Just watch it until the end. If you like graffiti and street art, you will watch it again.
Otto Schade solo show at Well Hung gallery
To celebrate Otto Schade‘s upcoming solo show at Well Hung Gallery, we are giving away one of Otto’s latest limited edition screen-prints called ‘Cop for a load’.
To win this amazing piece (click to enlarge), you need to subscribe to our newsletter or share this article via your favourite social media channels.
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Well Hung Gallery is pleased to present Otto Schade, an eagerly anticipated solo exhibition of new works by renowned street artist.
The exhibition showcases the range and depth of Otto’s works. Presenting 4 new full-scale paintings, a series of new screen prints and a collection from the Orb series. A new exclusive, limited edition screen-print will be launched on the opening night of the show.
Otto has developed a meticulous spray painting technique by intricately cutting layer upon layer of illustrative stencils. His distinctive, graphic ‘ribbon’ style and continued exploration of iconic imagery have made him one of the UK’s pre-eminent street artists.
Otto’s large scale, epic paintings can be seen in the streets of East London. These murals are extensively photographed by his ever-growing street art following. In the run up to the exhibition, Otto will be painting a new piece near Well Hung gallery in London.
What – Otto Schade solo show
Where – Well Hung gallery, 239 Hoxton Street, London, N1 5LG
When – 23/7 till 23/8/15
Four cities at Black Rat Press
In 2007 the global population living in urban environments passed the halfway mark, and that trend is accelerating. As cities become bigger and denser, and within the rigid structures of a mass-market society, truly meaningful personal interactions become increasingly elusive. The anonymising effects of scale and excess on the actor in the postmodern city can lead to a shared sense of social isolation.
In Four Cities Black Rat Projects will take a look at the four artists whose experience of urbanity propelled them to create within their environment in similar ways. With new works by represented artist Swoon, and secondary market works sourced from Os Gemeos, Banksy and Shepard Fairey, BRP will map the parameters of the street art movement across continents through the voices that emerged simultaneously as the strongest of their respective city scenes.
Artists featured: Swoon, Os Gemeos, Banksy, Shepard Fairey
Where –
Black Rat Projects
When –
20th May – 23rd June 2011 (Preview – 19th May – 6-9pm)
The Friends of Tony Romanoff at Pure Evil
Following his appearance in the adidas is all in campaign, London street artist Lucas Price a.k.a. Cyclops has been hard at work on his latest exhibition ‘The Friends of Tony Romanoff’.
Words from Pure Evil gallery
This film below documents the show and is narrated by the eponymous Tony Romanoff who uses an electronic voice generator to speak on the artist’s behalf.
Featuring brand new conceptual photographic work, as well as two dramatic installations in the gallery’s basement, there’s also a beautifully packaged, limited 7’’ single available to purchase at the gallery or selected vinyl emporiums.
Where: Pure Evil gallery
When: 1/4 till 13/4/2011
A 97 year old, nearly blind man who works wonders with MS Paint
His name is Hal Lasko, his nickname Grandpa. What he did for living is something we will probably never see again – he was a graphic artist back when everything was done by hand. He then had to retired and his caring family had the genius idea to introduce him to the computer and especially to Microsoft Paint.
Since then Grandpa spends ten hours a day moving pixels around his computer paintings. Some would call his work pointillism, others 8-Bit art but it might be a bit of both.
Anyway, another inspiration that is Hal Lasko, The Pixel Painter. We have included below a video interview of the artist plus a few examples of his works.
Tim Noble & Sue Webster shadow sculptures
One day Tim Noble met Sue Webster, the year was 1986 and the context was that they were both studying Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University. The next we know is that they have Tim Noble and Sue Webster for over seventeen years.
What do they create? Sculptural artworks made from discarded wood, welded scrap metal, broken tools, cigarette packets, soda cans and piles of trash. If you look at the pile of objects they assembled and piled, you see nothing but the light they point at it makes the magic happen – you find yourself in front of projected shadows projected shadows of people standing, sitting, smoking or drinking for example.
You’ll have understood that the precision and patience are out of this world. Every debris must be carefully placed, distances measured and spotlight angles revised again and again.
