Showing posts with label Busk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Busk. Show all posts

Sunday 4 November 2018

xEnso - Xenz' Nelly Duff Show

Xenz

2nd - 8th November 2018

Nelly Duff Gallery

156 Columbia Road

London E2 7RG



If there is a niche for graffiti writers who paint exquisite, delicate nature pieces with a dash of fantasy landscape thrown in then a huge chunk gets filled by Hull’s finest escapee, Xenz.

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Meeting Of Styles 2009


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Cans Festival II, Leake St 2008


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Bristol 2006 (photo 2009)


Xenz has a new solo show at scene stalwart gallery and publisher Nelly Duff.

xEnso at Nelly Duff Gallery


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The Golden Branch


Duffers and Dufferettes, as the gallery likes to calls its fans, will be well aware that Nelly Duff has an extraordinary knack for a lush piece of art so when Xenz casts his beadies over the eye candy hanging on the ground floor he figured that going circular would be one way to stand out among the rectangular wall fillers, now we know the circumstance of the circumference in this impressive collection.

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Elegance is a word that sits very comfortably in a description of a Xenz painting though the graffiti writer always lurks among the branches, literally. As a graffiti writer the letterform must reign paramount and outdoors Xenz produces stunning landscape paintings with his name cunningly disguised within the branches and trees.

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Xenz, Busk,(both written in the rock formations!) Hackney Wick 2011


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Meeting of Styles 2019 (this young man was just entranced by Xenz'z mural, beautiful to see)


The painting in the show may look a million miles from any graffiti aesthetic but look closely, again the letters are subtly secreted inside the lines of the flora. Illustrated by "mouseover" on the next image - best viewed on desktop or laptop rather than mobiles or tablets




The circular paintings were inspired by the zen buddist ensō symbol, ensō circles capture a concept of fulfilment, calm, strength and most particularly, elegance and enlightenment.

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A collection of beautiful watery paintings on handmade paper discs roughly a foot in diameter were painted in a very gestural manner; simple colours , dots, lines and drips were applied and left as they fell, no corrections, no smoothing of curves or sharpening of edges and a sense of grace and flow in the finished article is clear.

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Sketches From The Valleys Of The Shadows


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Graffiti writers love to show off their skill versatility and wit by writing alternative spellings of their monikers and Xenz was quick to spot that if you corrupt the label ensō by simply adding an x in front, you have almost got Xenz’z name ready made in there. It deserves a new form for the possessive.

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Xenz'z


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Xenz'z too


Xenz’z interior art has often featured wispy forest fronds and filaments frequented by flying fauna. The colourful birds flitting through the branches and hovering in front of soft petals are based on humming birds. This goes back to an occasion when Xenz was enjoying some traditional hospitality high up a Jamaican mountain when a long tailed humming bird flitted out of the forest canopy to perch on his finger like it owned it. A few magical seconds and some herb imprinted the experience in Xenz’z mind and thence into his art.

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Turquoise Dreams


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Humming Bird detail


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Nelly Duff’s upstairs lounges is a homely snug, embodied in the slightly stained and battered looking lintels over the fireplaces. Xenz happened to notice some circular coffee cup stains and that triggered his ensō reflex, so he added some beautiful birds. There’s nothing quite as naughty as a little tagging indoors.

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Gold cutting in


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Flutter


All round, Xenz has produced a wheelie great show, well worth a spin. (sorry about that!)

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"Round" of applause for this man please

LINKS:


Xenz website

Nelly Duff Gallery website

all photos: Dave Stuart (instagram)

Thursday 23 August 2018

Shoreditch Connectivity - A Big New Mural

Shoreditch street art is a little bit different, in many ways and for many reasons, it just is. One aspect in which Shoreditch however may be a bit off the pace is the gargantuan mural. The social media feeds of many brilliant photographers of street art from around the world are full of truly epic street art on a massive scale by amazing artists; 8 storeys high, 15 storeys high, visible from space, that kind of thing. Those murals seems to endure for years or perhaps until the next time the neighbourhood hosts another festival of mural street art. It’s not that Shoreditch has none of this art, just that it punches below its weight in such epic muralism.

