This November 2010 London Miles gallery presents a themed group exhibition featuring a bold selection from the International Contemporary art movement.
Where contemporary artists hark back to the masters of past movements paying homage to what was not only inspirational to forming how they paint today, but to what has formed the whole epoch of creative output as we now know it. Â Continue reading The idol hours: group exhibition at London Miles
Brooklyn-based street artist Specter is one of these very active artists who always come up with new projects. You may or may not like what he does but you have to give him credits for always keeping his creativity flame burning like Hell.
Pure Evil gallery is currently hosting his first UK solo show where Specter using garments such as scarfs or bandanas in his new portraits.
Here is what Specter says about it – “the story behind the pieces is that these are portraits of people who have influenced me artistically but instead of painting their faces I am painting fabrics that I feel represent them. I basically close my eyes and these images are what appears.â€
The show only occupied the front room in the gallery, in other words the number of artworks is rather limited. I was quick to go round then and to be honest did not feel loads of excitment about what I had just seen. While I agree that the use of garments is an unique portrayal approach, it is most definitely not the most emotion-trigger one which I believe portaits should be all about: hard to feel sadness or joy looking at a piece of checkered shirt.
Solid drawing and painting skills though and a great attention to detail.
The show runs until the 24th August.
I cannot resist to include a few photos of Specter’s installations and street artwork which is known for in the US. I could not described better what his work is all about than what I read on the Pure Evil website:
He evolves the subject matter by interlacing influences from the environment he chooses to adorn, incorporating characteristics from the surrounding neighbourhoods, architecture, local business and social economic classes; transforming the unwitting publics’ understanding of the space.
Through graffiti influence, he became obsessed with art in public spaces, where he sees potential inspiration and appropriate location to express his creativity. His aim is to deconstruct preconceived perceptions and draw attention to the neglected and less desirable issues, the non-sensational stories of the undervalued detritus of our culture we seldom hear about.
ART-PIE
Related links
> Specter’s art: www.specterart.com
> Make It Fit†Various & Gould exhibition at Brooklynite gallery (New York)
Photos from the show at Pure Evil below as well as Various street installations and artwork from Specter below
Part of our 3 street art works series you should see today. Smug, Etips and Smithe.
Smug – located in Limerick (Ireland)
Etips – located in Boston (USA)
Smithe – located in New York ( USA)
No words needed, just pictures. I snapped these on my way to blackall street art and all his creativity.
MIX: Winter Group Show 2015 at Lawrence Alkin gallery forms the second of the gallery’s biannual group show programme, which showcases the breadth of artists that are associated with the gallery and introduces those who we’re big fans of and will be working closer with in the future.
The exhibition runs throughout December and January offering you the chance to enjoy a wide variety of art and artists over the coming couple of months. On display you’ll find new original works from our roster of contemporary and street artists alongside iconic pieces from world renowned names. Expect to see everything from oil on canvas through to neon/light sculpture.
Works on show from the following names:
Jake Wood-Evans | Jessica Albarn | Miss Bugs | Jeff Koons | Dan Baldwin | Zoe Grace | Banksy | Dave White | Ryan Callanan | Dean Fox | Tom French | Nick Smith | STIK | Laura Keeble | Damien Hirst | Nick Walker | Static | Jube Jube | David Walker | Jackie Berridge | Shuby | Ai Wei Wei | Michelle | Mildenhall | Kim Smith | Will Blanchard (Wildcat Will) | Lucy Sparrow | Matthew David Smith
WHAT – ‘MIX’ winter show
WHERE – 42 New Compton Street, London WC2H 8DA
WHen – Until 16/01/2015
We instantly fell in love when we first saw these little wonders of sculpture. Kresimir Buden 2Fast is the sculptor behind these creations which obviously are graffiti inspired.
The artist is based in Zagreb (Croatia) and use various brands of spray cans from Montana to Ironlak. You will have noticed the Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans version amongst others.
I do not know for you but we particularly like the green one. What about you?
Click on the images below to launch the slideshow
Preview evening at Black Rat Projects, Thursday 8/09/2011, 6-9pm. The show then will run until the 16th October 2011.
Light as a feather yet inscribed with the heavy history of stories told, the blank page has long since lost its primary function: once instrumental for the post-enlightenment dissemination of information in the name of democratised knowledge, paper is now that detritus of the digital age. Just as painters, in the advent of the camera, sought experimental ways of reclaiming a trade absolved of all social utility, so today’s artists turn to this generation’s redundant material as a site of creative possibility.
