Showing posts with label Nick Walker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nick Walker. Show all posts

Saturday 18 September 2010

Papal Bull

Pope In London - Street artists rise as foretold

photos Nolionsinengland except S.Butterfly where noted


Benedictus episcopus servus servorum Dei, Pope Benedict, Bishop, Server of The Servants of God, etc etc is in the UK to give us a bit of a telling off and to enjoy one of the most expensive inter-city long-weekend breaks on record (Twelve million quids worth is the accepted estimate of his inclusive board and travel deal). Graffoto was a little disappointed that the opportunity presented by the elections in the UK this Summer passed by un-remarked by most of the street art/anarchist community, perhaps with the honourable exception of Dr d, so it is encouraging to see this papal visit has stimulated the minds and exacto knives of a few stencilistas in London. For anyone not familiar with the circumstances, the two protest themes hinge around expense and paedophilia cover-ups.

Top prize goes to the ever thoughtful K-Guy who placed controversial work in a couple of spots designed for maximum visibility to the papal entourage and all passing Catholics. K-Guys is at his best when presented with a toxic cocktail of politics, religion and hipocracy and the quality of his political work is sustained in this hear-no-see-no-speak-no cannon-ised monkeys. Reducing the pontiff to the level of a primate and mocking the Church’s inability or un-willingness to properly and clearly address the horrendous crimes committed within its sanctuary by a few (“Paedophilia is a sickness, they were “ill”), this work pulls no punches.


K-Guy “see-no-hear-no-speak-no”


K-Guy placed a version of this image on Thursday night on the Popemobile route to Westminster, Graffoto made a detour on the way to the day job on Friday morning arriving just as one chuffed-to-bits cleaner removed the piece off the streets. 0-1 to the buff.


I’ll ‘ave that


K-Guy was motivated to go one better for the Pope’s benefit on Saturday (today), placing a second specimen inside Hyde Park where the Pope was due to lead an open air séance or something. Wonder if it survived until the vigil, certainly thousands of Catholics will have got the message if it did.


K-Guy


SPQR also addresses the popular theme of papal cover-ups, this splendidly executed work referencing the less than transparent internal investigations supposedly carried on by the Catholic church. Being placed on a gallery wall miles from where the papal retinues and the flock would gather renders this effort a tad futile but to be fair to SPQR, he was presumably rather busy with a solo show opening at Signal Gallery that night.


SPQR – “Report Exposes Church Sex”


Much closer to the heart of the papal action geographically speaking is Nick Walker’s Cardinal Sinister placed on the walls of the Royal College of Art immediately outside Hyde Park. Nick Walker renders the Pope as a Blofeld-like evil head of a sinister organisation stroking the cat on his lap. We like the analogy to the head of a crime based organisation, the stencil has impressive scale and detail but we feel the Royal College of Art gains more through boosting its waning“edginess” quotient than Mr Walker gains for his imaginative composition.


Nick Walker "Cardinal Sinister"


We thank the ever vigilant Ms S Butterfly for photographing this effort by Raymond Salvatore Harmon (anyone like to hazard a guess at his religion?) aka RSH, location unknown. Perhaps the splatters of blood are a bit OTT but the few pieces by RSH we have seen recently have been almost violently dayglo, the point of the work is more important than the colour palate.


RSH – Suffer The Children (photo S Butterfly)

D*Face used the opening on Thursday of a retrospective show at Electric Blue Gallery, Middlesex St to mock the new religions of corporatism and branding with his logo cross (curiously, this time hung upside down St Peter style), previously seen at the 2008 aPOPcalypse Now show.


D*Face logo cross (aPOPcalypse Now, 2008)


The Pope angrily charged D*Face with what he called “Aggressive Atheism” but the bulk of the mainstream press have chosen to interpret the remark in the wider context of British Society.

Wednesday 7 May 2008

Banksy, No Lions, Eelus Group Show

Or Cans Festival: you created a monster


Words: NoLionsInEngland; pictures NoLions, Howaboutno 



Foreword - Cans Festival (the bits that make sense of where this post is coming from):
Cans Festival - the first preview night visit
Cans Festival - Let Us Spray - what went on in Banksy's pet project, the public access spray zone


The gauntlet was thrown down. Cans Festival includes a come-one-come-all stencil participation event and…well, you can’t get onto the "rock up and spray" ramp unless you are going to do some art.

