Dain
Rook & Raven Presents
‘You Rest You Rust’ – a group exhibition of Alternative Contemporary artwork. Featuring work by:
DAIN
Dale ‘vN’ Marshall
Daniel Lumbini
Penny
Private View 27th October
Show runs until 17th November
Gallery open to the public from Friday 28th October
Gallery
7/8 Rathbone Place
London
W1T 1HN
Gallery Opening Hours
Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 7pm
Late night Thursdays – open until 9pm
The Houston Wall, a showpiece of curated Street Art in an increasingly malled and moneyed Manhattan where the uncurated stuff is getting harder to find, is once again brandishing a Brooklyn favorite, thanks to Faile’s installation yesterday. Patrick and Patrick worked methodically throughout the day and are expected to return for some hand touch ups before sealing it. With this wall, owned and curated by developer Tony Goldman, it’s anybody’s guess how long it lasts without being tagged, as Shepard Fairey and Kenny Scharf can tell you. Happily for all of us, photographer Martha Cooper caught all the action as it was going up and she makes a guest appearance today to share these excellent shots and observations with the BSA family;
“The Brooklyn collective Faile had an all-day, marathon pasting session yesterday on the Houston/Bowery wall transforming JR’s muted black and white photo into a dazzling display of color. The free-standing wall has been a favorite urban canvas since Keith Haring appropriated it in 1982. Faile hand painted their piece in their studio on multiple sheets of paper which they then pieced and pasted onto the wall. ” ~ Martha Cooper
One trend these days in the world of Street Art is to go lavishly large, big with a bang, gargantuan with gusto! Copius expanses of epic walls, scissor lifts, cases of cans and buckets of wheat-paste, an assortment of assistants, photographers, a public press release, and a panting play-by-play on social media as the Street Artist progresses across the cinder blocks. The desire to think big is a historical human inclination, from the pyramids to the Great Wall of China to Burj Khalifa to the works of Christo and Jeanne-Claude , we love gigantic work.
Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)Due to its completely democratic nature, the Street Art practice also includes the simplest, least showy, and anonymous pieces. Often we find little one-layer stencils, sprayed in ten seconds, to be just as interesting, and sometimes more powerful than the largest mural. Hidden, tucked away on the bottom of a doorway or a lamppost, the stencil is a fast way for an artist to get up and run, as fast as a sticker slap and just as effective. This collection of stencils recently collected in a few cities reminds us of those days when a lot of Street Art was not conspicuously installed and the works were small. The artists here are unknown to us but maybe you have seen them.
Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Lazarides Gallery in London has a penchant for spectacular pop-ups in cavernous quarters, effecting a theatrical aura for the work of artists to take center stage. This month, Lazarides dives beneath the City of London, where there lies a complex system of tunnels and activities, including reportedly a military citadel – a bunker called Pindar. The Old Vic Theater, built in 1818, is located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London and just above an almost mythic installation by the gallerist this month. The tunnels and subterranean chambers housing “The Minotaur”, a collection of work by fine artists and Street Artists, add a clandestine mystery for the visitors who venture below. Combined with a program that can include dining and theatre, the mythic theme of the Minotaur is interpreted by the stable of artists to sometimes stunning effect.
Photographer and BSA collaborator Geoff Hargadon visited the exhibition and sends these exclusive images to BSA. The 16 international artists in the show, David Falconer, Sage Vaughn, Vhils, ATMA, Zak Ove, Doug Foster, 3D, Antony Micallef, Boxi, Conor Harrington, David Choe, Ian Francis, Jonathan Yeo, Lucy McLauchlan, Michael Najjar, Ron English, Stanley Donwood and Zevs.
If you have missed this, hurry because The Minotaur closes on October 25.
This Space Available
The grassroots movement against visual pollution
A documentary film directed by
Gwenaelle Gobe
Executive Producer: Marc Gobe/Emotional Branding
World Premiere at IFC Center/ New York
Saturday November 5th Time: 7:00 PM
Tuesday November 8th Time: 1:15 PM
Billboards and commercial messages dominate the public space like never before. But is a movement taking shape to reverse this trend?
In This Space Available, filmmaker Gwenaëlle Gobé says yes. Influenced by the writing of her father, Marc Gobé (Emotional Branding), this new director brings energy and urgency to stories of people around the world fighting to reclaim their public spaces from visual pollution.
