Hogan Rebel recently released his book Rebel journey: Dream-Believe-Create
, narrating the career of a dozen of famous modern rebels, and defining the founding values of the Hogan Rebel lifestyle collection.
We were asked to look closely at one of these artists, Paola Pivi, to come up with a quote for an upcoming video. You can see the video below.
Here are a few words from the artist herself –
What’s your definition of rebel?
Not a sheep, not a wolf.
Who do you consider rebel?
Somebody who creates their own system.
What’s your dream?
Freedom and peace, which I lost the day I saw somebody was about to abuse a person I love and I started a trial to try to defend him.
In what you believe?
Now that I see on my own skin how unbelievably hard it is to try to stop bad actions in other men, I respect whoever did something like this.Why man creates?To develop our brain.
Being myself an i-phone owner, I thought about getting myself a case many times but have always postponed it, until now. I smashed my phone accidentally on the floor (because I fell down the stairs for those wanting to know) last week and wished I had one of those cases, damn it. Continue reading Mika Ninagawa iPad Case→
The Foundry has really been doing the rounds on the street art/graffiti blogs and websites over the last month or so. Some people are loving it and others are getting sick of hearing about it.
As we are huge fans of many of the artists that have been adorning the walls, we decided to jump on the band wagon and do a write up about it, yet to be slightly different we wanted to drop a little history to give you a understanding of this locations significance to the local community and art scene.
The Building operated as a bank originally and was decommissioned in the 90’s when Tracey and Jonathan Moberly took out a lease on the space and turned it into a gallery for local and emerging artists. To cover costs, they opened the Foundry bar in the front section of the building, but wanted people to know that it was predominantly a art space. The bar however became a hang out for many current and future celebrities, Pete Doherty was known for hosting his poetry nights there.
The walls of the basement are heavily covered in early work by many big name graffiti and street artists such and Banksy and Faile. The walls have also been heavily tagged by regulars and visitors alike.
The Foundry came into the spotlight for a different reason in early 2010 when Hackney council approved the plans to build an 18-storey hotel and retail complex on the space, of course this successfully outraged the local community. Its not the first time that underground venues have had to make way for big business, but in this case the anger was directed at the blatant attempt to cash in on emerging trends.
The back of the building has a 6 meter high Banksy on the rear wall that is to be preserved and made a focal point of the commissioned ” Art’otel” and a large wooden hording has been placed over the artwork to preserved for future placement as a feature in the hotel (the murals by Zezao & Mr.Sperm currently cover the front of the hording).
Of course this profiteering by the corporate world on a mainstream encroaching subculture angered the art community and resulted in heavy protesting. But as always this was a valiant but futile effort and the building is in the process of being shut down and ready for demolition.
So how this links into the current surge in artwork? Through the right channels and with permission of the current lease holders, local and travelling artists have been given the green light to go to town on the space.
Check out all the shots we have ever taken of the foundry here:
We bring you our encounter with Ronzo‘s secret walls appearance at Streefest, street culture festival showcasing live art, which happened last May in East London.
We have also included pics from the Whitecross street party whose Ronzo was one of the thirty artists taking part on the event. His now famous cockroach figure could be seen lurking on building roofs.
Opening reception: Thursday 1st September 6.30 – 8.30 pm
Scream gallery will soon host Greg Miller’s first solo UK exhibition. The large-scale works artist will again use his creativity using collages.
His style is very much pop art-inspired paintings and his “Phantom Lady” got noticed this year at an Bonhams urban art sale earlier this year. See picture below.
“In his new work…Greg Miller brings the pictorial poise of Pop to the eloquent fury of street art, effecting a marriage – or at least a torrid affair – between two hot items. One item is hot today, the other has been hot for half a century, but in Miller’s hands there is no generation gap, only a spiritual union – one that generates a sky, or at least wall, full of sparks.” Peter Frank
You could not say no to an exhibition where you would get to see pieces from artists such as Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha without having to hop between venues across town, well you do not have to do that anymore – CRASH: homage to JG Ballard is that exhibition. Go now.
Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, big names on the menu as well as a good bunch of younger artists Glenn Brown or Jenny Saville. You look at the leaflet handed over to you earlier by the very friendly staff at Gagosian and you just do not know where to start.
