Goldie Archives

I had the chance to make the first Lock Up and really enjoyed the diversity and quality of the works I saw that day from Goldie, Nick Walker and others. Another similar group show is upon us – Lock UpII (Behind Bars) held at the Red Bull studios, which will give us an insight of the latest pieces from renowned urban artists such as Dan Baldwin, Pam Glew, Goldie or Chris Bracey.

Chris Bracey, a pioneer in making neons, created some of the first ever neons including some for Stanley Kubrick films. View the interview he gave to Art-Pie in 2010

Dan Baldwin shall again give his fans bold colour and abstract forms while Pam Glew’s iconic portraits on bleached national flags recently fetched $20.000 at an aucti0n will surely be worth the visit to the galler. For those keen on street art installations, K-Guy will be of choice, FinDAC’s stencils should also draw your attention.

David Whittaker’s new paintings are most definitely the most exciting aspect of this show. Ambiguity, calm, storm, hopes and fears, loads of feelings get on the canvases and certainly make David Whittaker’s pieces the most interesting and deeper works of art in this show.

When
Private view: 17th November. Show runs: 18th -27th November 2011.
Where
Red Bull Studios, 155-171 Tooley Street, London SE1 2JP. Nearest Tube London Bridge

Pure Evil London show | Art-Pie — Click to enlarge

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