In September 2011, Black Rat Projects offers a means of ingress into a field of art-making which presents a unique response to our contemporary situation. BRP PAPER ties Brian Douglas, Swoon, Leipzig based Annette Schröter, Polish artist Jarek Piotrowski, Armenian born Karen Sargsyan, Alex James Daw and Atlanta based Brian Dettmer through their common practice: the manipulation of paper. These are the artists who stand at the threshold of post-production practices and yet their aesthetic constructs Romantic landscapes and strives for a beauty long discarded by the history of art.
As they tear, rip, dye, cut, fold, recycle, trash, sew, stain, stick, mould, slice, slash, copy and paste their work into being, a narrative of materiality emerges that finds a unity between the post-punk adage and the ancient skilled crafts of origami and shadow puppetry. Labour intensive, their paper works create an opening where the sublime intentions of modernist painting meet the social pragmatism mobilised by the modern DIY spirit.
As all that was paper melts into data Black Rat Projects brings these international artists together for the first time to explore common themes in their work.
Words from Black Rat Press
Featured artists
BRIAN DOUGLAS | SWOON | ANNETTE SCHRÖTER | JAREK PIOTROWSKI | ALEX JAMES DAW | KAREN SARGSYAN | BRIAN DETTMER
We have all seen these street artists colouring our pavements without could not put the finger on what the piece actually represent. It is because you are not looking at it at the right angle. We are talking here about anamorphic art which has recently flourished all over the world.
But some artists take this form of art to the next level making it methodical and magical. Located in the factory hosted by Sub Urb Art based in Torino (Italy), Medusa, figure from the Greek mythology, has taken the patience, attention to detail and talent of two artists, Ninja1 and Mach505.
The number of surfaces used is phenomenal and make the task daunting. It took 35 hours to paint the whole lot. It was achievable by projecting the outlines of an existing Medusa drawing on those surfaces and paint over them.
“Also, tracing a projection might seem simple, but at a distance of 20 meters the pixels are the size of your head, and hardly visible at all because of other lights, so you do need to check what you’re doing from the viewpoint every once in a while. “
Read the full interview on Modernet
From certain angles
The end result
With some spare time available while on business recently in Dublin I had to put aside the Guinness and amazing Irish stew for a bit and not pass up the chance to check out what the streets had to offer.
The creative festival Offset had recently took place with international talent like JR and Faile taking the chance to add their mark to the streets and complement the local artists like Maser and James Earley. The festival birthed a collaboration effort between Maser and JR, while the duo of Faile hit the town at an impressive rate with a number of tags and stencils.
When in Dublin you can’t fail to visit Temple Bar for all its drinking establishments but it is also home to an excellent Conor Harrington piece down one of the areas quieter streets as well as a few galleries. A bit further a field is where you really find gold though and in the Tivoli Theatre car park is a range of work including a large number of pieces by Steve ‘Espo’ Powers and one from El Mac.
Dublin seems very receptive to street art and an initiative caught my eye called the Dublin City Beta project which first project has seen a number of traffic light boxes given an overhaul by a number of artists, with a forum to gather feedback on whether the art is good for the area.
A hub for the community is the shop All City, which stocks sprays cans, records and even has a spot to get a quick trim. Any time I visited this was a hot bed of activity with artists and DJ’s conversing while the weekend commencing my visit they were holding the annual All City Tivoli Jam.
I’m already looking forward to a return visits to see what more work has cropped up. Dublin is definitely worth a visit if you fancy your street art with a good craic.
CONOR HARRINGTON at Temple bar
El Mac
ESPO
John Stezaker once said of Collage that it “is a yearning for a lost world and reflects a universal sense of loss”. Those sentiments are certainly reflected in the work of artist and radical feminist Linder Sterling (also known as Linder).
In her series Pretty Girls, Linder reacted to visual world she occupied, a society of inequality and the gender specific rhetoric. Linder used the magazines of the late 70’s and 80’s as her painters brush. Splicing images of naked women from pornography, and kitchen appliances from those awful home improvement catalogues, she created a curious and slightly disturbing, yet telling depiction on the representation of women of the time.
Looking back at these images from the 70’s and the post punk era it’s amazing how contemporary they feel. Is this due to the inherent nature of collage and it’s yearning for a lost world (as Stezaker put it). Or is it that in a time when we are bombarded with imagery on a daily basis that more and more contemporary artists and looking back in time in an attempt to decipher it all?
Guest post by Brian J Morrison