From 240 hours of film, 160 interviews and visits to 11 countries on five continents, This Space Available charts a fascinating variety of struggles against unchecked advertising and suggests that more than aesthetics is at stake. If Jacques Attali once called noise pollution an act of violence, is visual pollution also such an act? Should we also consider, as one Mumbai resident says, “which classes of society can write their messages on the city and which classes of society are marginalized?”
Gobé offers a canny generational analysis of visual pollution, laying blame not just with the advertising juggernaut but also an entire generation of Baby Boomers, whose consumption-based culture has implicated them in the environmental fallout. She argues that it’s her generation, left to do the cleaning up, that is now leading the fight back.
But the filmmaker also recognizes the history and politics behind this fight. Turning to such legislation as the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, Gobé shows how the enforcement of this landmark law, designed to regulate outdoor advertising on America’s roadways, has steadily eroded. And today, public space activist Jordan Seiler faces harsh penalties for covering illegal outdoor ads with art, while officials turn a blind eye to illegally erected billboards.
Still, the film strikes a hopeful tone. A standout interview features Gilberto Kassab, the popular mayor of Sao Paulo, who threw a stone into the quiet pond of the billboard industry by successfully banning outdoor media in his city – the eighth largest in the world. The move is not without precedent: Houston’s 1980 billboard ban was also a deliberate tactic to improve its flagging image, economic competitiveness, and quality of life.
In the end, This Space Available challenges audiences to recognize that aesthetics and beauty go hand in hand with responsibility. Gobé asks why brands continue to ally themselves with an industry that cuts down trees, hogs energy, and spends its profits in courts and statehouse lobbies, especially while younger consumers push for improved corporate citizenship? And is everyone equally to blame for enabling the spread of visual pollution, while other humble individuals show that it’s possible to reverse it?
The film navigates these issues without promoting a universal solution. Gobé instead weaves together stories reflecting diverse local responses to an increasingly global condition. This Space Available compels audiences to consider these stories long after the film ends, or at least to remember them each time we speed by a billboard.
Vandal Expressionism
The exhibit will be up for the entire month of November, so even if you can’t make the opening soiree, fear not because you can go check it out later in the month…
But we do hope you can join us on
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2nd
from 6 to 8PM,
to partake in wine, cheese,
mingling, people-watching
and VANDAL EXPRESSIONISM
Other and Stinkfish
“THINKERS OF THIS”
Stinkfish • Other
November 5 – 26
Opening Night: Nov. 5, 6-9pm
BrooklyniteGallery.com
Brooklynite Gallery is proud to present, “Thinkers of This”, an exhibition from two well-traveled, street artists, STINKFISH and OTHER.
Drawing inspiration from all things that make a city tick, Colombian artist STINKFISH turns faces of unsuspecting people into vibrant portraits full of energetic emotion.
With work created on reclaimed surfaces such as vintage record covers, magazines and metal shelving, STINKFISH’s work cleverly mixes beauty and grit. Using a color palate that captures the flavor of the South American streets, this artist’s imagery does often originate from his own camera lens, but with all the time spent hitting the pavement, it’s no surprise discarded snap-shots are used at times to tell a story.
Striking women, proud men or gaze-filled children are often the subjects before STINKFISH adds his signature touch —an intricate tribal pattern to their features. Whether it be using stencil techniques or hand-drawing these patterns, Colombia’s premiere street artist’s images evoke a sense of cultural pride all while mixing in his post-youthful discontent and love of punk music.
Canadian artist OTHER has been kicking around this scene long before the term ‘street artist’ was one. Beginning with his freight train paintings that often consist of chalk white, weathered-faced vagabonds, floating on top of colorfully patterned, twisting-limb figures, OTHER has always made it a point to immerse himself in the very same culture he depicts.
Symbolic shapes, utensils, and typography in and around figures are the “sign language” he uses to communicate thoughts, ideas and dreams aloud. Curiosity often takes OTHER down the most windy roads, in the most remote places to seek out locations to work outdoors. These journeys often later feed into the back story of his paintings. Sometimes old signage, numbers, text bits and tags from other artists who’ve left their mark can become unplanned collaborations of sorts. Traveling and painting in places like northern Serbia, Chile and Romania with stories that seems to rival those of Hunter S. Thompson, no city or town is too far off the beaten path for this nomad artist.
