New work from Tika in Zürich, Switzerland.
Photos by Gabriela Domeisen
Roa at Healesville Sanctuary
Roa left Melbourne a couple of days ago. What an amazing month or so it has been. After arriving in Melbourne from Puerto Rico, one of the first things he did was visit Healesville Sanctuary. Healesville Sanctuary is a not-for-profit conservation organisation dedicated to fighting wildlife extinction through breeding and recovery programs for threatened species and by working with visitors and supporters to reduce threats facing endangered wildlife. The Sanctuary is a very important part of Roa’s whole visit to Melbourne, a major part of his show at Backwoods Gallery, Carrion, which I will go into more detail about in my next post.
The first day was all about Roa meeting the animals. He got the royal treatment from the Sanctuary and all the keepers, getting to go behind the scenes and really meet the animals, touch, feel and hold most of them.
The next few days were a combination of painting some of the animals he met, and preparing for the show. He painted three pieces while at the Sanctuary, the most exciting would have to have been the Platypus (Ornithorhynchus Anatinus) on the water tower (featured in the video). I was lucky enough to be there with Roa and experience the breathtaking views, hip hop, pizza and beer. A perfect afternoon 🙂 Continue reading “Roa at Healesville Sanctuary”
Digital sculpture as printable graffiti
The precision that goes into making these 3D prints fit outdoor surfaces is incredible! This video gives us a glimpse at that process. Curious to see if 3D printed sculpture picks up and is taken farther.
Recent work from Xuan Alyfe
I always struggle to describe the work of Spanish artist Xuan Alyfe. Today, I’m thinking the best way to describe it is as a cross between Momo, Isaac Cordal, and Interesni Kazki, if I’m limiting myself to using street artists as reference points. Well, whatever it is, it’s interesting.
Photos courtesy of Xuan Alyfe
Gaia and Nanook in Buenos Aires
This is possibly my favorite mural by Gaia in the last year. The piece was done in Buenos Aires for Meeting of Styles Argentina on a Ghelco factory had a part in Argentina’s Fabrica Recuperada, which was a worker’s authority movement. Gaia explained how his mural pays homage to the building’s history, “The cycle of neoliberalism is broken when in 2002 Ghelco was occupied by its employees during the Argentine financial crisis. The last chain link hand floats voting on the other side of the composition. There are 41 Ice cream cones for each worker in the occupied factory. One hand voting represents the democratic decision making process of the cooperatively run ice cream plant.”
Photos by Gaia
Weekend link-o-rama
It’s the weekend…
- This is not your average train-bombing video.
- Lois Stavsky interviews Stikman.
- Dennis McNett has an open studio this weekend, with some prints available at 25% off.
- Troy Lovegates has a new limited edition book available.
- Aiko, Ron English, Swoon, How & Nosm, Logan Hicks, Kenny Scharf, and Futura are showing work indoors at Wynwood Walls this week in Miami.
- Speaking of Miami, Brooklyn Street Art have a round up of great things to do and see in Miami this week.
- This work from Aakash Nihalani was done during Nuart earlier this fall, and I love it. It’s simple and site specific. Remember, always practice good placement. If you do that, you don’t have to paint 7 stories tall just to catch people’s attention.
- What Are You Doing To Participate looks like a great show of zines opening this week in LA with work from Mel Kadel, Matt Leines, Pez, and many more.
- Sickboy and Word To Mother have a show together in London next Thursday for one-night only.
- In Syria, street art and graffiti can get you killed.
Photo by Jade
NO-AD project
In 10 hours, artist Vermibus removed 30 advertisements from the streets of Berlin. The anti-consumerism project is as straight forward as its name: NO-AD. Yesterday we posted about Rosh’s ad disruption in Madrid. Personally, I think that these are a part of one of the more important movements in street art.
We are open
For a lot of ad disruptors, facing the physical obstacles is just a regular part of the game. Rosh has leveled the playing field between advertisers, ad disruptors and any old pedestrian in Madrid. The open invitation may provoke passersby to manipulate their environment, or provoke them to consider their decision not to. Either way, it is simple yet powerful work by Rosh.
