All posts tagged: Gabriel Pitcher

‘Our Towns’ Brings Gillen and Pyatt and Artists to Basildon Walls

‘Our Towns’ Brings Gillen and Pyatt and Artists to Basildon Walls

“We are committed to improving our town centre and art and culture has a big part to play in its future,” says Leader of Basildon Council Councillor Andrew Baggott. “We are also committed to climate change and are working towards a carbon net-zero borough by 2050.”

With a new street art initiative called Our Towns, curators Doug Gillen and Charlotte Pyatt are tying together environmental and social concerns with new large-scale murals here in the Essex, UK town.

Marina Capdevila. “Our Towns”. Basildon, UK. September 2021. (photo © Doug Gillen)

Partnering artists with the local schools, university, market and community organizations, Gillen and Pyatt have been introducing new public artworks all summer by international artists like Arches (Ireland), Franco ‘JAZ’ Fasoli (Argentina/Italy), and Marina Capdevila (Spain), as well as homegrown UK talents including Erin Holly, Gabriel Pitcher, INSA, Michele Curtis, and Helen Bur.

Helen Bur. “Our Towns”. Basildon, UK. September 2021. (photo © Aruallan)

While some on the roster are known for their street art and others have backgrounds in more formal studio practice, collectively perhaps their works are softening some of the brutalist edges of this town of just over 100,000 residents.

Helen Bur. “Our Towns”. Basildon, UK. September 2021. (photo © Aruallan)

Owing its name to an idea of challenging ourselves to see art and public space in original and meaningful ways that affect positive change, the Re:Framed project is steered by two pros in street art cultural production and analysis. “We are dedicated to developing new and innovative strategies to reposition the role of culture in social and environmental conversations,” says a joint statement by the curators.

“The Our Towns: Climate project will be our most ambitious to date, the legacy for which will see Basildon join the growing number of cities and towns across the world adopting the Global Goals.”

Giving their partnership the moniker Re:FRAMED, Pyatt and Gillen have worked in production, strategy, consultancy and documentation with art on the streets for approximately the last decade and plan to coalesce artists and organizations around social and environmental themes going forward. With high-quality artists and artworks like these, you can look forward to the two reframing both contexts and conversations in public space in their future.

Aches. “Our Towns”. Basildon, UK. September 2021. (photo © Doug Gillen)
Gabriel Pitcher. “Our Towns”. Basildon, UK. September 2021. (photo © Doug Gillen)
Erin Holly. “Our Towns”. Basildon, UK. September 2021. (photo © Aruallan)
Franco Fasoli. “Our Towns”. Basildon, UK. September 2021. (photo © Aurallan)
Franco Fasoli. “Our Towns”. Basildon, UK. September 2021. (photo © Doug Gillen)
Michelle Curtis. “Our Towns”. Basildon, UK. September 2021. (photo © Doug Gillen)
Michelle Curtis. “Our Towns”. Basildon, UK. September 2021. (photo © Doug Gillen)
Michelle Curtis. “Our Towns”. Basildon, UK. September 2021. (photo © Doug Gillen)
Insa. “Our Towns”. Basildon, UK. September 2021. (photo © Doug Gillen)
Insa. “Our Towns”. Basildon, UK. September 2021. (photo © Doug Gillen)

Our Towns
Location Basildon, UK

Local assistants with whom this production would not have been possible without;

Ben Stewart | @fusion_walls        
Louis Cutts | @l.a.cutts.design
Scotty Brave | @bravearts
Annie | @lettersbetogether
Yuki Aruga | @yuki.aruga



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Gabriel Pitcher Creates New Mural for “Project Zero” in Walthamstow, London

Gabriel Pitcher Creates New Mural for “Project Zero” in Walthamstow, London

“Encased in a wooden frame, the figure of Steve is shown seated, in a palette and pose reminiscent of traditional celebratory portraits of kings or popes. In his hand, he holds a timepiece, a symbol to the lost time waiting for change,” says the press release.

Gabriel Pitcher portrait of Steve Barnabis. Wood Street Walls/Project Zero. London, UK. (photo courtesy of Gabriel Pitcher)

UK artist Gabriel Pitcher has just completed a new community mural to address the topic of vulnerable youths and knife crime in London. Located on Canning Road, the figure of Steve Barnabis rises many stories upward, a local leader who has worked hard to address social and financial inequities for some time. Now the Covid economy is threatening to foist cutbacks and setbacks on the organization he is a youth worker at, Project Zero.

BSA gladly encourages readers, especially our London readers, to support this youth-centered project that bridges the gap, creates community engagement, and provides badly needed servies.

Gabriel Pitcher portrait of Steve Barnabis. Wood Street Walls/Project Zero. London, UK. (photo courtesy of Gabriel Pitcher)

I have seen first hand the positive impact Steve and Project Zero have had on young people in this borough, and the void it has left in the community. I also recognize the significant financial challenge faced by local authorities suffering cuts from central government funding. These critical services are desperately needed, programs like Steve’s have a life altering effect on the people using them.” ~Mark Clack, Wood Street Walls CIC


Project Zero https://projectzerowf.co.uk

Gabriel Pitcher portrait of Steve Barnabis. Wood Street Walls/Project Zero. London, UK. (photo courtesy of Gabriel Pitcher)

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO CONTRIBUTE


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Street Artist StrØk in Indonesia Ready to Catch Orangutans

Street Artist StrØk in Indonesia Ready to Catch Orangutans

Activism in the practice of Street Art and murals continues to inject itself into different situations, adding to its own definition, and perhaps challenging ours.

