Don’t Panic, the a free UK magazine, has a poster by Banksy available this week’s Don’t Panic Pack. It’s a nice free way to get his “Forgive Us Our Trespassing” stencil. On the other side of the poster, there is an ad for Exit Through The Gift Shop, so get two packs, that way you can display both sides. More info on Don’t Panic’s website.
I’m pretty sure that I’m the only journalist/blogger/whatever to have taken a video camera inside Banksy’s Leake Street cinema, where he hosted the UK premiere of Exit Through The Gift Shop. If you didn’t have a chance to see the cinema in person, here’s your chance to check it out:
And S.Butterfly has a great set of photos from inside the cinema.
Anthony Lister can be one of my favorite painters. He was once described to me as “an extremely talented painter, who happens to use a spray can,” and I completely agree with that assessment.
Lister’s next solo show is at Lyons Wier Gallery in New York City, and it opens on March 19th. Should be pretty awesome.
Also, Lister recently painted a mural at the Pulse art fair in NYC for the Lyons Wier Gallery.
Ad Deville of Skewville recently painted this in the back of Factory Fresh. Supply and demand, and two shall never meet.
Mac, Retna and Kofie painted this huge mural for Manifest Equality:
El Mac, Retna & Kofie: JUSTICE Mural for Manifest Equality- Time lapse: from Augustine Kofie on Vimeo.
The germ of this particular collaborative project (full PDF of the essay here) between Hrag Vartanian and I, began a little under two years ago when someone on flickr called a fake New Yorker article to my attention that had been pasted up on N7th and Bedford in the epicenter of Williamsburg. Entitled “Canal Street Swoons”, the scathing feature was pasted abutting a piece that I had committed to the streets entitled Rachel and the Wolves. While the anonymous author was particularly trenchant in its tone regarding my and Elbowtoe’s work in comparison to Swoon, I was excited that my pieces had engendered such a vehement reaction within somebody that they wrote, designed and pasted their own essay on the street.
Often, artwork in the gallery space is contextualized and its full scope realized by a supplementary text that provides the insightful background material and motivation for the piece. These auxiliary words help to complete the work and neatly establish the piece as apart of a larger narrative. Alternatively, what is so intriguing about street art is that it exists within the space that it occupies more autonomously and mysteriously. There is no description of materials employed or sources referenced; there is rarely even an associated name or moniker present. Such a floating image without any support gives the work an enigmatic character that is intriguing but simultaneously opaque.
This collaboration attempts to bridge that gap between the viewer and the art’s broader situation by producing more points of access into the work. The adjacent text fills in the art historical gaps and suggests at the intention behind the seemingly ambiguous figure. Furthermore, it extends the physical conversation on the street by demonstrating another form of interaction with the environment. Personally, this is an exciting moment because I am hopeful that it will spur more street art criticism that will exist physically alongside its subject.
For a more extensive explanation of the piece, check out Hrag’s writeup on Hyperallergic. More photos after the jump
-Gaia
Continue reading “Collaboration between Hrag Vartanian and Gaia”
Back in January, Ronzo put up some sculptures in London of his credit crunch monster. Now he’s put together a film of him installing the sculptures. Although I mentioned these sculptures when they were first spotted, the film is kind of funny, so I thought it worth sharing:
Ronzo’s Pity of London – Part 1 from Ronzo on Vimeo.
Over the weekend, there was a large-ish article on JR in The Observer. I think JR is pretty amazing, so I’m excited to see him getting recognition in such a popular magazine. Hopefully it will help him raise some money for whatever his next project is. The article may randomly compare JR to Banksy as the lead, but otherwise it’s very insightful. Odd random tidbit: JR is a bit of a hipster, which might explain why he takes so many photos…
You can read the full article on Guardian.co.uk.
Photo by Nick J Webb
Well the Oscars were Sunday night, and two good things came out of them: 1. Avatar didn’t win best picture, and 2. D*Face put some new statues in LA. D*Face made two 7-foot tall modified Oscars and put one outside of Mel’s Drive-In and the other in Runyon Canyon Park.
Personally, I think the giant Oscars are a bit much, but I love this regular-sized one. D*face aught to send them to all the actual Oscar winners.
These awesome photos of D*face’s studio are by Viktor Vauthier
