Tag: ben eine

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Art (and an identity) at auction

Banksy's "Portrait of an Artist" sold for £60,000 at Bonhams

There were two auctions of note this week.

First, Bonhams has their latest urban art auction on Tuesday evening. Most of the notable sales in that auction can be found on Arrested Motion. Additionally, an Eine went for double the high estimate and a Luc Price did very well.

But of course, it’s worth noting that there’s an element of madness with auctions. Perhaps this is best exemplified by an eBay listing where the item for sale was Banksy’s identity (listed for a Buy It Now price of $25,000). The seller claimed to have matched a person’s tax records with Banksy’s sale records. Sounds like complete BS to me. The listing was taken offline last night for unknown reasons. IFC has more info.

UPDATE: The eBay listing is back online, this time selling a piece of paper with Banksy’s name on it, which should fit within eBay’s auction rules.

Photo courtesy of Bonhams

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tasj vol ii – issue iii

Seth and I are finally back in LA after our trip to London and Paris. I had jet lag the whole time I was in London, then got it again when I got home, so that wasn’t particularly enjoyable, but other than that we did some fun things. Now we’re working toward Block Party with Boxi, Krystian Truth Czaplicki, Gregor Gaida, Simon Haas and Dan Witz + a showcase with Sixeart, which opens here at Carmichael Gallery on Saturday, November 13, and putting together the Miami issue of tasj.

I just wanted to quickly share some highlights from the current issue of tasj (vol ii – issue iii). As always, it’s free to subscribe to, no matter where you live.

As you can see from the cover, this is Part II of our Backstage Series (see who was in Part I here). One of my favorite interviews is with Mike Vargas and Moni Pineda, who run the web series/blog Friends We Love. I recommend checking out the site if you haven’t been on it yet; there is so much great content up there!

In addition to our Unurth, auction and art fair pages, we also have several new regular sections: Special Event (for shows taking place outside traditional gallery/museum settings – you’ll read about Blk River in here), Stopover (our city guide – this issue highlights London), Limited Edition (for prints and multiples – Faile, Bumblebee, Eine and Zeus are street artists who feature) and Newsstand (an off-shoot of Bookshelf and a place to support our fellow magazines and newspapers).

Hope you enjoy!

– Elisa

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VNA13 – Eine, Steve Powers, Dan Witz and a girl with her shirt off

I’ve got a drawer full of books and magazines to read and review right now, but Very Nearly Almost number 13 jumped to the front of the queue this weekend when I took a bus to and from Washington, DC. Why? Because it’s light and small and fits in my backpack way better than Trespass.

Regular Vandalog readers will know that I’m a fan of Very Nearly Almost, and issue 13 is no exception. Interviews with Elbow-toe, Dan Witz and Miso are great because I think they (particularly Miso) are overlooked talents. And then there’s Steve Powers who never responded to Vandalog’s recent interview request (kind of expected that to be honest). There’s even an essay by Dave The Chimp, who never ceases to entertain me, about the need to experience art in real life (as in not on blogs or in magazines). Oh and on page 74 there’s a photo of a topless girl.

Sorry if I’m sounding a bit glib. I really just want to write this post and get to sleep. Just got my flu shot and the symptoms are kicking in a bit. In all seriousness though, VNA is probably my favorite magazine and art lover should pick up a copy of their latest issue. You can get it online for £4.

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New Works from the Weekend Onwards

With the run-up to Frieze in London and everyone and their mother in town for events, there has been a bit of an explosion of art this week. So, I thought I would do a little round-up of pieces I have come across online since for the next few days all you will hear is “Oh my God! Hell’s Half Acre is Amazing!!” and “Moniker looks so cool!” Sometimes we need a break from that. Ok, well at least I do.

Motor in Leake Street by Steph Keller
Banksy Door at Old Vic Tunnels by Butterfly
Trustocorp for Reform School in NYC
Eine "Calculate" by VNA
Sando by Walls of Milano
Stik on Great Eastern Street by Spen H
Banksy "haring dog" by Romany W G

Oh come on, I had to post this one! It is one of my favorites of the new Banksy pieces. Plus, whoever made the Haring sculpture in response is awesome. It is a great addition unlike the graffiti next to it.

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Weekend link-o-rama

Recent mural by Eine. Photo by Unusualimage

Well it was the first week of midterms for me, so lots of time was spent locking myself in my room, turning off the wifi and just studying. On the plus side, had a great meeting today trying to get some grant money from my college to bring street artists to campus and I took a nap on what might just be the world’s comfiest couch. So here’s what I haven’t had the chance to blog with all that school stuff going on:

  • I’ll be running a modified version of my street art tours next Friday at the Moniker Art Fair. The tour will be free and we’ll being checking out the fair as well as some of the street art in Shoreditch nearby. That will be from 1-2:30 11:30-1pm and 1:30-3:00pm next Friday afternoon at Moniker.
  • Unurth has photos of Escif’s latest murals.
  • Kaws blogged some teaser shots of his upcoming book.
  • Feral has been posting a lot of photos on his flickr over the past month of the interesting work he’s been making.
  • Mike put together a nice overview of FAME Festival for Arrested Motion
  • The latest in the line of shows Yosi Sergant (previously involved with Manifest Hope and Manifest Equality) has worked on, Re:Form School looks to be another massive group show advocating a good cause. It is open in New York this weekend only.
  • Kofie has a solo show opening this weekend at White Walls in San Fransisco. The opening reception is on Saturday evening. Check out The Citrus Report for more info.
  • LAB (Little Art Book) has a pop-up shop in London starting today through October 23rd. There will be prints for sale priced as low as £30. Their blog has more info.

