email info@jaffacakesTLV.com.

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Now’s The Time at Black Rat Projects

Black Rat Projects (formally Black Rat Press) finally has their first show of 2010 opening in a few weeks. It’s called Now’s The Time. It’s a group show and it brings together artwork by some of the top names in street art’s history: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Banksy, Barry McGee, Faile and Os Gêmeos. I’ve heard about this show coming together over the last few months, and I like to joke that the idea behind it is strikingly similar to The Thousands, but two artists really separate this show from The Thousands and other similar exhibition that have been put on in the past: Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It’s not often that a gallery has put on an exhibition of what is claimed to be the world’s top street art and been able to include those two essential artists in the line up alongside newer artists artists like Faile. This is going to be a very interesting show. Now’s The Time opens April 22nd at Black Rat Projects in London.

Via Pimp Guides