Brooding about this on Sunday night, I wondered how the heck I could get onto that ramp to photograph some of the awesome shit being thrown up on the un-scripted walls. Monday morning had held promise of a lie-in as it was a bank holiday but a bolt of lightening hit the NoLions boudoir in the night – to get on that ramp I've just got to somehow discover the hidden artist within.

What image though? First thought was keep it small and simple, an animal silhouette, perhaps a butterfly but oh bugger hasn’t that been done to death by Messrs Evil and Walker already. Maybe a Leopard, but you couldn’t compete with Bansky’s Tag Leopard in the show. Then slowly slowly the penny dropped – how about a Lion based image.



Banksy

The story behind the name No Lions In England is that lyrical wizard Ian Brown, previously lead singer in the Stone Roses, subsequently multiple album releasing god-like genius and also long standing street art aficionado many years ago was in a group panel discussion on TV when a demonised rasta man leaps up and started loundly querying where has the lions on the England badge came from as there had never been any lions in England. Ian Brown went on to record the track No Lions In England with a thumping bass line so low the bass strings must hang somewhere down near the guitarist's ankles.

Having adopted the NoLionsInEngland monikor about 4 years ago, it seemed a good idea to create an image involving the three lions of the England football badge and add red crosses through them.

After breakfast, an image of the badge was found on the net, tidied up, transferred to the inside of the conrnflakes packet and luckily having an unused set of Stanley knive blades, the lion stencil was born. The cross was simple, and my daughter drew the words.




We checked in at Cans Festival reception,
“you got a stencil?”
“yup”
“you got cans?”
“errrrrr”

Some marshall guy allocating spaces comes over and takes us past the Colditz barrier separating the rock-up-and-spray talent from the rubber-neckers and suggests we slap ours under the Eelus tag. He then got us the black and the red sprays. The wall was as rough as a badgers rear end and as grubby as an ant-eaters breakfast so our new friend gets us some white to prep with. This guy, dark top heavy mop of curly hair if that helps, may work for PoW though we hadn’t met before and credit to him, he couldn’t have been more encouraging and helpful – we salute you.

Ably assisted by the young Little Miss No Lions, 5 minutes later we have both wielded a spray can for the first time ever and suddenly – this stencilling thing works!





And we were able to get close up pics of all the other un-billed genius’ art on that ramp - mission accomplished! Pictures of the have-a-go hereos work are here, and a description of the fun is in an earlier blog entry "Let Us Spray".









One thing the experience lacked was any kind of tension.  It was legal, authorised and totally lacking that key element of graffiti – the danger of being caught. Why stop there? Realising that stencils can be re-used and with blog compadre HowAboutNo confessing to having a stencil of his own ready to go, a couple of pints of Guiness was all it took to generate sufficient dutch courage to have a go on the streets.





How can we avoid standing out like spare pricks in Shoreditch at home time on a Wednesday evening? That’s easy, a pair of chinos, a pink shirt, cufflinks, 20 marlboro. We almost faded into the walls.

3 pints of Guinness and 30 minutes pass, and next thing several walls in Shoreditch appear to be ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly more vandalised than before. It seems a sort of very polite dis-obedience.





The Krah vs NoLionsInEngland vs CarTrain!
 

Tomorrow, we may return to the scene of the crime to get some snaps of our handiwork which we may add to this blurb.

Did it work? Tonight’s mindless wall daubing is a minuscule vindication of what the organisers of Cans Festival set out to achieve, to spread wider the use of the spray can and stencil as a means of public expression, to unleash the un-suspected and hidden talent in us all. We like to believe that this is being repeated up and down the country and the seeds sown last weekend at Cans will flourish over the coming years.






POST SCRIPT:

Cans Festival proved to be something Graffoto had to devote far more than this post to, here is the full set of related posts:

Cans Festival - the first preview night visit
Cans Festival - Let Us Spray - what went on in Banksy's pet project, the public access spray zone
Banksy, No Lions, Eelus Group Show - Banksy wanted anyone apart from artists to take up stencilling, we accepted the challenge
Cans Festival - One More Sniff - How the Cans wall art evolved in the first month or so after the event
Cans Recycled - First Peek - An un-scheduled sneak peek at the second version of Cans Festival when the tunnel was closed for a few days.
Cans Recycled Opens - Like it says on the tin
Alphabet Soup - The Cans 2 Letter Hunt - A Rarekind of letter game played at Cans Recycled
Cans2 Recycled Revisited - more.