That has now changed, a beautiful mural on the theme of “connectivity” which truly stands alongside the best in the world has been created in Shoreditch and it is stunning. The fun started in Spring this year and went on until August, 8 groups of artists working in pairs have painted a long montage of murals thematically linked on the idea of “connectivity”. The whole piece has been placed with permission on a building owned by a communications company and Graffoto has had the pleasure of discussing many aspects of this brilliant new mural with Lee Bofkin representing Global Street Art which managed the project.

Busk and Oliver Switch, flanked by Ninth Seal and Best Ever to left, Ed Hicks and Dr Zadok to right
Busk and Oliver Switch, flanked by Ninth Seal and Best Ever to left, Ed Hicks and Dr Zadok to right


First, a little flash back. This building for the past 20 years has been a rather intimidating, austere and genuinely brutal edifice. Any art or graffiti that appeared on the building was very swiftly dealt with using high pressure water jets.

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Colt building in Background, gray, anonymous 2010. Foreground fairground now houses CitizenM hotel.


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genuinely brutal!


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The hazy discolouration that evolved over repeated pressure jet cleaning of the walls down the years can be seen in the lower 6 foot of the walls.

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Security – stab people (augmentation by artist unknown)


The first visible signs of dramatic change appeared in March 2018 when Hunto and Mr Thoms painted the end or perhaps the start of the building. Lee explained; “The people who own the building are Colt, the technology company. They moved into the adjacent building, there was a big office refurbishment and Global Street Art was able to secure permission for artists to paint on the building site hoardings. We knew them from that project and it was a little conversation that resulted from that. Years later they came up with the idea [for the mural] and we said “yeah we can help with that”.

Cix Mugre, LibreHem and Spaik 45, #MXUK2015
Cix Mugre, LibreHem and Spaik 45, Mexico comes to UK #MXUK2015


“They suggested the theme of connectivity, and that changed how we thought about it, we realised no one had ever been given the opportunity to do something so big and we really wanted to make it work so we thought we’d take the theme of connectivity and make a literal interpretation of it within each section, so each section would be painted by a pair of artists so they would connect directly with eachother within that section. There was a lot of behind the scenes work coordinating the design, between the Global Street Art team as well as the individual artists, we then composited the ideas together to give a sense of the whole, then we had the conversations with each of the pairs of artists as to how they would each make it blend with the sections adjacent to them. The artists then painted in chunks!”

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Shoreditch Connectivity: Hunto & Mr Thoms


The hard work on the connections really paid off, and a great example of this can be seen in how the network of talkers, listeners and webcams painted by Thoms connects into the kissing cubist couple by Hunto and then the pipes in the network were left hanging on the fringes until Captain Kris and Tizer came along to paint the next section.

Hunto, mr Thoms


Then we can see how Captain Kris and Tizer, in their section which depicts a connection between the real and the virtual, took the hanging connections and blended them into their artwork, in particular the yellow conduit at the bottom morphs into a triangular branch like enclosure which closes right at the point where the robot with the VR headset is connecting with the female dancer.

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Captain Kris & Tizer


The dancers are dancing on a woodland floor which then flows seamlessly into the amazing woodland scene by Ed Hicks and Dr Zadok.

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Captain Kris & Tizer cut some rug


The connectivity depicted in the Hicks/Zadok woodland is provided by the fungal mycelium network, an organic information superhighway which actually really connects plants, trees and mushrooms across the forest floor.

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Ed Hicks, Zadok - The Mycelium network



The corner panel where King John Court meets New Inn Yard supports a vanitas painting by Busk and Mr Switch. The connection aspect here is the ammonite shell at the top which has not changed over millennia and thus provides a connection across the ages.

