We bring you our encounter with Ronzo‘s secret walls appearance at Streefest, street culture festival showcasing live art, which happened last May in East London.
We have also included pics from the Whitecross street party whose Ronzo was one of the thirty artists taking part on the event. His now famous cockroach figure could be seen lurking on building roofs.
35 artists got together for this exhibition held in this very good venue situated right on Malborough street (w1).
Watch the video of the show or even better, get yourself down there, the show has just been extended until the 31/9/2011.
Where – 55-57 Great Marlborough St, London W1F 7JX
Opening reception: Thursday 1st September 6.30 – 8.30 pm
Scream gallery will soon host Greg Miller’s first solo UK exhibition. The large-scale works artist will again use his creativity using collages.
His style is very much pop art-inspired paintings and his “Phantom Lady” got noticed this year at an Bonhams urban art sale earlier this year. See picture below.
“In his new work…Greg Miller brings the pictorial poise of Pop to the eloquent fury of street art, effecting a marriage – or at least a torrid affair – between two hot items. One item is hot today, the other has been hot for half a century, but in Miller’s hands there is no generation gap, only a spiritual union – one that generates a sky, or at least wall, full of sparks.” Peter Frank
Opening reception: Thursday 1st September 6.30 – 8.30 pm.
Please contact lee@leesharrock.co.uk for guest list
Opening times: Mon-Fri 10am-6pm; Sat 11am-5pm
Gallery address: Scream | 34 Bruton Street | London W1J 6QX
Centre for Recent Drawing presents the first UK solo exhibition of artist Maxime Angel. Through a highly physical and performative relationship to her drawing practice, Maxime Angel mines a deep held fascination with human sexuality and mortality in her intensely beautiful yet disturbing works on paper and card.
Angel’s personal interaction with her medium and her ability to project the internal and external machinations of the artitst’s body onto the 2D plane create a deeply visceral viewing. She lies, sleeps, smudges, interacts, destroys, scars, crumples and lives with her work, upon which she inscribes her fears, experiences and realities. Thus the drawings become an artifact of her life, laid bare in an intimate exchange of imagery and symbolism that sees the viewer not only connecting with Angel but reading something of themselves in the work.
The fragile nature of the medium reflects the works powerful grasping for fleeting beauty, as young vitality morphs into decay. Angel deploys these images as a metaphor for AIDS and our constant slide towards death, although she regards the act of drawing as itself a way propagate life, a Dorian Grey like exorcism of the inevitable.
Maxime Angels work traces a long and complex historical line of queer drawing, from tattooing to gay erotica, yet cannot be described simply as pornography. Her erotic illustrations mesh together both personal and cross-cultural references in uneasy yet sublime cohesion, while her beautiful and complex compositions recall traditions of Vanitas and still life. In doing so she subverts and utilizes the gay sub cultures, religion and pop iconography that have so influenced her life, exposing and exploring perceptions of gay narcissism.
Capturing what Angel describes as the ‘perfection in decay,’ these works entice the viewer with a rich visual language which is at once highly distinctive to the artist yet ultimately recognizable and truthful. We are reminded of our own mortality, but also of the cyclical and uplifting nature of life.
Maxime Angel will be working on a large site specific drawing in the gallery space in the weeks leading up to the show- feel free to come visit and watch Angel’s process on 28-30th April and 5-7th May 12-6pm. The show is curated by Paul Kindersley.
Words by Paul Kinderseley
Where – C4RD | 2 – 4 Highbury Station Road, Highbury Islington, London.
When – opening reception on Tuesday 10th May 2011 from 6 – 8pm. The exhibition will run from 11th May to 17th June 2011
Introducing a brand new series of paintings, Children of a Lesser God furthers the artist’s exploration into notions of control and release as well as the fundamental need for survival, love and liberty. Vaughn’s new works manifest these concepts through bleak, dystopian cityscapes that he juxtaposes with child-like imagery and untouched scenes of nature.
Gradations of oil paint are slowly built up layer by layer with brilliantly hued subjects taking centre stage within a muted urban backdrop of dreamy pastels. Wild animals run freely through the urban setting and masked children void of inhibitions heroically feature within downtrodden neighborhoods. Such imagery embodies the limits of humankind’s ability to outright conquer the exterior world as well as completely repress inner desires. Vaughn says, “These compulsory wild impulses propel both the feral and the tame throughout our lives, causing beautiful and sometimes savage moments.”
Children of a Lesser God invites the audience to project their own thoughts about personal existence irrespective of location. Through the contrast of minutely detailed wildlife and child superheroes against diaphanous cityscapes, Vaughn’s body of work in provides a eerily familiar setting which somehow both comforts and inspires his audience with visionary designs of freedom.
Where – Lazarides (Rathbone place, London)
When – 5th May till 4th June 2011
