I went down to Dray Walk gallery this week end to check out the NEW ERA XC show – a creative project solely dedicated to the baseball cap.
This show is to celebrate NEW ERA 90th birthday and on this occasion 90 NEW ERA XC commemorative boxes have been produced, each of them containing a blank New Era 59FIFTY hat (see picture). Continue reading New Era XC show: art on your head
Creativity is something to promote whenever you can, quirkiness is always something that will please the eye and mind of someone looking for something different. Takeshi Mazdakes is certainly one of these artists pushing the boundaries and being after something unique. He might just be achieving this with his exhibition ‘This is England 2010’. Continue reading This is England 2010: quirkiness on Bayswater road
Another exhibition by Signal gallery which I had penciled in as soon as I’d heard about it. The artist, SPQR, has been on the circuit for quite a while now and is a prolific stenciller, so I was not surprised to find, hung up on the walls of Signal gallery, technically very good, quality stencils.
For his first solo show in the UK, SPQR looks at how art can be used to express your disagreement about things surrounding you: society, media, economy, etc. At first sight, and maybe for the non-expert in street art, you may think that what you are looking at is ’some Banksy’, eg. (see pictures below) the reference to a chain of supermarkets and making fun of the police etc, are a parallel with Banksy’s sense of humour.
But SPQR’s stuff is as good as Bansky no doubt, even better perhaps and not just because of his unwillingness to cash in on the hype and fame like other street art artists. But based on what I saw in this show, and in particular the piece in the shop window of the gallery, thumbs up for SPQR
Go on SPQR, a bit of fame and hype you probably deserve won’t hurt, you would just be selling some art, some good street art, which everyone needs in their life!
What would you say: SPQR better than Banksky?
The show ran until the 28th September.
Related links
> Signal gallery
> SPQR website
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The year: 2001, the place: Buenos Aires, Argentina, the event: a terrible economic crash.
The outcome and most probably the best one: the explosion of the street art scene. Artists as a reaction to what was happening started to paint the streets and for some of them in a rather large scale.
Buenos Aires Calling is the show Graffitimundo presented at Pure Evil with the aim of bringing a feel of this scene to London.
I got very excited when I heard about this show as I know how much Argentina and the whole Central and South America street art scenes have been buzzing in the recent years.
I walked into Pure Evil and saw those stencils on the wall and thought ‘hmmm another set of stencils, I have seen it all before’ but looking at them closer and especially those from the artist rundontwalk and I was actually liking what I was seeing.
Rundontwalk uses an intricate graphic in his stencils (strangely reminding me of the back on those chairs I have got at home) which apart from being a certainly noticeable technique skill, gives another dimension to the works. The tiling sort of effect reminded me of Paul Normansell’s way of painting.
On of the pieces using this intricate technique is ‘Influenza’ representing a pig wearing a mask which the artist painted in reaction of the panic that followed the swine flu outbreak. Great effect with great colours.
I did appreciate the other stencils from other artists but really liked these tiny pieces of art full of colours on oddily shaped pieces of wood representing even querky characters or abstracts. I found a ressemblance with BASHER’S world of characters.
Stencil technique has been embraced by a very large number of artists these days like in Argentina and if the technique is pretty much the same worldwide, I felt that this collective of artists and more generally South and Central american artist really want to put accross a message and do not just do stencils where esthetic is what only matters but their meanings too.
Nothing wrong with wanting to put out there a cool looking Goldie type stencils but it is nice to know that some artists really try to engage their audience by trying to deliver a message to them.
This show really managed to transpire how much the Argentinian street art scene is vibrant and not ready to die just now, oh no.
Colours, colours, there are loads of them, shapes, representations are everywhere like street artist right now in Buenos Aires and surroundings. Feels good.
Click any picture to start the slideshow
The show at Pure Evil is now over
Gabriel Dubois is back to Stolen Space gallery after having taking part earlier this year to a group show – read about it here and his new works for his debut solo show – Kykkeliky are bold, this is the least you can tell about them.
German-Canadian artist, Gabriel Dubois grew up in the streets of Vancouver and started to drop graffiti on urban spaces of the Chinatown area. However what I was seeing all around me were far away from it: large wooden panels with bright coloured lines that seem to run at each other or from each other while meeting a multitude of geometric shapes on the way. Such works can quickly turn into a big mess but Gabriel Dubois succeeds in keeping some harmony of this buzzing gathering of elements.
Gabriel Dubois’ visual language is rich like the colours palette used. His pieces are vibrant and complex it seems but looking at it a bit longer and you may see some logical juxtaposition of those lines next to that series of circles.
Gabriel Dubois is a big fan of turning discard objects of modern culture into art and here into something alive. This is why you will find stuck into one of his pieces a cut-out of an old magazine representing a car. His abstract approach inspired from his numerous travels to places like Sri Lanka, India or Japan is the expression of his keen interest of hand painted signs he picked up at a very early age.
You will also notice that wooden (his surface of choice) structure standing at the entrance of the gallery (see pic below) which is another angle to Gabriel Dubois’ art practices.
Related link
> Sculpture and paintings by Gabriel Dubois on Boom
ART-PIE
