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Great In ‘08: Grafter Says…

This is part of Vandalog’s “Great in ’08” series, which will be running every day for the rest of the month. Check out previous posts here. Street artists from across the world have been offered one post to “gift” to one artist that they feel has been doing great work recently. Today it’s Grafter‘s turn (on a completely unrelated note, I hope to see some of you at the opening of Urban Angel‘s Art Lounge tonight, where Grafter will have some work for sale).

Who is one artist doing really great work right now?

There is a lot of great work going on at the moment and some fantastic shows being produced on a regular basis. The recent Eelus show at Electric Sheep was outstanding and some of the work displayed showed, I felt, a real change in direction for a well established artist who could easily have stayed within the comfort zone of his previous work but was brave and confident enough to explore new avenues within his work and show us all a much darker approach to his art.

An artist I have kept a close eye on and have been impressed by his recent efforts is K-Guy. The “Love Hate” print was of outstanding quality and showed a massive step up from “Lislam” which I felt was rather weak. The installations he left around the City of London after that were very nearly a stroke of genius.

The artist I feel that is busting everyone out of sight at the moment though has got to be Vhils. The piece he did at the 1st Cans festival, where he chiseled the image out of the brickwork of the wall, was innovative, fresh and helped to breathe new life into the portrait genre. In amongst the real big hitters of the scene he managed to completely steal the show and I couldn’t wait to see how these works would translate to paper/canvas. The 2 paper releases he issued through POW were simply stunning and the technique of forcing bleach through the screen to the image was again an innovation that helped to make it a whole lot more than just a simple screen print.

The 2nd time at Cans he showed us another new technique were he peeled layers of posters off of a billboard to reveal the layer underneath and produce an image from the different colors of the revealed posters. A truly innovative and creative artist who obviously enjoys exploring various mediums and techniques in order to produce class imagery.

Vhils at Cans Festival. Photo by RJ
Vhils at Cans Festival. Photo by RJ

See more photos after the jump…

Continue reading “Great In ‘08: Grafter Says…”

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Great in ’08: Poster Boy Says…

This is part of Vandalog’s “Great in ’08” series, which will be running every day for the rest of the month. Check out previous posts here. Street artists from across the world have been offered one post to “gift” to one artist that they feel has been doing great work recently. Today it’s Poster Boy‘s turn.

Who is one artist doing really great work right now?

Poster Boy: I think lately it has been Ellis G.

See more of Ellis G’s work after the jump… Continue reading “Great in ’08: Poster Boy Says…”

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Great In ’08: Klone Says…

This is part of Vandalog’s “Great in ’08” series, which will be running every day for the rest of the month. Check out previous posts here. Street artists from across the world have been given one post to give away to an artist (or two) who they feel has been doing great work recently. Today it’s Klone‘s turn (you can check out Vandalog’s recent Q&A with Klone here).

Who is one artist doing really great work right now?

Klone: Anthony Lister comes to my mind immediately. He is a great artist, one to follow for sure, that’s all agreed, but there’s more to my appreciation of Lister. It’s the fact he came from Australia, disconnected from the rest of the world and having to put more into getting himself out, I know the feeling exactly as Israel is like an island, sea on one side and rival countries on the others; now how you get yourself recognized outside of the island?

Photo by RJ
Photo by RJ

See more photos of Anthony Lister’s work after the jump… Continue reading “Great In ’08: Klone Says…”

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Great in ’08: Veng of RWK Says…

Here’s the first post in Vandalog’s “Great in ’08” series, which will be running every day for (nearly) the rest of the month. You can check out the other parts of the series here (once they are posted). Street artists from across the world have been given one post to give away to one artist who they feel has been doing great work recently. Today it’s Veng‘s turn.

Who is one artist doing really great work right now?

Veng: The artist that is doing some really good work now, I feel is Elbowtoe. Looking at his work, you can see the level of detail he puts into each brush stroke or each cut into a piece of linoleum, however beyond the details on the surface it’s the level of attention that goes into each piece’s story that makes them great works.