Augustine Kofie
Circulatory System: Recent Works by Augustine Kofie
Opening Reception –
November 12th, 2011, 7-11 pm
On View Through December 3, 2011
White Walls is pleased to present Circulatory System, the new collection of work by Los Angeles-based artist Augustine Kofie. This will be Kofie’s second solo show with White Walls, and will include 30 recent works including smaller collage case studies on paper, hand painted multiple screen prints, assemblage on wood, paintings on canvas and wood and a large wall installation. The opening reception will be Saturday, November 12th, from 7-11 pm, and the exhibition is free and open to the public for viewing through December 3rd.
The works comprising Circulatory System feature a clean delineation of geometric forms and divisions of space with a technical precision that resembles architectural drafting. Kofie’s understanding of illustration and linework results in a style of meticulous rendering that never seems cold or sterile due to the delicate sense of balance maintained within each composition. The muted palette softens the sharp lines, and imparts a simple elegance to the complicated arrangements of shape.
The vintage-toned color scheme- the pale seafoam and mint greens of the sixties and the varying beige shades of worn paper- fit perfectly with the collage aspect of the work. Found imagery and ephemera are interwoven into many of the paintings, constructing a new way of looking upon fragments of the past.
Kofie uses a similar approach of artful combination, rearrangement and layering to create a soundtrack that will accompany the exhibition, reflecting the theme as well as setting the tone for the collection. The 40 minute soundtrack is not an itunes mix but what Kofie calls a true mix, meaning a well- collaged assemblage of original beats, pulled dialogue from various films and re-edited songs.
Paul Insect
Post No Bills Announces
Paul Insect Triptease Revue
November 3rd – December 1st, 2011
In celebration of the show, the gallery will host
An Opening Reception on Thursday, November 3rd from 7-10 PM
Venice Beach, CA (October 2011) – Post No Bills proudly announces Paul Insect’s first major US solo exhibition. The show will feature an ambitious breadth of original works on paper, from one of street arts seminal figures.
TRIPTEASE REVUE will feature unique originals, exclusive limited edition prints and hand-finished works in Insect’s visceral style, mixing bright colors and arresting imagery – blending sex, politics, death and pop culture themes with a satirical edge.
The show will introduce a new body of work featuring masked voyeurs, explicit thematic paintings, plus signature babyheads, and a wide array of other sensory surprises. TRIPTEASE REVUE represents a new stage in the evolution of Insect’s art.
Paul started the renowned design collective “Insect” in 1995. He quickly found himself outgrowing the design industry and began placing his work on the streets. 2003 saw his first show “The Hills Have Eyes”, and in 2007, Paul exhibited at the famed Pictures On Walls (POW) Christmas show “Santa’s Ghetto” in Bethlehem, which saw him paint alongside Banksy and other POW artists on the separation wall in Palestine. Insect also gained notoriety for creating definitive album artwork for San Francisco hip-hop producer DJ Shadow.
“Bullion”, Paul’s first major solo show in 2007 at the Lazarides Gallery, saw him inconspicuously place real gold bars with bite marks on the streets of London. Before the show opened, Damien Hirst reportedly spent £500,000 buying up the entire show. His breakout follow-up show, “Poison” with Lazarides in 2008, took place in an abandoned sex shop in London’s Kings Cross and featured his iconic bronze Playboy Bunny skulls and his beloved babyheads – which have become some of the most recognisable images on the streets today.
Anthony Lister
Private reception
Friday 4th November 2011
6 – 9pm
As the launch event is limited capacity we will not be able to accommodate everyone.
If you would like to attend, it is essential to register interest at rsvp@gallery.as
Gallery A.S. at 779 George Street, (near railway square) Sydney
Exhibition continues by appointment only. Please contact galleryas@galleryas.com.au
Gallery A.S. presents an ambitious production with Brisbane-born artist Anthony Lister. Much farther reaching than your white walled gallery exhibition, Gallery A.S. has positioned Lister’s new happening in an exhausted sex shop in Sydney’s Chinatown.