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Busk & Mr Oliver Switch


Intended or otherwise, there may be another connection in this section as directly across the road from this corner panel is the HQ of Amnesty International, Amnesty’s logo is a candle entrapped by barbed wire, the candle in the Busk/Switch composition may be making a conection with the Amnesty International candle.

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Amnesty International Logo copyright Amnesty International


This then flows into a collection of hands in a lattice structure, the hands depict meetings, greetings, introductions, friendships, Ninth Seal and Best Ever have captured a very human form of connectivity.

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Mobile connectivity


Next to this is a beautiful tribute to old school modes of connection and communication by Nomad Clan, a pair of artists from Manchester. The lost art of letter writing sits alongside the pigeon post, now superseded by email.

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Nomad Clan Rewind


Those curious double headed arrow symbols in Nomad Clan’s art will be instantly familiar as “fast forward” and “rewind” to anyone who ever played or recorded on C60 and C90 cassettes. The fast forward arrow draws your eye to a collaboration between Mr Cenz whose multicoloured portraits are a familiar sight across London and Lovepusher, known for his amazing 3D letter writing. On the left Nomad Clan pay homage to retro connectivity, the female character to the right has the future of connectivity in the palm of her hand.

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Future Future: Lovepusher and Mr Cenz work-in-progress


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Future - Lovepusher and Mr Cenz


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Connectivity past, present and future


The whole project in its current form (not to suggest that this is anything other than the final manifestation) was brought to a conclusion by an abstract multi layered network created by AutOne and Neist whose complex handstyle we have loved for years.

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AutOne, Neist


Graffoto was very curious about the choice of artists and how they were paired together so it was great to get Lee's take on that. “It was conversations with the team here at Global Street Art, I had the sense of.. well pretty much everyone we have known or worked with over years and years, we’re six years in now and we had a sense of who would work well with the theme. There were also some people that we really wanted to work with, we wanted Tizer to paint a big wall and he’s been looking for a big wall so a natural pairing for us for Tizer was Captain Kris.”

Lee explains how the sections become progressively less and less illustrative as you work away from Hunto and Mr Thoms at the start.

“In the end with Autone and Neist the style had to be abstract because the space is broken up and layered, so that kind of made sense for a geometric abstract and Autone’s work is about maps and connectivity, it’s that sort of inspiration and it would work brilliantly with Neist and they have gotten on really well and their styles have meshed really beautifully together so we’re super chuffed with this.” Lee said.

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Networks, connections, real, painted.... AutOne and Neist


The organisation and logistics behind such a colossal mural is also hugely impressive and generally is something that Global Street Art is tremendously qualified to undertake. Just a few stats making the rounds: the mural is about 115m along its base and 13m tall making a surface area of almost 1500square metres; 250 litres of black emulsion (who buys black?) were applied as background and over 500 cans of spraypaint went into the painting.

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Hicks, Zadok detail


“The building was so huge we couldn’t imagine painting it in one go just because it is logistically so difficult, the volume of materials is absolutely massive, technically having to close pavements with council permission, manage the traffic because Health and Safety is a huge part of what we do but its fairly thankless and invisible to coordinate all of that and the lifts and to not drop a lift through a utility cover in the road because you can’t park on, all of that went into it as well. To make it manageable we suggested breaking it down into 9 sections originally, the first pair Mr Thoms and Hunto painted two sections so in the end it was 8 pairs of artists.”

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Danger, Global Street Art mulshing in progress


A colour palette was selected in dialogue with artists and building owners and generally was adhered to. “It’s such a big building it had to be a black background because if you stare at that much white paint you’ll get blinded in the Summer” Lee explains, “and that will get dirty quicker so the idea is that the black background would last a bit longer and it would fare a bit better against the dirt of the city. Also it’s one way of unifying the different sections if everyone starts with the same colour background.”

The end result of all these dynamics and the organisation and dare I say the connections is just about the most impressive, fresh, single piece themed collaborative mural Shoreditch has seen. All the artists involved deserve a magnificent pat on their respective backs and Lee and the Global Street Art team have every reason to feel very proud of this incredible achievement.