See photos of Elbowtoe’s work after the jump… Continue reading “Great in ’08: Veng of RWK Says…”

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Great In ’08: Street Artists Pick Their Favorites

Update: Check out the other posts in this series here.

Unless you live in a strange world where time does not exist, we’re coming to the end of 2008. As my contribution to street art’s end-of-year/Christmas/Hanukkah/winter solstice activities, I’ve organized a series of posts which will run from tomorrow until the end of the year.

What’s so special about these posts? I’ve asked a number of street artists one question: “Who is one artist doing really great work right now?” and given them the chance to respond and “gift” a post to the artist or artists that they’ve chosen.

Starting tomorrow, and continuing for the rest of the month (or at least until Boxing Day), I’ll be posting one of these responses every day, along with photos of work by chosen the artists.

Here’s a small selection of the artists who will be sharing some of their favorite artists with Vandalog readers in the coming weeks:

Gaia

Zeus

Cake

Posterboy

©opy®ight

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The Coveted Red Dot

Mike Marcus has started a great new project where he’s painting red dots on pieces all around London (galleries put red dots next to pieces that have been sold).

Photo by Sandrine Plasseraud
Photo by Sandrine Plasseraud

Here’s an excerpt from Mike’s blog post on the project, which makes some very valid points on the state of street/urban art:

Like many fine artists eventually do, I have reached a point where I want to devote myself to my practice full time. In order to do this, I need to make enough money through public funding and print sales to cover my needs for rent, food, art materials and the occasional beer. Obviously the urban art scene is a good place to target because so much money is being spent. For this reason I devoted much of the past month to marketing myself in this sector.

As this period draws to a close, I have to say that I have been left a little disappointed. Of the long conversations I have had with collectors and dealers, I have come to the conclusion that the scene wants to consume (both commercially and intellectually) safe art. Because of the supreme lack of imagination shown by its aficionados, todays urban art seems to be a retrospective of yesterdays street art, a parody of itself.

What happened to the radical movement where we could say what we wanted without being moderated by galleries? Weren’t we meant to be subversive? These days it seems that we are more conservative than the art establishment which we reacted against. Somewhere during the change from “street” to “urban”, the movement lost its passion and subsequently its message.

I think Mike is right about this (to an extent). His work is certainly on the controversial side, and I think some of his most controversial stuff is his best. Unfortunately, it also gets ripped off the walls after 30 seconds and I don’t know many street art collectors who would want to put such controversial work in their homes.

Mike has decided to push the boundaries, and street art says he’s pushed too far. Isn’t that the point of street art? Are street art fans getting complacent and boring?

Anybody go to Pictures on Walls today? I enjoyed it, but after reading Mike’s post, I’m starting to see it differently. What boundaries were being broken? Isn’t that what attracted us to street art in the first place? Artists were tearing down the art establishment by giving away their art, now they are trying to become the art establishment.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love street art, I just think we need to be careful. Street art needs to remember what it is supposed to be. I love that street art took over the Tate Modern, but the Tate needs to adapt to us, we shouldn’t adapt to suit it.

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Two Minute Tour: Shoreditch Street Art

I went on a street art walk through Shoreditch today with gofindit.net, which is an campaign for the new Ford KA. The website isn’t really about the KA though, it’s meant to be about how you can discover new things by just opening your eyes and looking around. While I’m not the biggest fan of car companies co-oping street art because it’s “hip” and “cool”, the website does have a few cool bits.

First, they’ve put together a great video of Shoreditch graffiti:

Second, remember Space Invader’s QR codes? Well Ford’s made some really sick ones for this campaign that they’ve been sticking around Shoreditch. Once again, we have the question of is it okay to think something that Ford is doing is cool, but I think you’ll agree, these are, at the very least, cool technology. Besides, maybe some street artists will pick up on this idea… Check out the video of Ford’s QR codes below. I got to play with these a bit today, and I have to say, really fun.