PREVIEW

Pure Evil at XOYO

Leave a comment

Andy Warhol’s famous dictum that “Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” in an age of media and internet saturation sounds less like an off hand quip and more a prescient statement of fact.. It is fitting then that the inspiration for the series of darkly reductive artworks created by artist Pure Evil that make up the core of the Last Good Time show was an email full of thumbnail images received from a Chinese company specializing in the reproduction of the classic canon of western artwork, produced by an entire copy village indifferently mass producing Rembrandts and Warhols .

From this spark came further artworks in a series built on the idea of the tragic muse, the ‘POP’ combustibility of creative relationships and the dark side of the classic glamour of the age prior to tabloid overload, seen through the ghostly tear filled eyes of Elizabeth Taylor, Li Tobler, Sylvette Davide or Brigitte Bardot.

When – 5/8 till 8/9/11 (Preview this thursday 4/8/11, 6pm)
Where – XOYO | Cowper Street | London — EC2A 4AP

BLOG, GIVEAWAYS, INTERVIEWS, PREVIEW

Momentary, the new solo show by Carne Griffiths

Leave a comment

We have been following the rise of Carne Griffiths, an artist painting with unusual mediums such as tea, who has become an established and respected figure in the art world.

‘Momentary’, his biggest solo show to date, he told us, is opening today to the grand public so we met the artist and asked a few questions –

Art-Pie – 1. Can you tell your readers about yourself in a few words?

Carne Griffiths – I’m a painter with a passion for drawing and nature, my background is as an embroidery designer, and I have a fascination with outsider art and with the unconscious process of Automatic Drawing.

Carne Griffiths | Art-Pie
Click to enlarge

A-P – 2. Can you tell us about your creative process and where does your inspiration come from?

C G – My creative process is fuelled by energy – I like the spontaneity of painting also, watching what the materials do themselves on the page, how inks mix when left undisturbed… then from this chaos I like to manipulate the image – normally using fountain pens and calligraphy ink, I add fine detail, cross hatching and flowing lines to balance the composition. I like the combination of control and freedom, and the way the two elements combine in a drawing.

A-P – You are using interesting and unusual material, such as tea, to paint. What else do you use and how did you come about including these in your creative process?

C G – I generally use materials that give an unexpected or unknown effect – painting is intuitive, the tiny movements made when creating a piece of work are often impulsive for me rather than calculated – and this for me is the magic within the work.

Carne Griffiths | Art-Pie

A-P – “Momentary” at Lilford gallery is your next upcoming solo show. Without giving too much away, what can we expect from you in this show?

C G – Yes the momentary exhibition opens tomorrow – It is the largest collection of works to date, Lilford is a large gallery and I wanted to do justice to the space, the show is a response to the speed we are living our lives, the concept behind it being simply slowing down and taking time to look.. I have introduced new aspects to the work to reinforce this concept, a virtual reality drawing that you can walk through, and a mix in collaboration with Fluidnation’s Ben Mynott whose music influenced the work created and who in turn created a 3 hour mix as a backdrop to the exhibition.

A-P – 5. Any other business you want to tell us about?

C G – I will be about during the exhibition adding to the Virtual Reality drawing and also creating work on the black wall that has been prepared for the installation, the show runs until the 21st of August and being the first solo collection of work for 2 years I’m a little apprehensive and excited to show it.

His biggest show to date

Inspired by nature’s expansive colour palette these new works present a vivid alternate reality.

We only included a picture of one of his numerous and fantastic new pieces (see above) and we encourage you to get yourself down to the gallery, you will not get disappointed.

Although we did not include pictures for other works, Carne tells about below and we believe that after reading about it, you will feel the urge to go and check out the show – we certainly are…

‘Let’s stop time‘

invites the viewer to slow down and take time to reflect on the beauty within their surroundings, a chaotic solitary moment becomes a place for meditation.

‘Eternity‘

captures the beauty and chaos of a single brush stroke within which an alternate reality is revealed like a dream or a momentary glimpse into the life of a stranger all in a single moment.