Adam Mc Ewen’s Boeing 747 undercarriage ‘Honda Teen Facial’ in the entrance looks like it fell through the roof and sets the tone of what this exhibition will be about – provocative as was JG Ballard’s literature. Another large scale piece which immediately draws your attention is Richard Prince’s car model made of steel, plywood and Bondo. You look up and right there hing up on the wall is ‘Explosion’ by Roy Lichtenstein. Big names, big works. Continue reading CRASH: homage to JG Ballard at Gagosian gallery→
The Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago. I remember it like yesterday, although at the time I did not understand the full meaning of what was unfolding in front of my eyes.
Looking back at it now as an adult, I can see the importance of what this event meant – the cold war was on its way out. Tyranny and freedom denials were starting to become something the West Berliners could dream of getting rid of.
Berliners at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall
Such dark times and oppression naturally led to various acts of rebellion, from President Kennedy standing by the Wall in 1963 and declaring: “Ich bin ein Berliner.”, to artists braving the Grepos (or border police) to express their disapproval of the tyranny that was in place in West Germany.
And it is the latter that I want to talk about here. I want to pay tribute to all these artists who defied the ‘death strip’ as it was called, a no man’s land between the two walls, the border of East and West Berlin, and Thierry Noir, a French artist, knows it all too well.
Thierry Noir is thought to be the first street artist to paint the Berlin Wall. Born in 1958 in Lyon, France, he moved to Berlin in January 1982 with two small suitcases, and lived in a squat at Mariannenplatz, near the Berlin Wall.
His first attraction to the city was the fact that David Bowie and Iggy Pop lived there at the time, and Thierry Noir was a big fan on their music.
“Nothing really happened at the Berlin Wall. There were no cars, no shops, no noises. I never saw any ‘actions’ with the Grepos, never saw any soldiers shooting at anybody.” – Thierry Noir
One of the first things he painted on the Wall was this elephant (see photo below). “I started painting outside because I wanted to say that it’s good to put art in the streets and not solely in museums and galleries.”
This painting symbolises the key to success – heavy work every day. In other words, get your ass out there and grasp opportunity, do not stay at home waiting for something to happen – that is what the artist’s message was all about.
Thierry Noir in 86 painting the Berlin Wall
“We used to collect leftover paint and materials from the renovation of houses in Kreuzberg. We made do with whatever we could find. We had no money to buy materials.” Thierry Noir
Thierry Noir’s cartoon-like profiles
Thierry Noir’s style quickly changed to become what he is famous for – brightly coloured paintings depicting cartoon-like profiles (see below). The artist called this transformation – his Fast Form Manfesto, which is in fact the result of a need to adapt his style. It was in an effort to cope with the hundreds of people who approached him to talk while he was painting, at risk for being caught by the German authorities.
One famous incident is when Keith Haring was invited to come and paint the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie in October 1986. Thierry Noir, with the help of Christophe Bouchet, an artist he’d met a few years earlier, painted a series of 2-meter Statues of Liberty at this precise location. Unfortunately the wall got painted over in yellow, in preparation for Keith Haring. Haring however was not aware of this, so after apologies and embarrassment from Keith and annoyance from Thierry Noir, both artists were fine in the end.
What else to say about Thierry Noir? A great artist with a great story, his brightly coloured paintings are now seen as iconic and are still visible on the wall’s East Side Gallery.
“Fairy tales challenge the reader to imagine magical worlds different from our own. We are reminded by the fairy tale of the thing we never should have forgotten — that our world might have been different and is magical the way it is: unexplainable, unpredictable, wild, and surprising. With our imaginations awakened, we can see with new eyes our own world filled with wonder once again.”[1]
Travis Prinzi from G.K. Chesterton on Fairy Tales
Oriole, (c)2006 Annabel Dover
There once was a girl, some said she was blue, some said pink, but the sparrow outside her window knew. She was iridescent.
The sparrow had seen many yellows fatten to red and be swallowed whole by the worm-mother, but he loved it best when the worm-mother let loose the pearl. The pearl was always different; she was a crescent, a mysterious creature that changed shapes. There were many crescents, sweetsacs that fell and turned into whisperers, featherwash which appeared when the sky was heavy and sparkled when the yellow came out from behind the heavy, but his favourite was the pearl. Sometimes the pearl hid and would not come out, sometimes she laid bare her beautiful pearly skin and shone with exhilarating force, this made the iridescent girl come to her window and the sparrow would see her shimmering colour. The girl would breathe deep the scent of the pearl and she would leave gifts of her copper strands for the sparrow. The sparrow always repaid the girl’s kindness with gifts of his speckled feathers. Sometimes he would leave pebbles that looked like the pearl.
