Fans of London graffiti have got to check out the Writers’ Block series of videos. Basically, writers put a few tags in a black book. Here are two of my favorites…
Ludvig:
Panik ATG:
Some of the other writers who have worked with Writers’ Block include Gold Peg, Insa, Mighty Mo and Elate.
London has been abuzz with talk of Faile and Bast’s Deluxx Fluxx Arcade show at Lazarides‘ Greek Street. Luckily, for those who aren’t in London and can’t see the show in person, Babelgum has put together a video about it:
And of course, Faile also have a retrospective going on just down the street at Lazarides’ Rathbone Place location:
Wednesday night is the opening of perhaps the 2nd most anticipated solo show of the year so far (the most anticipated being Hirst’s at Gagosian). It’s the opening of KAWS’ show at Galeria Javier Lopez in Madrid, Spain. KAWS has posted a few photos of the set up on his blog. Here’s a couple of those.
Via VNA
David Choe has posted a lengthy mish-mash of links on his blog, with the point being that in April he’s got a solo show in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles with Lazarides Gallery called Nothing to Declare. And, he’s also got a book being published this summer
Wooster Collective posted this interesting street art documentary called Open Air. It’s not new, but I hadn’t seen it before.
I didn’t intend to post anything more about Mr. Brainwash’s Icons “art show,” but then Animal New York make this hilarious video:
A very interesting article on Channel 4’s website and piece on the 7pm Channel 4 news on Monday. Read it if you are interested in the art market.
There’s no one quite like Banksy – the only street artist most of us have ever heard of it.Aside from the mystique that surrounds his identity (the Daily Mail claims to have unmasked him) his rise from the streets has brought him into conflict with the art market. One Notting Hill dealer accuses of him of being a control freak.
Our little excursion into the Banksy market was instructive.
Banksy has an outfit to sell his prints, Pictures on Walls in Commercial Street, and a sister organisation, Pest Control to authenticate everything. He has an agent and a publicist.
I’ll say two things about the article and video: 1. Who cares if Banksy’s a brand or whatever? Every successful artist does the exact same things to varying degrees. 2. Channel 4 should stop pretending that the media aren’t complicit in the Banksy hype that they’re now trying to call him out for. The BBC found the house where Banksy grew up and could have revealed his identity, but didn’t. The Daily Mail could probably do a hell of a lot better job “unmasking” the guy. And if the Channel 4 reporter Nicholas Glass was at the opening of Banksy versus The Bristol Museum and honestly didn’t notice that there was artwork for sale, he can’t be said to have been very observant at all. And of course, I include myself in being complicit building Banksy-hype and generally ignoring the odd bits like not authenticating street pieces or the fact that he works with a PR agency, but I don’t think I’ve ever pretended to not be part of that hype-machine. Oh, and I’ll add a third comment: 3. Yes, we should respect Banksy’s privacy and just let this thing run it’s course, it’s more fun that way.
Sort of confounded as to how this was made logistically with the clay faces melting in and out of the ground but this is incredible.
via Unurth
First of all, I came across this quote today from Skewville from a few years ago about the potential implosion of the street art world: “I think once there’s a big corny movie that comes out like street art 3d or whatever, then it’s gonna… that’s when it’s over.” I just thought that was funny.
More importantly, urbanartcore.eu has just posted a review of Exit Through The Gift Shop. From what I’ve seen, it’s the first review by a fellow street art fanatic and not a typical film reviewer. It’s great to hear that everybody from film critics to hard-core Banksy fans are loving the film.
This month, Clare Rojas’ show We They, We They opened at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK. For whatever reason, this hasn’t gotten as much attention as it deserves. It took me a while to warm up to Rojas’ paintings, but now I’m definitely a fan.
Ikon presents the first UK museum exhibition by American artist, Clare Rojas (b. 1976, Ohio, lives and works in San Francisco). Best known for her folk-inspired practice, Rojas uses a wide range of media, including painting, installation and printmaking. Her work is characteristically made by using flat areas of colour betraying her origins as a printmaker, its naïf, homespun style thrown into relief by a knowing subject manner. Thus Rojas challenges, with humour and irony, stereotypical representations of the sexes.
The exhibition at Ikon, comprising much new work, marks a shift in Rojas’ practice. Paintings of empty domestic interiors suggest people have just departed, leaving clues of their identities, subtle revelations of gender and class. In other paintings, images of women are increasingly abstracted and yet retain a deceptive playfulness. Stacked conglomerations of shape, colour and pattern evoke figurative presence – a crescent of hair, a waist of a figure – all rendered in Rojas’ distinctive, flat style. It is as if she is reclaiming tropes from early modernist masters, visual languages that were particularly focused on feminine subjects such as the cubism of Picasso or the surreal biomorphism of Miro.
Rojas’ paintings will form centrepieces in a larger installation that is the entire exhibition, walls of the gallery covered by a patchwork of painted panels akin to a quilt. Some are focused on particular imagery; others are assemblages of colour and pattern. They combine to recall a myriad of references from West Coast modernism, to Latino folk or Native American craft, outsider art and street graffiti.
Ikon’s Tower Room will contain paintings on antique banjos, drawing together Rojas’ musical and literary interests where lyrics describe relationships, sometimes with tenderness, sometimes with pointed humour. Around the time of the exhibition opening there will be a concert in which the artist will perform songs taken from her albums released under the name of her alter-ego Peggy Honeywell.
A publication will accompany the exhibition; a children’s story illustrated with images of new work.
In collaboration with Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco.
I’ll probably try to make a trip up to Birmingham in the next few weeks. This looks like it could be something really special.
Photos courtesy of Clare Rojas and Ikon