Wednesday 6 February 2008

Urban Art - Insanity Takes Hold

(all photos Bonhams)

Originating from the streets of Bristol, Brighton and London, growing up via galleries in the East End (TLSG and BRP well represented tonight), the street print and canvas fetish they call urban art arrived in the plush west end auction rooms of Bonhams tonight .

Standing room only as Banksy stole the show, with new records for signed and unsigned screenprints, and a high score of £190,000 plus about £50,350 in premium and taxes was reached for the multiple Laugh Now monkeys on painted board. Other Banksy highlights included £82,000 for the pink punk canvas, rather a lot for a picture which looks like it might belong in your daughter’s bedroom and the jaw dropping £80,000, that’s over £100k with add ons, for the signed editioned print, read it again..editioned, Kate Moss (30/50) which undoubtedly brought a smile to one seller’s face.


Note all prices here are hammer prices, add a further 26-28% for buyers premium, VAT and artists fees, which raises the interesting question of how will Banksy get his since you have to provide name and address to collect!

Christ With Shopping Bags (13/82) topped the prices for other signed prints at £17,000 whilst signed HMV (19/150) and Golf Sale (27/750) both realised £11,000 and signed I Fought The Law brought in £10,000. The last three make the £11,000 paid for an un-signed Bomb Middle England (288/500) look like in-explicable lunacy. The only rat at the show other than me, an un-signed Gansta Rat (94/350) went for £6,500.



Nick Walker’s burgeoning recognition, his soaring talent showcased superbly in LA at the moment was rewarded by a Moona Lisa canvas stretching to a cheeky £45,000. The beautiful London Morning After AP 12/12 with its lush blue sky went for £4,500 and probably drew the largest number of frantically waved paddles.


Two very dark but classy Guy Denning oil on canvases priced erratically with the 50x70 Fear and Loss knocking down for £8,000 compared to the comparative bargain of £2,000 for the 50x50 We Saw This.


Antony Micallef flippers failed to catch fire with the Peacekeeper Uzi loving quartet ranging from £1,700 to £2,200. That’ll teach ya.

Adam Neate’s The Apprentice went for a tasty £36,000 making the smaller Neates on cardboard look a comparative steal at between £5,500 and £8,500.

Catalogues sold out so expect those to flip on eBay at a ridiculous premium any minute now.

The auction had more buzz than a hive on acid and undoubtedly suggests that apparently faltering prices are due to kick on again. If that’s what you want. Frankly the mood did border on the insane, though the buyer of the top priced piece has been popping up at all the street art openings for some time so wasn't bidding in ignorance. Given the awesome/in-explicable prices achieved for the somewhat patchy to mediocre selection auctioned tonight I would be surprised if cashing in on the street art bubble isn’t attempted again fairly soon.

Tuesday 17 July 2007

Found Was Friggin Fabulous

Last nights "Found" show at The Leonard Street Gallery was simply amazing. mentioned earlier last week it featured scores of artists, most of whom had produced new versions of old stuff specially for the show, and also included older (and more expensive mostly) pieces from the likes of Obey and Nick Walker amongst others.

Asbestos

It is running for an undisclosed amount of time, and they will be switiching the items on show around, I think the stuff they have waiting in the wings could fill the place out all over again, so will be a whole different expereince in a couple of weeks.

Sweet Toof


It was hosted with the usual effortless charm of the gallery's staff (I'm sure the women are getting more attractive. . . or is it the extremely strong vodka cocktails they serve up) Either way, both were plentiful.
Arofish

Mantis

Elbow Toe

To contact the gallery, visit www.tlsg.co.uk

Thursday 12 July 2007

"Found" @ TLSG

FOUND :


An exhibition of artworks on found objects

20 JUL 2007 til ongoing 2007

Found is an exhibition of original artworks made on found objects and materials. The exhibition will open on Friday the 20th July and will include works by AMP, Arofish, Asbestos, Beejoir, Cyclops, Rene Gagnon, Mantis, Matt Small, Skewville, Judith Supine, Elbow-toe, Sweet Toof and Nick Walker


A number of limited edition prints made by participating artists will be available during the show and also featuring will be works by artists including Titi Freak, Date Farmers, Adam Neate and David Choe.

Please contact the gallery or continue to check this web page for further information.

*no bribes were offered by tlsg for this post, but feel free.....if you must!!!!