Bogan Paradise challenges conceptions of the Australian identity – those attributes perceived as both positive and negative. Euphemisms amount in the Australian vernacular to champion the quintessential Australian larrikin – a character that most other cultures would bluntly disregard. It’s the ‘she’ll be right’ laid back attitude that we exonerate as while we consent to and discount irresponsible acts.
Lister investigates the underside of such a responsibility-free society. We witness several incarnations of the ‘victimless crime’, a ‘no worries’ attitude to a future too far off for retribution – pissing in public, Mum smoking a bong, swearing at the televised footy match, burn-outs on the oval, amoral Queensland cops, desecration of wildlife, motorcycle gangs, and other petty misdemeanors as well as a few more personal crimes such as the home-made tattoo in the garage, sun-burn, a terrible haircut, an unhealthy obsession with sports or celebrity magazines.
Social commentators have oft questioned the larrikin streak in Australian culture, and have theorised about its origins. Some say that larrikinism arose as a reaction to corrupt, authority during Australia’s days as a penal colony, or as a reaction to norms of propriety imposed by officials from Britain on the young country and such disdain for arbitrary authority a reaction to of the often conservative norms of bourgeois Australia. What cannot be argued is that the larrikin is an important part of our culture and has emerged repeatedly, informing Australian contemporary art, popular and youth culture and political debate.
Bogan Paradise will be held in the top 3 floors of a dilapidated heritage listed, discreet George St Building. The convergence of Lister’s vision with this early Sydney building and recently de-zoned sex shop presents a unique context for Anthony to amplify his themes of wayward Australiana. The space will exist as several involving environments as a rabbit-warren of surprising installed, performative and interactive rooms.
Anthony Lister is a trailblazer with an international following and a general disregard for borders. A prolific street artist and painter Lister has managed to marry the empathy and abjection of 20th Century figuration with the irreverence of the contemporary pavement culture. His work shows a genuine affection for the human body, and also a tender understanding of the ways in which the demented, destructive, playful and powerful collide and coalesce.
Anthony Lister was born and raised in Brisbane, a metropolitan center and capital of Queensland, Australia. In 2001, he earned his Bachelor in Fine Arts at Queensland College of Art, and in 2003, moved to New York to continue his education under the tutelage of distinguished abstract painter and New Zealand native Max Gimblett.
He has since shown in solo and group exhibitions all over the world in commercial and institutional galleries, art fairs and prizes alike. His work is held in many collections of high esteem including the National Gallery of Australia and the BHP collection.
Gallery A.S. is Joseph Allen Shea‘s site-specific exhibition project. It’s vision is to create marriage and/or discord between architecture and contemporary art to bring interest and vigour to Sydney’s art and cultural domain.
Nuart 2011, the annual Street Art festival in Stavanger Norway, just wrapped with a small tight roster of international artists putting new murals and installations around this waterfront city of 120,000. An inventive late “Summer Camp” that has brought worldwide attention and fame to the city in the last decade, Nuart continues to creatively stretch and challenge it’s participants while putting them on the street, in the gallery, and in front of the classroom.
Lucy McLauchlan (Photo Courtesy of Nuart11 © Mookie Mooks)It could be the electronic music festival, the wicked history of goth and black metal spawned here, or the nearly thousand year old cathedral downtown, but something smart skews the outlaw impulses of artists toward exploration here. Perhaps it’s just the contrast of this sharp manicured capital of culture playing host to an art movement associated with urban decay that feeds the uncanny tension in some of the work. Whatever it is, each year there is something of high caliber that helps keep Nuart fresh and relevant.
For Nuart 2011 eleven artists from seven countries worked to create installations, including an indoor exhibition in a complex of buildings that formerly housed a brewery. Participating artists were Dan Witz (US), David Choe & DVS1 (US), Vhils (PO), Herbert Baglione (BR), Dolk (NO), Lucy McCluchlan (UK), Herakut (DE), Tellas (IT), Escif (ES), HYURO (ES), and Phlegm (UK)
With special thanks to the talented photographers: CFSalicath, John Rodger, Mookie Mooks and Akut.
To learn more about Nuart visit their site at:
This article also appears on The Huffington Post
Our weekly interview with the streets; this week including Cake, Dain, Elbow-Toe, General Howe, Joshua John, Obey, Olek, Rae, Shepard Fairey, Swampy, and Swoon.
Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY