Later this month, catch me at The Art Conference, a new arts festival in London. I’m excited to be speaking alongside some amazing artists, including Jordan Seiler, Dan Witz, Tinsel Edwards, and Lucy McLauchlan. I’ll be there to speak about what street art can be when it goes beyond decoration.
The Art Conference will take place July 23 and 24th, and includes a ticketed conference portion and a free exhibition component. Friday the 8th is the last day to pick up early bird tickets to the conference, so don’t delay if you want a deal. For more about the speakers, schedule, and tickets, check The Art Conference’s website.
Speaking of Dan Witz, he’s got a Kickstarter campaign going for an upcoming series of street pieces, which he hopes to install inside London’s iconic red telephone booths.
Surge, Gaia, Stormie, Remi/Rough and in The Underbelly Project
UPDATE – LOCATION CHANGE: The Underbelly Show has moved to 78 NW 25th Street in Wynwood, Miami to accommodate the large scale of the artwork in this show.
The Underbelly Project is back. Last year, I posteda lotabout the project where 103 artists from around the world secretly painted an abandoned/half-completed New York City subway station. After that initial burst of press here and around the web, The Underbelly Project organizers stayed silent. With only occasional vague tweets from a mysterious twitter account and the appearance on Amazon of an upcoming book about the project. Yesterday though, The Underbelly Project announced that they will be participating in this year’s Basel Miami Week madness with a pop-up gallery in South BeachWynwood.
The organizers of The Underbelly Project and The Underbelly Show, Workhorse and PAC, have this to say about the show:
Workhorse: The New York Underbelly was an important chapter for us, but the story hadn’t been comprehensively told. The Underbelly Miami show gives us a chance to present the broad scope of documentation – Videos, photos, time-lapses and first hand accounts. The project is about more than just artwork. This show gives us a chance to show the people and the environment behind the artwork.
PAC: While the experience each artist had in their expedition underground can never be captured, it is my hope that this show will highlight some of the trials and tribulations associated with urban art taking place in the remote corners of our cities. Too often the practice of making art in unconventional venues remains shrouded in mystery and I hope this exhibition will shine a faint light on those artists who risk their safety to find alternative ways to create and be a part of the cities they live in.
35 of the 103 artists from The Underbelly Project will be exhibiting art in The Underbelly Show, plus video and still footage of the artists at work in the tunnel. Here’s the full line-up: Faile, Dabs & Myla, TrustoCorp, Aiko, Rone, Revok, Ron English, Jeff Soto, Mark Jenkins, Anthony Lister, Logan Hicks, Lucy McLauchlan, M-City, Kid Zoom, Haze, Saber, Meggs, Jim & Tina Darling, The London Police, Sheone, Skewville, Jeff Stark, Jordan Seiler, Jason Eppink and I AM, Dan Witz, Specter, Ripo, MoMo, Remi/Rough, Stormie Mills, Swoon, Know Hope, Skullphone, L’Atlas, Roa, Surge, Gaia, Michael De Feo, Joe Iurato, Love Me, Adam 5100, and Chris Stain.
For this show, the space will be transformed into an environment imitating the tunnel where The Underbelly Project took place, right down to playing sounds recorded in the station while The Underbelly Project was happening.
If you absolutely cannot wait until February to get We Own The Night, the book documenting The Underbelly Project, a limited number will be available at The Underbelly Show in a box set with 9 photographic prints and the book all contained in a handcrafted oak box. Additionally, you will be able to your book signed by the artists participating in The Underbelly Show.
The Underbelly Show will take place at 2200 Collins Avenue, South Beach, Miami78 NW 25th Street, Wynwood, Miami. There will be a private opening on November 30th, and the space will be open to the general public December 2nd-5th, with a general opening on the 2nd from 8-10pm.
This year, Vandalog hasn’t been covering the Nuart festival in Norway nearly as closely as we should. Some great work has gone up by a bunch of artists over the last few weeks. Between Nuart’s flickr page and the coverage at Arrested Motion though, the festival has been covered extensively elsewhere. Check out Arrested Motion for Nuart contributions by Lucy McLauchlan, Dan Witz, Phlegm, Herakut, Vhils (including what may be my new favorite piece by him), Escif, David Choe and DVS-1 and Nuart’s flickr set for even more images.
With fall approaching (hopefully quickly after all the time I’ve been spending in 100 degree weather), another edition of Stavanger, Norway’s Nuart festival is just around the corner. This year, Nuart will break away from the murals that its become known for in favor of an event more like The Underbelly Project or Hell’s Half Acre: While there will still be some walls painted around the city, most of the festival will be indoors where artists will focus on painting directly on the walls of “seven abandoned 17x5x5 meter tunnels [and] a 50meter long access tunnel with an entrance hall equal in size to the cities largest gallery.”
Lazarides are headed back to The Old Vic Tunnels off of Leake Street in London, the site of last year’s Hell’s Half Acre show and Banksy’s launch for Exit Through the Gift Shop. If you thought Hell’s Half Acre was a bit of a posh haunted house, you ain’t seen nothing yet. From October 10th through November 4th, Lazarides are turning the tunnels into an art exhibition space, but also a Michelin Star pop-up restaurant. The show is called The Minotaur, after the Greek legend. The absurdity of the whole thing leaves me speechless. As for the art, there will be a labyrinth-esque installation with new work from a number of artists including Conor Harrington, Stanley Donwood, 3D and Lucy McLauchlan. Unfortunately, it will cost £5 to get in if you aren’t under 18. Entry is free to some, but by some I mean it’s free if you’re eating at the restaurant for £65 a head, haha. On the plus side, there’s a bar, so you’ll be able to drink away the pain of having spent £65 to eat in a dilapidated storage room.
I dunno. Maybe this will be fun and full of amazing artwork and food. It probably will be enjoyable for the select few who get to experience it, but The Minotaur still strikes me as absurd and way over-the-top. Kind of like a real minotaur.
It’s been a crazy week in London. Moniker and all that. But here’s what has been going on with street art elsewhere:
Okay, so I will mention one thing about Moniker: Graffoto seems to be the first to post a review, and what a review it is. Doubtless, Vandalog will be posting something in the coming days, but in the mean time, check out Graffoto to see all that Moniker goodness.
Mudwig is part of the Meta Snout show opening today at High Roller Society in London.
I’ve tried twice to see Word To Mother’s solo show at Stolenspace, but they always seem to be closed when I am near the gallery. Photos look great though and I’ve only heard good things.
Old-school graffiti writer Duster UA has a solo show coming up in December at London Miles Gallery. Tickets are on sale now for a special event at the gallery during the show.
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).
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.
As Fame Festivalget closer, more and more work is popping up in Grottaglie. The latest are Wordtomother‘s walls and the making of an indoor piece for the gallery exhibit, as well as some pretty intricate black and white outdoor jobs by Lucy Mclauchlan. I cannot wait to see the work created for the gallery by the artists. Less than two months away guys!
