“The Ugly America” show opening today at The Outsiders is the work of legendary graffiti artist Saber’. The artist spent 8 weeks immersed in the Outsiders Newcastle branch last autumn and created all the works on display in the gallery this time in London.
We stepped in and were hardly wowed by what we were seeing: a series of pale wooden pallets works. We quickly realised that they were all depicting “The Star-Spangled Banner”, understand the American flag.
But then we remembered that “The Ugly American” refers to a multi-million-copy best selling book and 1963 movie, in which Marlon Brando starred, and is all about telling about the dark side of the American foreign policy. I looked again at the pale stuff and could relate now. Off downstairs…
The mood was slightly happier down here and colours from Saber’s pieces smiling at me. The artist’s technique that consists of mixing aerosol art with oil and even charcoal pleased my little eyes.
What – “The Ugly American” by Saber
Where – The Outsiders London | 8 Greek Street, Soho, London W1D 4DG | Monday – Saturday, 11:00AM – 7:00PM
When – Friday 10th of January 2014 to Saturday 15th of February 2014
Tristan Eaton and Shepard Fairey and other artists are working with Designersbloc on Painted Oceans, a project to preserve and celebrate sea forts off the Kent coast. The Red Sand Sea Forts, which are located just off the east coast of England are the lucky winners for this project.
The sea forts are located in a cluster eight miles north of Whitstable off the Kent coast and were built in 1943 after the Blitz as a strategic defense post to help defend against any similar attacks.
This project is nuts in terms of feasibility but exciting at the same time hence we wanted to publish something on the site and ask you to support it. A crowdfunding campaign is underway to raise money for the project and an accompanying documentary.
“Painting at sea – are you crazy?”
According to Designersblock director Piers Roberts, Painted Oceans is set to be “one of the most dangerous and exciting mural projects in history”.
He says the motivation for the undertaking, is three-fold – “To preserve them and promote their value, “to investigate their history “and to stimulate the economy of the coast.”
“There are two types of these forts, the army ones and the navy ones; the Redsand ones we’re working with are the army ones and were once connected by bridges,” adds Roberts, who is working with the Project Redsand Trust, which is able to grant access for the project.
A month at sea
Engineering consultancy Burro Happold has already looked at the structural integrity of the site, which was once home to pirate radio station Radio City in the 1960s.
Tristan Eaton – who is behind the idea for the project – specialises in large scale environmental work. He has already drafted in Shepard Fairey, Futura, How & Nosm and The London Police, who are all planning their murals now. All of the artists will live at sea for a month to complete the project.
Night mural for POW! WOW! in Hawaii by Tristan Eaton
The logistics…
Roberts, who is project lead, says there is still a long way to go. “We need to think about how we get onto the forts, how will we link them, how we get gantries onto them, how we paint them…The murals won’t be painted straight onto the rusted steel, we need to get undercoats on there and use marine quality paint. It’s really about preservation.”
Chairman of the Project Redsand Trust Robin Adcroft says the project is still in review. “As yet no agreement has been reached between Project Redsand and Painted Oceans to carry out the mural paintwork,” says Adcroft.
For the project to go ahead “much detail would need to be clarified and agreed upon,” says Adcroft who wants Project Oceans work to contribute to the long-term conservation of the site.
He adds: “Further public consultation would be required before any go-ahead can be granted.”
If the project gets the go-ahead it is expected to be completed this summer and after that boat trips will take visitors out to see the work, according to Roberts who says it is too early to say whether people will be able to access a landing platform.
Street artist Mobstr has a very interesting artistic approach and combine stencils with nagging messages which have made Newcastle (where he is from) council going loopy more than once.
Mobstr purpose is to make us see the public space we live in.
This is the movie everybody is talking about right now and whoever is behind the promotion of it is just very clever.
We are at the Sundance Film Festival last month in the United States. No mention at all about the movie in the official programme but rather a very late announcement a few days before the start of the festival and there you had it: speculation and expectation leading to the sort of buzz that makes people queuing up hours before the screening.
I expect the same level of interest when Exit through the gift shop comes out here in Europe on the 5th March. Let’s not forget that Banksy’s show last year at the Bristol Museum attracted more than 300,000 visitors.
Should anyone have thought that at last Banksy’s identity would be revealed, ditch that idea, this is not what that movie is about at all. Banksy can only been seen from behind and in shadow and his voice is digitally altered. Who would give up his identity when it precisely what is making some of his artworks fetch the £200,000 + mark, come on.
“I guess my ambition was to make a film that would do for graffiti art what ‘The Karate Kid’ did for martial arts — a film that would get every schoolkid in the world picking up a spray can and having a go,” Banksy said of his first film earlier this month at Berlin Film Festival.
Beyond being some sort of graffiti ambassador, I believe Exit through The Gift Shop deals with a much more interesting issue: How do we assess or evaluate Art and eventually like it? Why Street Artwork is now selling as much in terms of value than more classical type of Art?
With actor Rhys Ifans as narrator, he allowed Thierry Guetta to film him while ‘at work’. To make it short (a post about Thierry Guetta is coming up soon) he is the cousin of the artist Invader, a French guerrilla artist who sticks mosaics upon walls and buildings inspired by the video game Space Invaders. Guetta filmed his cousin’s artwork as well as other artists and was thus sucked into the street art world which led him to meet Banksy.
The London premiere of ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’ is happening right now as I am writing this post around Leak Street tunnel so if like me you did not get an invite, you might as well watch the trailer below
Pam Glew is a well-established, contemporary British artist, best known for her unique bleaching technique on fabric, vintage flags, and handmade vintage quilts. We’ve written about her previously and are excited to again with her fourth London Show since 2011, Wanderlust Hotel.
Wanderlust hotel?