Photo by unusualimage

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This is going to be awesome… Moniker International Art Fair

Way back at the beginning of August, I mentioned that the Moniker International Art Fair would be starting in London this year as a street art alternative to Frieze. Basically, some of the world’s top urban, street and low-brow art galleries have been brought together and will be exhibiting under one roof from October 14th-17th at Village Underground in Shoreditch. Galleries with booths include New Image Art, Campbarbossa, Black Rat Projects, Carmichael Gallery and more. Additionally, there will be project spaces from artists like Ben Eine and Polly Morgan.

They’ve just released this new animated video for the fair:

While our friends at VNA are officially sponsoring the fair, we here at Vandalog have a bit of involvement as well. Elisa Carmichael is obviously going to be there for Carmichael Gallery, Steph Keller is currently interning with Moniker and I’m organizing something small with them as well which will be announced soon, so you can be sure that we’ll be posting a lot about the fair in the coming weeks.

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Weekend link love

Billboard by Mobstr

This link post is definitely going to be a weekly thing. Hopefully it will allow me to link to things that I just haven’t had the time to cover here on the blog, my Twitter or Vandalog’s Facebook page. So here’s what you may have missed in street art this week:

  • My Love For You Is A Stampede of Horses and Arrested Motion have two sets of amazing photos from Fecal Face‘s 10 year anniversary show at The Luggage Store in SF. This show has a pretty sick line up including Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Jim Houser, Swoon and Maya Hayuk.
  • Nychos’ solo show at Pure Evil Gallery (in cooperation with End of The Line) opened on Thursday. Go here for the press release sort of info or go here for photos from the opening.
  • That I May See, Matt Small’s latest solo show, opened last week at Black Rat Projects and it looks absolutely stunning. My family and I can’t thank Matt enough for his support of the Robert Shitima School in Zambia, which is where Matt and Black Rat Press have decided to donate 40% of the proceeds from this show.
  • Eelus, Logan Hicks, Eine, Lucy McLachlan and others are headed to Gambia next month for the Wide Open Walls project.
  • OFFSET has once again put together an interesting conference of creatives who will be speaking next month (October 1st-3rd) in Dublin. OFFSET 2010 will have presentations from Gary Baseman, Steve Powers, Marc and Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective and many more. Early bird tickets are available online for 150 euros (with discounts for students thankfully).
  • A very touching work of street art in Brooklyn.
  • Just Seeds has put together Resourced, a set for political posters that you can download and print at home. There are designs by Gaia, Armsrock, Chris Stain, Josh MacPhee and many more artists.
  • When I first heard about JR’s new Unframed project, I didn’t really care for it. Basically, JR is wheatpasting other photographers (often famous) photographs around in cities. To me, this sort came out of left field. I don’t mind when Blek le Rat does similar things, but with JR, I always liked the stories behind the photos as much as the images themselves. I thought that with Unframed, that aspect of the art would go away. Luckily, Angelo at FAME Festival reassured me in an email and said once I learned more about the project, these would be just as interesting as the rest of JR’s art. Because I trust Angelo, I waited and didn’t write anything about Unframed or JR’s piece at FAME Festival. Earlier this week, Hi-Fructose’s blog posted a better explanation of the project as well as some photos of Unframed taking place in Switzerland. As usual, Angelo was right and after reading that post on Hi-Fructose, I’ve been convinced about Unframed.

Photo by Mobstr

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Eine and RYCA hit Hackney

It’s been quite a week for Eine, what with the prime minister giving President Obama one of Eine’s paintings as a gift, but Eine has taken that experience and put it right out on the street in this new collaboration with RYCA. Eine painted the words “The Strangest Week” and RYCA painted the phrase “Power Up.”

Besides looking great, this piece actually asks an interesting question of the art world. Eine and RYCA have literally used the same stencils, the same ideas, the same paint and the same spot to paint this piece. Ben Eine’s work gets publicized by major newspapers, and RYCA isn’t nearly as well known outside of the street art world. In fact, Eine’s involvement in this wall is probably why I’m writing about it. So yeah, the art world is kind of silly. But this also speaks to the beauty of street art when it’s outdoors. The thousands of people who will walk by this wall every day have no idea if those words were painted by me, Hackney Council, Eine and RYCA or maybe even Banksy; they just enjoy the message.

Photos by Unusualimage