Showing posts with label Skewville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Skewville. Show all posts

Friday 12 October 2018

Sweet Toof back, with friends


If there is one thing Shoreditch has lacked in the past few years it is the regular sightings of shocking pink gums and pearly teeth from Sweet Toof, the last proper dental checkup around Brick Lane was a paste up bombing session with Insect in 2013.

Paul Insect, Sweet Toof
Paul Insect, Sweet Toof, 2013


Last Christmas a glorious selection of shutter paintings appeared in Dalston around the time of a joint exhibition with Rolf Carl Werner at the BSMT Space. The Graffoto review of that show (here) has a selection of some Sweet Toof street art classics and indeed it neatly makes the point that Sweet Toof loves a collaboration.

Sweet Toof 2017
Sweet Toof & Rolf Carl Wener, Dalston 2017


The link to BSMT is significant as last week at Moniker Art Fair (here) BSMT exhibited for the first time in an art fair environment and their eye catching display included work from the aforementioned molar magician.

BSMT Space, Moniker
BSMT Space, Moniker Art Fair 2018, feat Sweet Toof, A.CE, Skeleton Cardboard, Rocco and Brothers


Sweet Toof’s presence in the Brick Lane area has resulted in several spots receiving a new set of snappers starting at the top end with the Brick Lane Gallery now sporting a Salt Toof Beigel facade to match the famous Beigel shops opposite.

Sweet Toof
Sweet Toof


Skewville was also spotted hanging around Moniker Art Fair (here) and this is significant as Skewville and Sweet Toof have previously connected in London and NY with each hosting solo shows for t’other in their respective cities. Skewville’s “Slow Your Roll” show was held at High Roller Gallery (covered here) whilst Sweet Toof took a bite out of the big apple at Factory Fresh.

Skewville  "YO!  - YO backatcha" shutters DSC_4815
Skewville, "YO"/"YO" London 2011


factory fresh toofpaste
Sweet Toof, Dark Horse, New York 2012 - photo Luna Park


Brick Lane saw them collaborating on an old Sweet Toof spot, Skewville giving it a big New York “YO” over the full Sweet Toof set.

, Skewville
Sweet Toof, Skewville 2018


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Sweet Toof, Burning Candy, Brick Lane same spot olden times


Back in 2008 Sweet Toof turned a hostile fencing feature into a set or razor sharp incisors, which lasted into 2014 and has now been reclaimed.

Sweet Toof
Sweet Toof 2018


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Sweet Toof razor sharp 2007


Sweet Toof
Sweet Toof v. Pez & Nylon 2018


In years to come people will sigh wistfully as they recall seeing Sweet Toof, Pez and Nylon on the same wall in an alleyway.

The biggest buzz for a street art spotter comes in chancing upon a significant piece of street art by a favoured artist and turning into the alley leading into the Seven Stars Car Park on Tuesday this huge set of gnashers was found. The teeth are by Cash4 and Skewville, and it was news to us that Cash4 was in London.

Sweet Toof, Skewville, Cash4
Sweet Toof, Skewville, Cash4


The significance of this spot for Sweet Toof spotters is that this alley way was once grazed by a massive Lenny Highroller by Sweet Toof and his Burning Candy mates and this did last years.

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Sweet Toof, Burning Candy, Seven Stars 2007


SO Sweet Toof does some business reclaiming some old spots, collaborates with old friends and hooks up with NY muckers.  Meanwhile, Skewville's invasion of London was put to good use with some of his old spots getting a fresh pair of screen printed converses.  As always, look closely.

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Skewville, London 2018


Dentists recommend you get your teef checked once in a while and Sweet Toof’s Instagram reveals more molar imagery that has been added in East London locations this week, something to track down and check out.

Links

Sweet Toof instagram
Skewville instagram
BSMT Space website

Photos as noted:

Luna Park instagram
Dave Stuart instsagram

Monday 2 January 2012

Graffoto Round Up of the Year - Part 2

Part 2 of 4 in the round up of my favourite graffiti and street art action in 2011. Already a few days into the new year, this all feels so last year already. . .

All photos by HowAboutNo except where stated.

Probs
Probs

Various

Blam repainted his famous Oscar the Grouch piece (and possibly one of the longest lasting pieceof street art, it was up for nigh on 6 years, but was unfortunately buffed quite a while ago now) I think we all knew this one would never last as long. Painted on a legal spot in Brick Lane that had a lot of visitors this year.