Inspired by the goings on in legendary hotels such as Chelsea Hotel and Hotel Marmont,’Wanderlust Hotel’ is a fictional guest house frequented by illicit overnight guests and dark secrets. Self-staged photo shoots make up the majority of the subjects.
Populated by the weekend girlfriend, the bride, the maid, the mixologist, the sleeping porter, the receptionist and the VIP guest all swapping roles and sweeping in and out of the pictures frames.
Formerly trained in Theatre Design, in this series the artist explores an imaginary world; a fictional hotel, an invented environment and a narrative where the players in the hotel encounter each other within the hotel. The archetypes are empathetically reflected on in the Bellboy sleeping, and the melancholic maid, sometimes humourous (the Call Girl on a visit to Vegas encounters the ‘Glitter Gulch’ signage), and turned on their head (the bride has a revolver, who is also the same model as the call girl).
Acting is a common theme, and the ‘play’ idea is explored in the miniature hotel model. Here the hotel is bereft of people as if the residents are now only present in the paintings. The models in the work occupy more than one role, as a metaphor for how fate and luck play a part in our lives. In ‘Sisters’ the artist explores a meeting of 2 estranged identical twins. One of which is the maid, one the VIP. An imagined rift is between them as if they have not spoken in years. The heavy quilt is embellished with swarovski crystals which appears to elevate the characters appearance, the maid’s headpiece appearing more like a crown.
Let’s get technical
The medium Glew uses is dye and bleach. The use of fabric, and dyeing, washing and sewing is used as a metaphor for ‘women’s work’. Glew celebrates women in the history of art who have been overlooked due to an element of ‘craft’ in their work. Sourcing antique and vintage american quilts and national flags, the fabric of the work is as important as the image itself. Using quilts to insinuate sleep and slumber, the textiles are rich in both history and texture. Decontructing large American flags to just the stars they become less about the location and more visceral.
I have always found that acrylic paint used in conjunction with spray paint is a definite winner and give you astonishing results. However, it is difficult to master both mediums for most of us unless you are Will Barras.
Bad Reception, his latest show at Stolen Space, brought to us a series of works never exhibited before which, for most of them, have been painted using acrylics and spray paint (oil and ink have also been used for some of the works).
I was walking towards the entrance of the gallery and could see some of Will Barras’ works and my first thought was ‘wow, it looks amazing from here’. I was eager to go in and check the show out.
The fact that most of the works are large scales pieces gives you the tone of the show – bold. A quick look around the gallery and it became obvious to me that the composition in his works is heavy and busy which, coupled with the large scale aspect make the whole experience very overwhelming. Add to this a varied and strong colour palette and often you get some sort of dramatic or epic feel to the painting, it is almost exhausting to look at his works as you need to look and look again to get the whole picture, to get the story behind it.
Indeed Will Barras intend to tell us a story, the story of Mr Benn – read more about iton the Stolen Space website
Will Barras’s technique is really remarkable, he manages to combine urban/graffiti techniques with more traditional mediums such as acrylics or oil and the result is breathtaking and definitely achieve to blur the line between abstract and reality – what is really going on these paintings?
“I want to maintain the natural flow and energy, the tension between abstract and figurative, while developing and elaborating on a narrative. To generate a multiple choice of possibilities of what could be happening Ideas usually develop from the everyday mundane, broken phone converations and awkward situations …” Will Barras
The show ran until the 14th November 2010.
NB: if you wonder whether the motorbike was part of the show, well not really. Will Barras decided to leave it there after the opening night. Random but it did fit well with the show!
London gallery, Whisper, is proud to present its new exhibition opening in April 2012, ‘Moments of Clarity’, by the creative duo STATIC – an artistic extravaganza, showcasing an exciting collection of new layered acrylic works, as well as a variety of live art events.
STATIC is the creative output of East London based artists Tom and Craig, who have been working as one since 2006. The combination of their backgrounds in Graphics and Fine Art allows for their collaborations to create an award winning aesthetic that fuses elements of urban art with fine art.
‘Moments of Clarity’ debuts an evolved body of work from the artists. This exhibition will showcase STATIC’s new ‘layered’ work, which toys with light, reflection and transparency to create unique pieces mixing screen printing and stenciling on layers of glass, Perspex and aluminum. This practice results in ‘floating’, deconstructed portraits and multi-layered symbols and patterns, in which hope, dreams and escapism are visualised.
The last few years have seen the rise of digital art. Devices such as Ipads have been at the forefront of this and some artists already master the new medium.
Adobe could be taking this a bit further with their new projects Mighty stylus and Napoleon ruler. These two pieces of hardware are designed to work with Adobe’s touch and tablet apps. Project Mighty is a pressure sensitive stylus, and Project Napoleon is a small ruler that projects straight lines onto the tablet for more precise drawings.
Watch the video below to get a better understanding
Noise. Noises. They are everywhere these days and unique in their own ways but can they be assimilated to art too?
Labspace Studio ( (a creative agency & art house in Toronto, Canada), the people behind Noise Intercepted, a global art project about noise part of the Noise Project, certainly think so and have just launched their project today. and guess what, we are taking part and are excited about it. But what is it exactly?
Noise Intercepted is a series of ten experience-activated noise challenges that prompt participants to listen, observe and interact with their urban soundscape in new and unlikely ways.
The project brings together over 200 collaborators from 28 countries around the globe — artists, sound ecologists, designers, writers, mothers, fathers, educators, filmmakers, administrators, technicians, scientists, students, programmers, health practitioners, and the list goes on.
Over the course of four months (March – June 2013), participants will be sent (via text msg & email) a series of ten noise challenges and creative prompts.
They have exactly 1-week to respond to each challenge and share their findings here with you.
London gallery, 