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Smooth ankle v. pebble dash foot? Tizer detail

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Hicks and Zadok Neurons Crackle

Links:
Global Street Art website 
Hunto instagram
Mr Thoms instagram
Captain Kris instagram
Tizer instagram
Ed Hick instagram
Dr Zadok instagram
Busk One instagram
Mr Oliver Switch instagram
Best Ever instagram
Ninth Seal TBA
Nomad Clan instagram
Mr Cenz instagram
Lovepusher instagram
AutOne instagram

Neist instagram

All photos: Dave Stuart except Amnesty International Logo, copyright Amnesty International


 

Saturday 20 November 2010

Mantis - Altered State

Lord Napier, Hackney Wick
18 - 20 Nov 2010


photos: NoLionsInEngland except Howaboutno where stated


We like our street artists a bit elusive and few come more enigmatic than Mantis. The mystery revolves around the un-signed socio-political work on the streets and the comparative scarcity of paintings and prints. Mantis is a regular street defacer, his repertoire including epic stencils, defaced road signs and his own installed road signs though he has been known to freehand paint some large figurative pieces by the side of canals.


"All Fall Down", photo HowAboutNo


Quite often attribution to Mantis is process involving “definitely Banksy” followed by “not sure” followed by “not on Bansky’s website” sheepishly concluded with “oh, its on Mantis’ website”. The script goes horribly wrong when pieces are initially attributed to Grafter followed by a consensus that in fact Eelus was the painter


Mantis, not Eelus, nor Grafter



You are here (no exit)


One of Hackney Wick’s particular landmarks is the derelict Lord Napier pub hard by the Hackney Wick overground station.


BUSK


This has been derelict for years and Mantis has chosen its blackened interior to host his first ever solo show.



Painted wall background by Busk


In the first room, a granny’s living room, as comfortable as a slipper, complete with tweeting parrot simulates a world of contemporary modernity denied. A rocking chair provides a cosy perch next to a roaring fire – flames by Busk – in which Granny would sit and contemplate the sepia toned on the wall.




A couple of the finely drawn exercises have been seen out on the streets in stencil form, though it seems unlikely that they are stencils on this occasion.


Hopscotch (Hope Scotched)



The End Was Nigh


Glimpsed through the open door is the parallel exterior world of grim and congested urban landscapes and threatening spooky weirdness. Hanging on dirt streaked un-painted walls are a series of spraypaint and ink drawings on canvas and wood, celebrating a sort of retro modern architecture on one side and playing with life and death on the other.

The particular fish-eyed perspective of this ink drawing over aerosol spray on wood has the luminosity of Hopper’s Nighthawks combined with a bit of Rushka perspective.


Corner Shop


Mantis’ street work combines humour with social commentary and occasionally the humour surfaces in this show like this crushing of the Warholian legacy. A bin below this painting held a collection of empty Campbells soup tins, replica labels made by Mantis.



Recycle


Several of the paintings explore the future architecture theme, on the end wall the whole planet is covered with skyscraper buildings which chimes with the dire predictions implicit in simple but effective street pieces by Mantis.


Stop Consuming


In one corner a slot machine plays games with our fate, the buttons teasingly invite us to play or not play, the spinning reels indicate life or death and the nudges don’t deliver on the promises the labels make


Grim Reaper optional


Mantis has coyly omitted any sign that the art might be for sale, no drawing labels, no price list, in fact no indication anywhere of even the artist’s name. Self effacement is taken to the limit here. This show is fascinating just for the fact that it is by Mantis and revelatory in the undoubted quality of the drawings. The show runs for just three days and at time of writing closes tomorrow with a party, though we understand the paintings may be removed before the fun begins since it is planned to be a bit of a bop.



Oh, Now I see


Mantis is the kind of artists that delights Graffoto so we are particularly pleased that his debut show should be the subject of Graffoto’s 200th post. Happy 200th something to us - yeeeeeeeeahhhhaaaawwww

More images on flickr here