The sparrow knew the girl was pleased with his gifts because she would study them intently, then she would make another one appear by tracing their outline with a stick! The sparrow thought it a very clever thing to do.
This little fairy tale is for Annabel Dover, a fellow fairy tale lover. I interviewed her recently for This ‘Me’ of Mine:
Jane Boyer: On your website you describe yourself as constantly being “drawn to objects and the invisible stories that surround them; [t]hrough their subtle representation…exploring their power as intercessionary agents that allow socially acceptable emotional expression. The work presents itself as a complex mixture of scientific observation and tender girlish enthusiasm which often belies their history.” That is a wonderful compendium of mystery, fact and fascination. Do they share equal weight in your explorations?
Annabel Dover: I really enjoyed the show ‘Life or Theatre’ by Charlotte Salomans. It showed a very personal, fabulous fantasy representation of her life.
My upbringing was constructed from lies and my parents indulged in their own personal dramas. The truth was impossible to decipher and the objects that surrounded my sisters and I were often the only witnesses to ludicrous acts of fantasy and violence – the Freemason’s case with a bag of un-hewn rocks, a sign of dishonour; the naval coat with the buttons ripped off, indicators of an affair that my father had with a Naval officer; the college gown of my sisters’ father, an alcoholic professor; the love letters of his father, Canon for the BBC; the jewellery that represented both my mother’s and my grandmother’s love affairs. These and many other objects highlighted the traumas and the breaks in human relationships that made up the atmosphere of my upbringing. The stories told to me by my family unravelled with the discovery of these indiscreet objects.
The personal stories people tell are fascinating to me, they announce who they would like to be and often contrast with how others might perceive them to actually be.
Peripheral Vision, (c)2010 David Minton, oil on canvas
But it may be that without meaning there is only space, so in a sense I make my paintings by accident, but knowingly so. The central space created by painting ‘at the periphery’ has a tension that is constantly pregnant with possibility. In order to remain so, the tensions of space are never resolved, but continue and it is this continued lack of resolution that forms the overall content of the picture.[1] Perhaps what’s missing is what’s outside that loop or the fear of its ceasing to be a loop and become something that runs forward in time. All those fears and hopes, everything the intimacy within the home brings, begins to open up to a greater loss and eventually time will bring the loss of things because of the infinite nature of time; everything outside of time is infinite.[2]
At art college we were encouraged to self-analyse our output and I found myself not fully understanding how I travelled from initial concept to final outcome. So, now I find it useful to think of myself as a black box where every new line of enquiry has the potential to reveal more of my inner (often hidden) self and my motivations for doing what I do.[3] Initially it was very important to move away from outward observation, it came out of necessity for me, and I had to close myself off from the real world for a while although outward observation is creeping back into the work acting as little anchors.[4] All that is visible is a barely responsive exterior… This indifference, characteristic to the figures in my paintings, suggests the social is almost taken away. You wonder what is revealed in this state of consciousness, just mindless projections on to others perhaps.[5]
Woman with Cardigan, (c)2010 Melanie Titmuss, oil on canvas
This play on words, mixing up sentences from each artist interviewed so far for This ‘Me’ of Mine, is not intended as a clever ploy at meaning-making, but rather a look at the interconnectedness of the issues of the self and identity. Each of these artists is concerned in their own way with issues of self in their work. It is fascinating for me as curator to see how their concerns link together in the universal struggle to self-identify; something which I hope will become evident through these interviews.
Join us in the on-going discussions. Go to INTERVIEWS at the This ‘Me’ of Mine blogsite to read more from David Minton, Anthony Boswell, David Riley, Aly Helyer and Melanie Titmuss, the artists interviewed and quoted above (see credits below for links to the individual interviews).
Interviews coming up: Sarah Hervey, Shireen Qureshi and Sandra Crisp. Waiting in the wings: Kate Murdoch, Annabel Dover, Edd Pearman, Cathy Lomax, Hayley Harrison, and Darren Nixon. Art Historian and critic, Becky Huff Hunter, is kindly interviewing me and that will be coming up too.
The Foundry has really been doing the rounds on the street art/graffiti blogs and websites over the last month or so. Some people are loving it and others are getting sick of hearing about it.
