Vandalog – A Street Art Blog

Last Wednesday was the opening of The Thousands, the art exhibition I curated. The photos are on flickr and the blog posts are online, and yet, I haven’t mentioned the show much on Vandalog since the opening. It’s been busy, so now I’m making up for that.

The folks at Babelgum have been super-supportive, with three videos about the show. The first is a behind the scenes look at the show, a bit of the set up, as well as a chat with me about the exhibition. The next two are tours of the exhibition.

And there are hundreds of photos on flickr in The Thousands’ group pool of all the pieces in the show.

Just hours before opening, the books arrived. The Thousands: Painting Outside, Breaking In was sold at the show, and now you can buy it on Drago’s website. And forget about hours, minutes before we opened the doors, Hera finished signing her prints for the special edition of the book with a lithograph of one of Hera’s sketches (you can get those at CampBarbossa £100).

Of course, the opening was packed. Thanks to BrewDog, there was a steady supply of their Punk IPA beer until 15 minutes before closing time. And Gold Peg was also there selling some ice cream at the Mad Beef Ice Cream Parlour. I was worried about who would show up on Wednesday, but not only did we have artists like Know Hope, Hera and the Burning Candy crew, but there were people I didn’t recognize! That felt pretty cool.

I think The Thousands looked amazing, but I’m not the only one. Here are some reviews I found:

• The Future Tense were there taking some great pictures and chilling with Hera. They say “most people agreed it was a welcome opportunity to attend a show solely to celebrate the medium rather than to buy or be sold to”
• Arrested Motion sent s.butterfly over to have a look. They say “RJ Rushmore’s debut exhibition highlights some of the strongest representatives of the street art scene.”
• It was great to finally meet Sean from Organ Magazine. He says “The Thousands is a triumph.”
• Ryan Millar says “It was all delicious.”
• Art of The State has some cool photos including both sides of Roa’s piece.
• The 405 says “The goal of The Thousands was to attempt to show the art world and the public that there are great works of art within the sphere of “street art” and that street artists deserve a place in art history at least equal to that of The Young British Artists or the great pop artists; And hells yes, that was indeed achieved.”
• Of Burning Candy’s mural, Hookedblog says “get down and check it out.”

Which brings me to the murals. The murals looked amazing. As planned, Burning Candy showed up to paint this (daytime shot here):

Unexpectedly though, I found out that there were 3 small walls on the building that I could have painted, so I invited Inketish, Pure Evil and Know Hope to come by. Here are those results:

And here are some interviews and articles that were done in the lead up to the show:

• I had a nice chat recently with Mymetropole
• Curated, Open Magazine, dailyDuJour, Juxtapoz, Brooklyn Street Art and The 405 all have email interviews with me.
• And The 405 also interviewed Rowdy, Nick Walker and Armsrock.

So that’s The Thouands in a nutshell. It was an amazing experience and I hope to do it again.

Thanks 1000x over to all the people who helped put the show together, especially my mom who doesn’t even like street art that much.