YOUNGMAN, 2012
1 wooden stepladder, and discarded wood
But beyond the piling exercise, the creative output is remarkable and powerful and question the notion of abstract forms being able to turn themselves into figurative ones
If you want to read more about what concepts lie behind these works, read this excellent piece from the Blain Southern gallery
We included 4 examples of these shadow sculptures as well as video telling you more about the concept
DEAD THINGS, 2010
1 black cat, 19 crow heads, 4 rook heads, 5 jackdaw heads, 13 crow legs/feet, a pair of crow wings, a pair of jackdaw wings, 6 juvenile black rats, 1 x chaffinch (male), metal stand
SUNSET OVER MANHATTAN, 2003
Cigarette packets, tin cans shot by air gun pellets, wooden bench
BRITISH WILDLIFE, 2000
88 taxidermy animals; 46 birds (35 varieties), 40 mammals (18 varieties), 2 fish, wood, polyester glass fibre filler, fake moss, wire
First seen on Marvellous
Multiplied fair at Christie’s
Coinciding with Frieze Art Fair in what is undoubtedly the most important week in the London Contemporary Art scene calendar, Multiplied Art Fair presents the perfect forum to scope out emerging artistic talent.
In collaboration with over thirty London galleries the art fair will be hosted by Christie’s and will offer contemporary art editions in all its manifestations, from prints and photographs, to artist’s books and 3-D multiples. Continue reading Multiplied fair at Christie’s
LUDO latest streetart in Poland, Katowice
LUDO, French steet art from Paris made a visit to Poland during the Katowice Street Art Festival and took this opportunity to complete this hiuge piece depicting what looks like an aunt wearing “police” gear.
Address where this can be seem: ul. Markiefki 55
Pictures from Streetartnews.net
P183, street artist or Bankski copycat?
P183 is his name and Moscow his playground where he has recently dropped a series of street artworks which some will tell feels very “banksy-ish”. Banksy, British artist, first began his guerilla artwork campaign in Bristol in the early 1990s.
It is hard not to agree when you see some of his works below but one piece particularly caught my eye – Seeing is believing, I actually think it is very clever and is one of the best use of the urban furniture I have seen in recent street art. It uses lamp-post to double as the arm of a giant pair of eyeglasses, with the rest of the ‘frames’ drawn in the snow. Clever
Another piece is worth mentioning too – Instigators Of Bridges. A rioter with a flare has been drawn on a flyover and fire is lit at night giving the piece another realistic dimension.
What do you reckon?
Reified People
“Reified people proudly display the proofs of their intimacy with the commodity. Like the old religious fetishism, with its convulsionary raptures and miraculous cures, the fetishism of commodities generates its own moments of fervent exaltation. All this is useful for only one purpose: producing habitual submission.”
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, p.33
My first question was what exactly is a ‘reified person’? “In Marxism reification is the thingification of social relations or of those involved in them, to the extent that the nature of social relationships is expressed by the relationships between traded objects,” I found that definition in Wikipedia, it made an impression on me once before and I wondered if it would shed light on what Debord might mean as a ‘reified person’.
Some possibilities perhaps:
1. a person who worships someone in the public eye turning them into an idol and collects all manner of idol memorabilia
2. a person who takes on the attributes of a worshipped idol in the projection of a personal identity
3. a person who expresses personal identity through the outward display of status brands
4. a teenager
5. each and every one of us in the Western World (I cannot speculate here on other cultures)
As I wrote the first three, I realised the fourth and fifth. Some of these possibilities present themselves through the work of Cathy Lomax and other artists in This ‘Me’ of Mine such as Annabel Dover and Kate Murdoch, though, in their work, not as idol worship but the simple expression of social relationships through objects or the exchange of objects. This idea of ‘reified people’ is implicit throughout my interview with Cathy Lomax, The Perfect Wrapper.
Jane Boyer: Your work often deals with pop idols (Sixteen Most Beautiful Men, Dead Filmstars) and iconic film imagery (Film Diary, The Count of Monte Cristo). Curiously though, it’s not pop culture which is your subject, but the fascination, escapism, hero-worship and fan-love we’ve all experienced. What fascinates you about our psychological propensity to fascination and ‘longing for something unobtainable’?
Cathy Lomax: I think that pop culture in general is just a wrapper for supplying the things that the market demands – i.e. what we want. These things do not change much; they are excitement, desire, escapism etc. So with this in mind I let myself lead the direction of my work by following what it is that I am drawn to. I do not like to think that I am in any kind of elevated position in my commentary on my subjects; I am in and amongst the subject matter. Looking deeper into what it is I am interested and fascinated by, it is apparent it is something that I do not actually want but rather that it is something I can think about and live out in my head – probably because this is the safest way to do it. This is what led me to the Film Diary as film for most people is the most intense way to experience other lives and worlds.