Blam

Pablo Delgado proved to be an interesting newcomer, a slightly new take on stuff that could have just been tired and forgotten about, he made sure that he placed them in enough spots to be seen and at least he was an artist that was getting up regardless of any print release of self marketing campaign. (his work is available at Pure Evil I realise, but small hand limited editions only.)

Pablo Delgado

Pablo Delgado

Pablo Delgado

Stik
Stik

A.ce

A wet weekend at home in East Sussex in May. Being at home means usually not much to be seen in the way of street art or graffiti - so I took up "urbexing" to fill in some down time. I thought nothing of seeing the odd bit of graff here and there in the derelict buildings....but was amazed to find my first real Paul Insect piece in an old abandoned girls school. . . . .

Dead Mickey

Islington-20110617-Myne
Myne

Back in January, a chance encounter with a young man on the streets was our first introduction to the colourful and angular world of ALO. Before too long ALO was getting up with spiky, twisted characters on board

Raise a glass to Bortusk Leer who did more than his share to brighten London's corners with mad-cap fun.

DSC_8129
Photo: NolionsInEngland

In April we got our first introduction to a man who came to pretty much own Shoreditch shutters before the year was out. Malarky continued to have a big impact throughout 2011 with High Roller Society hosting a Malarky presented Gocco Printing workshop workshop and a prestigious interview in VNA issue 17, still available here

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Photo: NolionsInEngland

We lost two HOFs during the year, the second comes up later but regardless of the arts council lumberjack fest, nothing in the UK matched the cultural desecration the demolition of The Pit, RIP, wrought on an un-broken line back to the very beginnings of London graff.

The Pit RIP
Photo: NolionsInEngland

One of 2011's most brilliant street art campaigns was by the old master Ron English. Judging by the huge numbers of human-free photos that surfaced on the net it seems not many spotted that the speech bubbles were meant to interact with passers-by, as revealed on Graffoto here.

ron english
Photo: NolionsInEngland

Ad Skewville was over in the Spring. Apart the brilliant "Slow Your Roll" show at High Roller Society, Skewville dropped a number of stunning shutters on Roman Rd and Bethnal Green Rd including the pair above exchanging honest Brooklynite greetings across the street.

Skewville  "YO!  - YO backatcha" shutters DSC_4815
Photo: NolionsInEngland

Part 3 to follow soon which will cover the months of July to September.

Saturday 26 March 2011

Skewville - Slow Your Roll



High Roller Society

Unit 10 Palmers Road,
London E2 0SY
(Click for map)

19 March – 24 April 2011



photos: NoLionsInEngland

New York twin brother street art legends Skewville are bombing London for their first solo show at High Roller Society gallery. Fame on the streets worldwide has been secured thanks to their sneaker mission but Skewville are never shy of exploring ways to subvert the normal paste up- stencil-gallery show limitations of street art convention.


Trainers over telegraph wires have been around basically since trainers started wearing out, there’s nothing new in dangling sneakers from telephone wires but surrounded by a vast noise of stickers, stencils and paste-ups Skewville sought what they termed “next levelism” for street art techniques and so the trademark silk screened hand cut laced wooden sneakers mission kicked off. Wherever they go they take a few wooden sneakers and leave their “tag” by throwing pairs up over lampposts and telephone wires where they can hang more or less un-touchable. By their estimate they have done over 6,000 pairs in the past 11 years, Graffoto knows of 1 in London which has been there since 2004.


London, 2011


Skewville came to London in 2004 with a mission to do break the mould in putting up repeated simple images on the streets. London was in the grip of the stencil mafia and if stencils weren’t simple enough already, why not get up using a refinement of the old primary school potato print technique. Seeking an edge and discovering easy repeatability, Droo Skewville developed the sneaker stamp, in essence cutting a fresh pattern into the sole of old sneakers. The example below was buffed only last month and others still thrive nearby.




Skewville’s next refinement was to cut the image into a roller pad and hey presto, believe the Hype!




Less long-lived were some quirky sculptural grill signage from 2008.




The current trip has resulted in some more thrown dogs but don’t mark Skewville as street art one trick ponies, this year they have pulled off at least four shutters around the East End. On the streets of New York and wherever two bad ass jive talking yoots from the home counties meet, the greeting of choice is a YO! On opposite sides of an East London high street two shutters greet each other with a YO! before each working day commences, they then disappear and at the end of the shift they re-appear to salute each other.


YO! - YO backatcha!