Photo courtesy of Public Ad Campaign
Tonight We Won’t Be Bored – 10 years of V1 Gallery
V1 Gallery in Denmark celebrates its 10th year with Tonight We Won’t Be Bored; a massive show of 100 new works by artists like André, Kenny Scharff, Futura, Faile, Lydia Fong (aka Barry McGee), Barbara Kruger, Shepard Fairey, Steve Powers, Todd James, Andrew Schoultz, Thomas Campbell, Erik Parker, André, Neckface, Eine, Wes Lang, Clayton Brothers, and many others. The show opened on November 30th and runs through January 12th.
The Copenhagen gallery got its start in 2002, in a space which had formerly been used as a bakery. With their first exhibition being with Faile, they got the ball rolling pretty quick. By 2007 they moved to a larger space and later started curating shows and participating in art fairs around the world.
Photos by Henrik Haven
Banksy torn out of context in Miami
Caroline Caldwell contributed to this post
Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?
Okay, so now you’re probably thinking “What the hell is RJ on about? That line came out of nowhere. I think it’s the punchline to some knock knock joke, but it makes absolutely no sense at the start of a post. I don’t think I’ve heard heard RJ say banana and I couldn’t care less if I had.” And you’d be right. That line makes no sense out of the context of the joke in which it belongs, and until we have that context, we can’t say for sure whether that line is good or bad. And yet, this is pretty much what a show that’s on right now in Miami asks visitors to do…
Marc and Sara Schiller from Wooster Collective wrote a must-read piece about unauthorized Banksy exhibition in Miami this week and why they find the exhibition so objectionable that they won’t be attending. The works in the show in question were removed off the streets to be sold into private hands, and the art fair hosting the show is fully aware that Banksy disapproves of the show. If this sounds familiar, it’s because these are the some artworks that were shown in The Hamptons a little over a year ago. This time though, the works are supposedly not for sale as they are now part of a private collection. Regardless of all that, as the Schillers note, Banksy’s best work really only works when experienced in context in which it was intended (whether that intended context be on the street or in a gallery), and bringing these pieces indoors probably makes most of them much much much weaker than they were on the street.
This is certainly not the first time we’ve seen someone trying to make a buck off Banksy and it’s reasons like this that Banksy created Pest Control, a controversial committee which determines the authenticity of Banksy works on the market and which refuses to authenticate any street works or works not originally intended for resale.
The show is accompanied by this ridiculous wall text:
What this wall texts shows is a fundamental misunderstanding of Banksy’s practice. By removing the work from its original context, they are only showing a part of the work. To see the works “as artworks themselves” is to see them on the street without a plexiglass cover on them. Taking them out of that context to evaluate them is like removing 1/64th of a Warhol print from the rest of the piece, framing it, and hanging it on a wall to evaluate on its own without considering the other 63/64ths of the piece. A wisp of Marylin’s hair is unlikely to seem a great artwork all on its own. As the Schillers say in their piece, Banksy’s best work is about context and site specificity, and you usually need “The long shot” providing context for the work for it to make complete sense. Even his best gallery work has this same feature, where it makes sense in a gallery or museum context, but might not make sense on the street. Asking what value there is in a Banksy street piece hung on a gallery wall is a bit like asking what value there is in a Picasso that’s been put through an incinerator.
Plus, I can’t help but laugh at the way they refer the Banksy as a graffiti artist and his work as graffiti.
The Schillers write, “It’s intentional on our part that this article doesn’t mention the name of the show that will take place this week in Miami. Nor will we mention the name of the speculator who is crassly attempting to profit from the work. Attention is what he desires.” I however must acknowledge that a good chunk of Vandalog’s readers are also regular readers of Arrested Motion, who visited the show and did publish that information, so hiding it it a bit futile. The show is called Banksy: Out of Context and it is at the Context Art Miami, an offshoot of Art Miami.
Nonetheless, I do agree with the Schillers that the show should be actively avoided, particularly since it is not free to visit. Context will cost you between $10-$50 just for a one-day pass. Instead, why not stop by the always-exciting Fountain Art Fair where Living Walls has organized dozens of street artists to paint next to one another in an outdoor portion of the fair? There, the work may be a bit out of place as street art, but at least the artists are on board with the idea and making the work there with the knowledge of where and how it is going to be displayed.
Read more on Wooster Collective, where the Schillers have written a lot of similar things to what I’ve echoed here, but they probably use better grammar.
Photos by RJ Rushmore and courtesy of Arrested Motion