In’Perfectly Still‘, the ‘Hourglass‘ and ‘Elevation‘

time is brought to a standstill and the beauty of nature among chaos is evident, all three works begin as an abstract composition, embracing chaos and the freedom of single strokes of paint, accidents and chaos in which we seek to find order. Rising from this chaos we find beautiful accidents of nature or creation depending on our beliefs and ideologies, it seems almost irrelevant how they occur.. what is common is the beauty in infinite detail.

The show opens today to the public. The gallery is open 7 days a week so you can pop in and see the works whenever is convenient for you!

Lilford gallery, 8 The Old High Street, Folkestone, Kent CT201RL

GRAFFITI GALLERIES, STREET ART

Smug, Cheo and more

Leave a comment

I was glad to find out about this exciting project pushed by Bruce McClure – showcasing some of the best in UK street art / graffiti talent with a distinctive inspired theme – ape.

Beyond the very well put together time-lapse videos, the concept is as motivating and is looking at encouraging a bit of friendly rivalry between cities like Bristol, London or Manchester.

Featured artists : Aroe (Brighton) | Smug (Glasgow) | Cheo (Bristol) | Eject (Manchester) | End of the Line (London)

Go to the Ape Street Art YouTube channel to view the videos and enjoy below our favorite – Choe from Bristol.

Below are also a the pics of the artists’ pieces.

Smug from Glasgow
Smug from Glasgow
End of the Line from London
End of the Line from London
Eject from Manchester
Eject from Manchester
Cheo from Bristol
Cheo from Bristol
Aroe from Brighton
Aroe from Brighton
STREET ART

Stencil republic, be a street artist

Leave a comment

If the thought of having to go out there at night, hood on and a few cans in the pockets seems to you just not doable, the new Stencil Republic book, by London-based creative studio Ollystudio’s Oliver Walker and published by Laurence King, may be your alternative.

Pick one of the 20 stencils printed onto perforated card which have been created by international street artists such as Artiste Ouvrier, BS.AS.STNCL, Chris Stain, Dan Innes, Orticanoodles, Ozi, Run Don’t Walk and Stencil King, who has penned the book’s introduction.

Stencil Republic | Art-Pie

Hours of fun and feeling of being a street artist, uh within the safe walls of your living room or bedroom, whatver this is a great toy.

One of the street art pieces you will be able to drop is Orticanoodles skull pictured below so what are you waiting for?

Here is what street artist AIKO has to day about the whole thing, ‘This is something you cannot learn at school. It doesn’t matter whether it is commissioned or unauthorised, painting in the dirty alley, on postal stickers, canvases, store signs, outdoor murals, you have to feel it, jump in, don’t stop and…have fun.’

Stencil Republic | Art-Pie

Stencil Republic by Ollystudio is published by Laurence King Press on 1 October, priced £19.95

Buy it from Amazon

STREET ART

Brazilian street art takes on the football world cup

Leave a comment

The 2014 edition of the football World Cup has now been on for almost a week and it has already been labelled as the better edition of the last 20 years.

While most of us have been enjoying great goals from the safety of our couch, brazilian street artists have taken their art to the city walls of Brazil, mainly Rio De Janeiro and Sao Paulo to remind us of the dark side of the Great game as they put it.

Artist: Paulo Ito
Where: Sao Paulo
The mural shows a starving, crying child with only a football on his dinner plate serves to highlight the vast expense of hosting the World Cup when the money for food, schools and hospitals is needed so much.

“There is so much wrong in Brazil that it is difficult to know where to start,” Ito said. It seems the beautiful game has a dark side.” says Paul Ito

Paulo Ito | Art-Pie

FIFA is not the most welcome and loads of artists ask the football association to go. Cranio is one if them it would seem. One of his mural shows a suited man throwing a sack labelled “public money” down the toilet.

Cranio | Art-Pie

Cranio | Art-Pie

Cranio | Art-Pie

Artist: B.Shanti from the Captain Borderline crew
What: Anti Copa Mural Project organized by Colorrevolution and Amnesty International
Where: Rio de Jainero (Brazil)
Dedicated to all brasilians who lost their home during the brutal eviction.

