Part of our 3 street art works series you should see today: Phlegm, Inti & Natalii Rak.
Phlegm – located in Antwerp (Belgium)
Inti – located in Poland
Natalii Rak – located in Poland
Phlegm, Inti & Natalii Rak street art
Matthew White x The Dirty Toyz
We’ll bring you a moghty artistic collaboration between Matthew White and The Dirty Toyz, 3 electrodub producers & DJ’s. The result is an eye catching work of mixed media illustration on a 150×120 board of wood.
Song “So Real” by The Dirty Toyz
Produced by Cinematic Luna. Directed, shot and edited by Luca Naddeo.
‘Life Work’ by Martha Cooper at Stolen Space
About Exhibition
Martha Cooper is a legendary photographer who has shot around the globe, beginning with USA to Asia. She worked both for papers and magazines like New York Post and National Geographic and independently, making contributions into her personal archive.
Stories and captures that appeared in her lens were different and timely: travels, people and of course art. She has been documenting graffiti and street art for 40 years and her iconic book “Subway Art” influenced on graffiti culture and opened a new world to those whose countries came to urban art much later than in USA.
Martha Cooper is still working with graffiti and street artists, documenting artworks of US and international artists around the world, and continues to make an important contribution to the urban art movement.
Graffiti and street art are ephemeral but pieces and murals can be preserved through photography. Since the late ’70’s, Martha Cooper has documented urban art with a view towards historic preservation. Her work will help make this art form immortal, providing future generations of artists and historians with images of what has been called the biggest art movement in the history of the world. The gallery will exhibit Martha’s photos in a timeline from the ’70s until today, following her interest in graffiti as it spread from a localised New York City phenomenon into a massive worldwide urban art movement. Included in the exhibition will be also photos of StolenSpace Gallery artists shot by Martha in various locations.
Visual Impact – Creative Dissent in the 21th Century
Liz McQuiston‘s new book ‘Visual Impact – Creative Dissent in the 21th Century’, is out now. It is a richly illustrated exploration on art and design driving major social and political change in the 21st century.
Loads of events, such as Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, etc., plus social issues like poverty, equality, gun-control and more, have given rise to what is known as ‘activist’ or ‘protest’ art.
Visual Impact highlights the extraordinary power of art and graphic design to affect social and political change. Generously illustrated with over 400 images, this is a visual guide to the most influential and highly politicized imagery of the digital age. Read more about the book
To celebrate the book and all dissident artists, we’ve included some famous and striking images below from artists conveying a strong (and often) political message.
Artist: JR
Artist: ROA
Artist: unknown
Artist: Princess Hijab
Artist: Blek Le Rat
Stik at Subway gallery
We have all seen the stick men across East London, well the man behind all this, STIK, is having a solo exhibition at the Subway gallery, venue as quirky as STIK men.
Stik’s show at the Subway Gallery will feature an exciting Live Graffiti event, an installation comprised of four large light-boxes and hosts the long awaited launch of the new high quality print edition “Single Mum” produced by Squarity. As always there will be smaller, affordable pieces on sale too at this show which is set to be a vibrant and fascinating event for all.
When –
Preview is on Wednesday 2 March 6—9pm
The show will then run until the 26 march 2011.
Where –
SUBWAY GALLERY | Kiosk 1 Joe Strummer Subway | Edgware Rd / Harrow Rd | London W2 1DX
Video painting at Cordy house, London
Video installation by the creative Brooklyn duo Sweatshoppe. The principle is simple: a LED roller paints video onto a wall. The effect is guaranteed.
Thanks to the programming language called Max/MSP, Blake Shaw wrote a software that makes possible the projection of video visible when it comes in contact with the LED lights on the roller.
The video below is Sweatshoppe at it on top of Cordy House, Shoredith, London towards the end of last year.
SWEATSHOPPE video painting@ Cordy House from SWEATSHOPPE on Vimeo.
Related links
> www.sweatshoppe.org
> http://brunolevy.com/
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(software)
Brick Lane street art
Another stroll along the mighty Brick Lane and another set of street art which we woud like to share with you. The LUDO and CRANIO pieces were our favorites. Which one is yours?
C215
LUDO (left) | #CODEFC
CRANIO
Meet Tristan Eaton, an artist from Los Angeles
Tristan Eaton is an American artist from Los Angeles. He is a graffiti artist, illustrator, toy designer and also a street art muralist.
Eaton was born in 1978, in Los Angeles, California.
Going from places to places
When he was 8 years old, his family moved to London, England. At age 16, they moved back to the United States but this time to Detroit, Michigan. While Eaton loved the city of Detroit, he always wanted to live in a big city and thus, moved to New York when he was 20 years old.
During his teenage years, Eaton painted everything, from dumpsters to billboards, wherever he lived. He had a troubled childhood and was arrested many times for shoplifting and making graffiti.
He used art as an escape from reality and also to escape from legal authorities by providing artistic evidence to judges, principles and police officers.