Part of a larger campaign called “Splash and Burn,” today we have Norwegian stencil artist Strøk, aka Anders Gjnnestad, with a brand new piece he did in Bukit Lawang, North Sumatra, Indonesia.

The image of a huge net is not remarkable except for Strøk’s characteristic play on perspective and planes, and the fact that the subject is Orangutans, or rather, an increasing lack of them.

Strøk for Splash & Burn Project. Sumatra 2016. (photo © Strøk)

EcoTourism has become such a huge industry in the last decade and a half thanks to Westerners longing to do something meaningful and engaging on their vacations aside from going to an amusement park or lying by the beach. Unfortunately, irresponsible development, untrained “guides” and uncaring tourists have trampled over the natural areas, changed the natural behavior of wild animals and endangered their future – with Orangutans in Bukit Lawang as a prime example. The lure of tour money and the behaviors of visitors ignoring even basic rules like “don’t feed the wild orangutans” has created a lot of aggressive animals who are now dependent on you for food and the uncontrolled hordes of visitors have damaged the living environment.

“I just found that what I wanted to create was a mural about Orangutans and one of the main problems they are facing – destruction of habitat,” says Strøk of his new piece.

Reference photo. Rescuers working for  Sumatra Orangutan Society or SOS for its initials in English prepare a net to catch an Orangutan about to fall down from a tall tree. (photo © Andrew Walmsley)

With a desire to educate himself about what orangutans are like and how some of them need rescuing and relocating, the artist went to the Orangutan Information Centre headquarters in Medan and met with the people working there. “While being given a presentation of their work, I got the idea of what I wanted to paint. They showed us photos of how they work with the SOS (Sumatran Orangutan Society) to rescue and relocate orangutans in trouble,” he explains. “Orangutans travel great distances almost daily, in search for food. If the jungle is cut down around them and they get stuck in a small pocket of trees, that’s bad news for them.”

“Basically, OIC/SOS have a hotline that people can call if they see a distressed orangutan. Then the OIC/SOS gets together their team that is on standby, go to the location and they shoot the Orangutan with a sedation dart. When it sleeps and falls down from its tree, they are standing below it, breaking the fall with a net – much like the old school fireman rescue method. Then the orangutan gets checked by a vet, and depending on its condition it is either relocated into the wild, or taken to a rehabilitation facility.

Strøk for Splash & Burn Project. Sumatra 2016. (photo © Strøk)

The new stenciled and sprayed wall piece was created to evoke the image of the animal falling to safety and as a larger metaphor about our collective responsibility to care for nature and its other inhabitants. Strøk says he really liked the location he worked with, and after taking photos while standing on a roof of local guys holding the net, he created the stencils and started painting.

“I was free to do whatever I wanted, on whatever wall or surface I preferred and that we could get permission to paint. On top of my list was a rusty old tourist agency billboard with a barely visible map of Sumatra that was along the main road as you enter the village. I integrated the oil palm tree that was already directly behind and leaning over the billboard into the composition of my painting,” he says

Strøk for Splash & Burn Project. Sumatra 2016. (photo © Strøk)

This might be a bit of a sidenote, but I wanted to include this photo of the construction I was standing on to paint. “I´ve always had massive respect to people who can put together something good and solid, in an effective way. This construction was put up for me by two local men in about an hour, and proved to fit me and the work I needed to do, like a glove. I am glad they got a look at me before they started, though, as I am about 1,5 times the height and at least double the weight of an average Indonesian. They tailored it so I could stand up straight on the middle level and climb up and down with confidence.”- Strøk

Strøk for Splash & Burn Project. Sumatra 2016. (photo © Strøk)

The palm oil tree that reaches over the front of the new piece is significant because this installation is part of a larger campaign about the palm oil industry begun by Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic, who raised money for Strøk and six other artists this January by selling a special lithograph print called “Splash and Burn

Other artists like Mark Jenkins, Isaac Cordal, Pixel Pancho, Gabriel Pitcher, Bibichun, and Axel Void all participated in the first series of installations, and Zacharevic intends to develop the project further to raise awareness about the negative impact that our often unregulated industrial world is having on the natural one, and the people, animals and ecosystems that depend on it. For more information on “Splash and Burn” check out the new article just published in The Guardian.

“For this project I knew I wanted my work to connected on more levels, to tell a more specific story in a way,” StrØk tells us. “I wanted to create a work about Orangutans without painting one. It was a challenge, but a very welcome one.”

To read about an unregulated industry of ecotourism that is not eco-friendly and is very possibly ruining the habitat for orangutans, go here.


Our sincere thanks to Charlotte Pyatt for her help in the project and with this article.

 

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