On to the main reason for Skewvilles’s presence in London, the show at High Roller Society. It takes two to have a conversation and a duality is a recurring theme in this show. There are two parts to the show, one side of the room is older Skewville, the other is new stuff. Skewville has neatly bisected the room with the show’s Slow Your Roll mantra to mark this out as a show of two halves. The over-size stamp used to create the slogan down the middle forms part of a sculptural installation, the tyre rolling out Skewville’s message not to get too impressed with themselves.




In the more colourful half, we see some a Skewville staple, a collection of silkscreened collaged slogans and pop imagery which might have come from the classifieds in a Brooklyn butcher’s trade magazine.


Honey I shrunk The Kids/Brooklyn Flavor/Open Daily


An about turn to the opposite side of the room yields examples of the more recent Skewville direction. Stained, painted and etched images on wood is used to create these intriguing figurative paintings which hint at more meaningful significance.




One theme common to most of the work looks like an expression of regret at the inevitable compromises made on the passage to adulthood drawn from the perspective of the free spirited outsider looking on. It’s the blind stumble downwards from the pursuit of fame and fortune to having to take jobs to fund the dream to then finding life is passing by and yet another sucker has fallen into the trap. A shady spiv [N. Am: flim-flam merchant] employer in All In A Days Work lures the 9-5 work drone with a series of false hopes, fame, fortune, desire and hope ... and then the hidden truth...”Day Job Sucker”.


All In A Day's Work


You have to wonder whether the artist’s sentiments are first person regret or third person teasing. A further series of monochromatic compositions represents the working life as a fast vehicle now decrepit and propped up on bricks, graffiti painted on the vehicles’ side captures the dilemmas – 9-five, “fake a death”, “no return”, “Day Job Sucker”.


Love East Hate West/Fake A Death/Day Job Sucker


This theme of compromises continues through many of the more recent paintings and even some of the older coloured works, check out Vicious Cycle, Sucks Either Way, Side Deals, not to mention the deadly contemporary vices immortalised on various bottles and mousetraps including Envy, Desire, Lust, Desire, Fame, Fortune. Of course pursuing a gallery career doesn’t make the idealistic artist immune from those character traits either. Perhaps the paintings are signalling the start of a quest for liberation from the crushing work-eat-sleep drudge or an early warning to avoid this trap.

The figures in the paintings frequently incorporate a composite of architectural features, outdoor spaces, ambiguous signs and signals all pointing towards an individual’s bewilderment and sense of being overwhelmed by his urban surroundings. Alternatively a viewer could be excused for seeing a person who appears to dominate the environment, the fabric of the community appears to be internalised within the subject who appears to be bigger than the external world, perhaps Skewville really are the High Rollers of their universe, who knows?


Sucks Either Way (Detail)


Some of the symbols didn’t register for cultural reasons, for instance, the rectangles with a cross apparently are painted in playgrounds in NY to represent a pitcher’s target area for a game of “stick ball”, but then it’s quite likely someone from Brooklyn is going to wonder why three vertical lines and two horizontals at the top might get drawn on walls in the UK. This “intelligent pictogram” side of the show is full of interesting aspects and innuendoes derived from Skewville’s lives, home culture and influences but equally they can speak to the circumstances of most viewers, the symbolism is fine.

Between and within the various paintings are dotted lines and crosses creating divisions, links and groupings, Ad of Skewville gave us some cock and bull about them representing paths around their childhood clubhouse and X marking the spot where ye treasure may be found, the story was a good ‘un about notes they used to leave to remember where they’d hidden weapons they’d need to fend off bigger kids out to kick their arses . Another interpretation might be that Skewville could be using a draughtsman’s drawing convention to denote a section or another view through a drawing, as if begging the viewer to take a lateral view to discover the meaning within in the picture.





One thing noticeably absent from the show are sneakers, none. Whilst Skewville have put sneakers in shows in the past – their earlier shows were self promoted and curated – now their gut feel is to react against the exploitation by too many of the streets for commercial promotion by separating the street from the gallery, though Skewville will never resist a YO! or a BEEF, indoors or out.




At the top of this story we found lots of evidence of Skewville's longevity with street pieces surviving in London for the best part of more than half a decade which is no mean achievement in this place. Based on the interesting collection of work in this compact gallery space there is no sign that Skewville aren’t going to continue rolling for long time to come. The show raises fascinating questions about he possibility that the sentiments may be a personal exchange between the twin components of Skewville and you are compelled to appreciate that these concerns engage us all and the art reflects equally into our lives. Ok, it’s fun to contemplate the art in that way but at the end of the day the work has a fascinating and intelligent charm, we just like it !

For a selection of other images from Slow Your Roll and a few other Recent London streetpieces, click here.

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!!!!