Jumping on the bandwagon – The Foundry

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:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chasingghosts/sets/72157626097759963/

Featured artists: Milo Tchais, Run, Zezao, Mr.Sperm, Elmo, ATG, Stik and of course ROA.

The Memory Industry

Untitled 2008, (c)Darren Nixon
Untitled 2008, (c)Darren Nixon

“One of the reasons I source mainly from newspaper, television and internet imagery is because the way we interact with these media shapes so many of our opinions about the world around us. Most of what I know about the world has been drawn in a fairly disjointed and fragmentary fashion from this huge, seemingly ever present sea of information.

The sheer amount of available knowledge is so overwhelming that I end up feeling always frustrated that I know nothing about anything. Not knowing what I should be spending my time getting to know, I end up with a constant sense of only ever partially understanding even the most important current and historical events.

I am impelled by a great fascination but end up mostly confused about which direction to allow my fascination to lead me in the time I have. Although partial understanding can be frustrating and isolating, it does carry its own qualities. As events become jumbled and confused in our minds a kind of magical haze is thrown over everything. We start to create our own narratives, filling in the gaps between what we pick up from various sources with any number of unreliable memories and opinions.” Darren Nixon

Darren’s central theme of ‘not knowing’ brings up issues of ‘not remembering’ and when applied on a global scale, this “magical haze” created by the fragmented reality of media overload, threatens our formation of collective memories; memories we experience as part of a culture and a society, memories which connect our identity to the cultural experience of a larger social group.

In art since 1900, Benjamin Buchloh makes this encouraging statement in the final roundtable discussion, “The Predicament of Contemporary Art”: “…the effort to retain or to reconstruct the capacity to remember, to think historically, is one of the few acts that can oppose the almost totalitarian implementation of the universal laws of consumption…”

However, he concludes with this condemnation, “…to deliver the aesthetic capacity to construct memory images to the voracious demands of an apparatus that entirely lacks the ability to remember and to reflect historically, and to do so in the form of resuscitated myth, is an almost guaranteed route to success in the present art world, especially with its newly added wing of “the memory industry”. Chilling.

Read more of my interview with Darren Nixon, Joining a Conversation Well Underway.

Terrestrial Series by Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada

Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada is a Cuban American contemporary artist. He as bee around since the late 90´s he has been replacing the faces of cultural icons chosen by advertisers with the faces of anonymous people to question the controls imposed on public space, the role models designated and the type of events that are guarded by the collective memory.

His spectacular interventions are created for the sake of bringing awareness to relevant social issues. His large scale time base works avoid negative impact on the environment, challenge the conformity in contemporary art and allow for a reflection that goes beyond the completion of the piece to focus in its concept, process, and the metaphor that comes forth because of the material chosen.

Here below is ine if his works – an 11 Hectare portrait in Belfast, Northern Ireland!

Jorge Rodríguez Gerada | Art-Pie

Jorge Rodríguez Gerada | Art-Pie

Jorge Rodríguez Gerada | Art-Pie

Jorge Rodríguez Gerada | Art-Pie

New prints just in!

We are thrilled to have partnered with the Curious Duke gallery and are now able to bring you awesome art.

Representing only the best UK emerging artist, Curious Duke Gallery aims to change the way you buy art work. Curious Duke is fast becoming the go to gallery to buy affordable original and limited edition art.

Curious Duke is housed in Curious Duke Gallery a 400 year old subterranean space on Whitecross Street in Islington. One of the most welcoming and unique gallery spaces you will ever encounter.

“Thirteen” at The Circle, 13 artists, 13 prints

"Thirteen" at The Circle | Art-Pie
Click to enlarge

Sugar For My Soul and The Circle celebrate the superstitions, history and mystery of Friday 13th with a limited edition print exhibition.

An exhibition like no other in London’s Soho district, each of the superstitious 13 artists will produce a limited print run inspired by Friday 13th with only 13 editions.

Curated by Sugar For My Soul this must see collection is open to the public for 13 days from Friday 13th May until Wednesday 25th May 2016.