Anti Copa Mural Project organized by Colorrevolution and Amnesty International | Art-Pie

But not everything is negative, take a look at this street view project from Google showing you panoramic views of (happy) street art from Rio De Janeiro and Sao Paulo amongst others.

> https://www.google.com/maps/views/streetview/brazils-painted-streets?gl=us

CONTEMPORARY ART

The unnamable

Leave a comment

When Context Take The Game | Art-Pie“Where now? Who Now? When now?

Unquestioning. I, say I. Unbelieving. Questions, hypotheses, call them that. Keep going, going on, call that going, call that on. Can it be that one day, off it goes on, that one day I simply stayed in, in where, instead of going out, in the old way, out to spend day and night as far away as possible, it wasn’t far. Perhaps that is how it began. You think you are simply resting, the better to act when the time comes, or for no reason, and you soon find yourself powerless ever to do anything again. No matter how it happened. It, say it, not knowing what. Perhaps I simply assented at last to an old thing. But I did nothing. I seem to speak, it is not I, about me, it is not about me. These few general remarks to begin with. What am I to do, what shall I do, what should I do, in my situation, how proceed? By aporia pure and simple? Or by affirmations and negations invalidated as uttered, or sooner or later?
Generally speaking. There must be other shifts. Otherwise it would be quite hopeless. But it is quite hopeless. I should mentions before going any further, any further on, that I say aporia without knowing what it means. Can one be ephectic otherwise than unawares? I don’t know. With the yesses and the noes it is different, they will come back to me as I go along and how, like a bird, to shit on them all without exception. The fact would seem to be, if in my situation one may speak of facts, not only that I shall have to speak of things of which I cannot speak, but also, which is even more interesting, but also that I, which is if possible even more interesting, that I shall have to, I forget, no matter. And at the same time I am obliged to speak. I shall never be silent. Never.”
Opening paragraph to The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett

Contemporary philosopher Alain Badiou asks if we can name a truth, anticipating and forcing into knowledge all the elements contained in that truth, risking a totality of knowledge related to it; a problem, for example, in politics where this turns to totalitarianism. He says, “The construction of a truth is made by a choice within the indiscernible…But the potency of a truth depends on the hypothetical forcing…The problem is to know whether such a potency of anticipation [hypothetical forcing] is total…My answer is there is always, in any situation, a real point that resists this potency.

I call this point the unnameable of the situation. It is what, within the situation, never has a name in the eyes of truth. A term that consequently remains unforceable. This term fixes the limit of the potency of a truth. The unnambeable is what is excluded from having a proper name, and what is alone in such exclusion. The unnameable is then the proper of the proper, so singular in its singularity that it does not even tolerate having a proper name. The unnameable is the point where the situation in its most intimate being is submitted to thought; in the pure presence that no knowledge can circumscribe. The unnameable is something like the inexpressible real of everything a truth authorizes to be said.”
Alain Badiou from Infinite Thought

The unnameable is something I have personal experience with. The secret and the truth. I’ve held both of these things, safeguarding, I thought, others and myself. Both secret and truth can be destructive if kept silent. But it has been my experience that once spoken, the unnameable is an agent of transformation; it comes in facing what’s real.

Read more of my interview, When Context Takes The Game, conducted by Becky Huff Hunter for This ‘Me’ of Mine.

——————————-

Beckett, Samuel, Three Novels Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Grove Press, New York, The Unnamable, originally published under the title L’Innommable, copyright © 1953 by Les Editions de Minuit. Translation copyright © 1958 by the Estate of Samuel Beckett, pp. 285-6.

Badiou, Alain, Infinite Thought, Continuum International Publishing Group, London, New York. Trans and ed by Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens, 2005 – 2011. “Philosophy and Truth”, pp. 43 to 51, originally titled “The ethic of truths: construction and potency” quote p.49.

STREET ART