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8 Famous Artists who Gained Appreciation After Death

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Hollyweed not Hollywood, the prankster who hijacked the hills of California

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Chen Wenling’s farting bull

Prince tribute on the Belfast Cathedral | Art-Pie

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7 Prince street art, graffiti & urban tributes to Prince

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Spray cans sculptures

BLOG, FEATURE, STREET ART

An Old Spanish Church Transformed by Street Artist Okuda

PREVIEW

Havana Club presents Wall Project @ Rich Mix

January 13, 2011 Pierrick Senelaer

The Project is an art competition that will allow emerging talents to gain exposure in one of East London’s cultural hotspots. The twelve-month project includes three commissions launched by three live events, hosted in conjunction with the start of Rich Mix’s new seasons.

We went to see the wall painted by Remi Rough and it is ace – see pictures below

More about the project below:

The Havana Club Wall Project is a celebration of the unique spirit of the Cuban city of Havana. It will embody the unique and inspiring attitude that reflects the true values of the Cuban capital – humanity, spontaneity and creativity – all of which are synonymous with authentic Cuban rum.

Artist Remi/Rough is launching the Havana Club Wall Project with his interpretation and vision of the values that make Havana so unique. The celebrated urban artist has been specially commissioned to design and paint an interior wall that runs the entire length of the Rich Mix events space. The Wall Project is then open as a competition to encourage amateur or professional artists to submit their interpretation of the true values of Havana.

Two winners will then launch the following seasons with their designs on Saturday May 7th and Friday 2nd September. Entries are submitted by e-mail to visualarts@richmix.co.uk, a selection will be posted on the Havana Club UK and Rich Mix facebook page to invite public feedback and final judging will be made by a panel led by Remi/Rough.

Entries must be submitted by: March 7th – with the winning wall design on show from May to July 2011 / OR / July 2nd – with the winning wall design on show from July to September 2011 For further enquiries please contact Krista Booker krista@theneonhub.com or 0207 729 5129

Related links
> Havana Club UK
> Rich Mix London on Facebook

ART-PIE

CONTEMPORARY ART, REVIEWS

The Great British sculpture show at Hatfield house

May 21, 2014 Pierrick Senelaer

I was up for a treat, a helicopter fly and guess what, I got another treat: the Great British Sculpture Show currently in full swing at Hatfield house.

After having been thrilled by the helicopter excursion, I was eager to come back down to earth and wander amongst the bronze, wood and stone sculptures set against the formal topiary of the famous gardens and enchanting woodland at Hatfield House

There was over 70 sculptures from 22 artists such as David Goode, Geoffrey Dashwood, Hamish Mackie, Ian Rank-Broadly and Etienne Millner but we’ll focus on Wilfred Pritchard for now

About the artist – Wilfred Pritchard is the “nom de guerre” for the sculptures of Eddie Powell. He is owner and curator of The Sculpture Park, works as a Photographer as Eddie Powell and Sculptor as Wilfred Pritchard and has sold many sculptures worldwide privately from The Sculpture Park and through various auction houses, including Sothebys and Christies.

Now, skeletons are the fundamental basis for teaching sculpture. Luvvie has one included in his Sculpture School for reference and many have pinned them together in various forms. Wilfried Pritchard is just doing this and you can encounter a series of rather comic sculptures like a group of dancing skeletons.

WHAT – The Great British Sculpture Show
WHEN – 5 April to 30 September
WHERE – Gardens of Hatfield House in Hertfordshire

STREET ART SPOTTER

Benjamin Lozniger, El Mac street art

July 20, 2013 Pierrick Senelaer

Part of our 3 street art works series you should see today. Artists featured are Benjamin Lozniger, El Mac and ?? (can you help?)

Benjamin Lozniger

El Mac

?? – can you help

CONTEMPORARY ART

The unnamable

October 21, 2013 Pierrick Senelaer

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.

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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

Inkfetish, Jasik and Poer collaboration – Rainbow

March 21, 2013 Pierrick Senelaer

Fellow crewmates Jasik, Poer and Inkfetish have done some magic on Leonard street and painted a large mural based on the cult kids TV show ‘Rainbow’.

BLOG, STREET ART

Mehdi Ghadyanloo’s street art illusion

July 3, 2014 Pierrick Senelaer

Meet Mehdi Ghadyanloo, a proficient street artist from Teheran, Israel.

The artist style is ‘illusion’ and his works always need you to look again and again to understand what it is all about but that illusional aspect is most definitely why so many people appreciate it.

Surreal scenes are often depicted in his murals such as a man floating up into the sky and holding on helium balloons.

Mehdi Ghadyanloo is a painter and designer based in Tehran, Israel. His street art is extensive. What makes his artworks particularly intriguing is that they are full of dimension that tricks the brain.

BLOG, STREET ART

Alex Meade’s 3D made into 2D street art

October 2, 2014 Pierrick Senelaer

Meet Alexa Meade. He creates amazing series of living graffiti art but the twist is that he masters the ability of using actual people made to look like they belong in their 2D graffiti background.

No need to say that the level of careful painting and attention to detail is huge here but it works pretty awesomely to turns three dimensional figures into two dimensional figures. All participants are painted in black and white and cleverly get tangled in the explosive and coloured backgrounds and the illusion of they are part of the static art is achieved.

You will see a few examples of Alexa Meade below.

DIGITAL ART

Day Tripper, a stop motion by LC Beats

February 4, 2013 Pierrick Senelaer

We present you the latest animation from filmmaker and human beatboxer, Luke Cavalan (aka LC Beats). Entitled “Day Tripper”, the stop motion has actually been created for as the music video for the latest single off Def Wish Cast’s recent album “Evolution Machine” (The hard hitting track features production from esteemed Australian beat maker, Dizz1, and vocals from the UK’s Spikey Tee)

The video features claymation caricatures of pioneering Sydney Hip Hop group, Def Wish Cast, running wildly through the city streets, promoting their upcoming performance, eventually finishing things off by delivering a high energy live show. After nearly 3 years in the making, having filmed 1 hour of footage for each second of film, the time has finally come to showcase this work of art.

The hours to get this stop motion movie together has been mammoth and we admire the commitment and passion here.

We have included the video below –

CONTEMPORARY ART

Reified People

April 27, 2013 Jane Boyer

“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

White12_L'Atalante (c)2011 Cathy Lomax — White 12 (L’Atalante), (c)2011 Cathy Lomax

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.

A quick walk down Camden high street … art

October 27, 2013 Pierrick Senelaer

We happened to be in the Camden area today for shopping related reason but stumbled upon some great street art pieces and no long past before we were snapping these away.

We were very pleased to see one of Dan Kitchener‘s (aka DANK) piece flanked on a wall just by the Stables Market entrance in Camden. Its size is pretty impressive and the subject, a banal street scene, becomes a fireworks of colors under Dan’s spray cans.

A few more yards down and we walked the mighty Bar Fly and its giant see monsters – Pics after the fold

Dan Kitchener – DANK

Bar Fly

STREET ART ENCOUNTERS