“I am not a graffiti artist”
Eaton became interested in graffiti when he was in London and upon moving to Detroit he started doing a lot of graffiti, mainly due to lack of police regulation. He doesn’t consider himself a graffiti artist but more of a muralist.
His graffiti work does not consist of letters but mostly characters. For his graffiti work, he never focused on using just spray paint but painted with whatever he could get his hands on. According to him, good graffiti is painting something big and beautiful but illegally. Everything else is mural work for him.
A keen interest in comic books
His interest in comic books also peaked during his time in London. He was inspired by the 2000AD Magazine by British illustrators. He would draw characters from comic books, such as Jack Kirby, early X-Men, Silver Surfer and even the anime film, Akira. At 18, he made his first toy for Fisher Price, which was the beginning of many to come. His creativity led him to becoming a leader in advertising.
He was a regular consultant for many clients, such as Hasbro, Pepsi and Nike.
Eaton was approached by Kidrobot designer, Paul Budnitz, who offered him to work as an art director on an animated film called Kidrobot. Kidrobot became so popular they stopped working on it and started producing designer toys, mainly action figures.
The action figures were made on a limited edition basis and were inspired by the work of famous graffiti artists and hip-hop culture. Eaton believed these toys allowed people to purchase something which tied fine art with consumerism, because fine art is extremely expensive while consumerism is affordable and available to the masses.
This idea gave birth to these limited edition designer toys that led Eaton to become internationally famous with a huge fan base.
Eaton wanted to showcase his art to the lower-class of the urban cities he visited. He believed everybody had the right to have access to fine art and they did not just had to see gray buildings and big billboards. With this intention, he created remarkable murals all over the country.
Inspirations and where to see Tristan’s works
Eaton claims his artwork is inspired from Os Gemeos, Mode 2, Takishi Murikami and many others. His creations can be viewed at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum and some of his collection at the Museum of Modern Art is permanent. On his website, Eaton states “outdoor, public art is the most important to me. Public art has the ability to inspire and transform our communities.” It is obvious how important it is for Eaton to share his art with the rest of the world.
Currently, Eaton is the President and Creative Director at Thunderdog Studios Inc. Thunderdog is a prominent brand for designer toys and a creative agency based in New York. Thunderdog is the backbone of all of Eaton’s work. His team at Thunderdog helps him put together big projects, such as toys and video collaborations. Tristan Eaton happily resides in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
More on Tristan Eaton’s website
Shepard Fairey Sound & Vision show
Shepard Fairey’s Sound and Vision show has been the hot topic in town for the last few weeks. The artist and his crew has hit hard for this show since not only the Stolen Space gallery is hosting the show but another much bigger one a few yards away has also been necessary to give a roof to the impressive amount of pieces the artist has produced.
Since the Hope portrait of Obama back in 2008, Shepard Fairey and his brand OBEY has become something people recognize and like. You see a Shepard Fairey and you know it is one – the typography, colors and subject will give it away. OBEY is a brand here to stay.
Adam Neate, dimensional painting at Elms
Once again I was on my way to the Elms Lesters Painting rooms to go and check out the latest dimensional paintings from Adam Neate. I still had so many good memories from Adam Neate’s last year’s show, also held at this venue, that I could not wait to see what this new show had to offer.
The layout and feel of the Elms Lesters painting rooms is as I remembered it – high ceilings, wooden floors and a relative darkness only interrupted by spots of lights giving the artist’s pieces all the shine and attention they deserve. But Adam Neate’s works would not even need all that for the visitor to quickly realise that what they are looking at is something quite special, something you also need to look at for a little moment to get what it actually is.
Acrylic, perspex, metal and aerosol on board : there you have what makes up Adam Neate’s works. But these mediums need some solid imagination as well as some advanced manual dexterity to transform and assemble some elaborate and intricate pieces of dimensional art – Adam Neate has just done that.
The palette used is flamboyant with a preference for red, the shapes are rounded, the end result is astonishing. Adam Neate’s art is very evocative, his job is to put shapes and colors together, your job is to see through these and come back out with a vision of the piece, your own vision of what you are actually looking at. I found his series of “Red Dimnesional Portraits” very powerful, I could almost hear them shouting at me as I walk past them. The flamboyant colors and defaced visages have certainly something to do with it.
This review will not be complete without mentioning his “Canvas Crucifix”. The Elms Lesters Painting rooms have been accommodated to give even more emphasis to this amazing piece of art. A wall was especially made so the piece could be hang on and with a clever setting of light and shadow, isolate the piece from everything else and draw people’s attention. I found myself very intrigued, slightly apprehensive and thinking “What the hell is that? Adam Neate torn the whole canvas, while still attached the frame, in a such way that he managed to produce what looks like a character on a crucifix. No painting here just a very original use of the canvas as such – a dimensional approach again.
The show at Elms Lesters Painting Rooms is now over. You will find more pictures of the show by scrolling down.