The Superstitious Thirteen Artists:

Benjamin Murphy | David Bray | Ben Oakley | Elfin | Rugman | Inkie | Jeba | Carne Griffiths | Nomad Clan | Lilly Lou | Hicks | Captain Kris | Stedhead

To attend the private view on Friday 13th May, RSVP to hello@sugarformysoul.co.uk to be guaranteed entry. The private view is strictly guest-list only.

Private View: Friday 13th May 2016 (obviously!)
7:30pm – Late

Example of a post

Anonymosch, Otto Schade | Art-Pie
Click to enlarge

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Mexican city giant mural by artists’ collective known as the German Crew

We are always happy to see people dedicated to bringing art into communities that typically remain miles away from it for various reasons, such as poverty.

So when we heard about this project, called “Pachuca Paints Itself”, in central Mexico by an artists’ collective known as the German Crew, we had to feature it on Art-Pie.

Click on the pictures to enlarge

Pachuca Paints Itself | Art-Pie

Hundreds of houses painted

The collective spent 14 months turning the steep hillside area of Las Palmitas into something a colossal and very much alive mural.  It was an incredible effort to change people’s perception of a neighbourhood previously seen as rather gloomy and rough – art at its best, art to its best use.

“We have painted 209 houses. Every color represents the soul of the neighborhood. It has been a community effort as each household has participated in some way,” said project director Enrique Gomez, who goes by MYBE.

MYBE is a reformed and tattooed gang member who is now focusing all his attention on graffiti art and muralism.

Pachuca Paints Itself | Art-Pie

The project in numbers –

– 209 house painted
– 5,000 gallons (20,000 litres) of paint used
– More than 16,000 square feet (1,500 square meters) of murals covered

Even better, we hear that thanks to the huge success of this project, another impoverished area called Cubitos, is next to be painted happy.

Pachuca Paints Itself |Art-Pie Pachuca Paints Itself | Art-Pie Pachuca Paints Itself | Art-Pie Pachuca Paints Itself | Art-Pie

Markus Kiebel at Arch402 – Inside Complexity

The first London solo exhibition by German artist Markus Keibel sees a continuation of his interactive site-specific installations, as featured in PORTIZMIR 2 (2010), the triennial of contemporary art held in Izmir, Turkey. Exploring semantic roots and the poetry of materials, Keibel’s work brings to surface enigmatic, abstract forms.

Markus Kiebel

Since 2005, the Berlin-based artist has not only developed conceptual site-specific installations, but also an abstract idiom using different forms of human traces. The perception of viewers is the issue addressed by Keibel, whose current work investigates how colour interacts with viewers. His sculptures, paintings and works on paper draw their elements from simple materials, often using pigmented glass and acrylic colours to modify their mode of operation.

Created on-site especially for the Arch 402 Gallery, Inside Complexity will reveal a large-scale floor sculpture, designed for viewers to walk over and leave traces as they move.  Characterized as an ever-changing form, the four concentrated circles—created using different coloured pigment powders—shift and disperse throughout the exhibition venue, causing the colours to lose their intensity. As part of the exhibition, the transformation of Keibel’s ever-changing floor sculpture will be captured both in a time-lapsed video and on canvas.

In order to create these final works, the gallery space will be closed the day following the Private View (11th Feb) when Keibel will use the transformed pigment areas to create big canvases (170 x 280 cm), revealing the transcribed traces of human movement.

Keibel’s interactive installations are less focused on how interaction with the work evokes feelings in the public, but rather, with how these feelings act on given materials, as the pigments ultimately seem to reveal a sentimental beauty. Rendering the pigments in his own specific mode of representation, Keibel not only prefigures subjectivity in the abstract but also his own subjectivity, from a viewpoint that questions the prescriptive experience.

Words from Necmi Sonmez

Where – ARCH 402 GALLERY | Cremer Street, E2 8HD | Tue-Fri 11-6
When – 12 February – 18 March 2011 / Private View 10 February 6-9pm

STREET ART