So, seemingly bugger all...unless it's really subliminal?!
Wednesday 14 May 2008
It's Still a MysterY To MME
I have often wondered if Eine is actually spelling anything out in placing his letters along our thouroughfares, from his latest spat of shutter realted daubery (at least in the order I have spotted them) here is what he has spelt so far :
So, seemingly bugger all...unless it's really subliminal?!
So, seemingly bugger all...unless it's really subliminal?!
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.
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.
Monday 5 May 2008
Cans Festival - Let Us Spray
Popped down to the third and final day of Cans Festival, this time with a mission to get past the security and get some photos on the exit ramp where all the un-billed artists could rock up and spray. Conning my way past with a few stencils in my mitts, the results of this mass participation spray-a-thon are pretty awesome.
Known names seen in the spray-it-yourself area included Jef Aerosol, The Krah, K-Guy, TEK13, Mr Brain-washed (but he was everywhere), Snub, Hush, Hutch, C215, Asboluv. These regular practising crims were jostling shoulder to shoulder with a horde of enthusiastic stencilists from the beginner (I’d never sprayed a can in my life before) to the staggeringly accomplished. Here’s a selection of some of the highlights.
In the main drag, Blek had passed through, dropping a few very familiar Blek images. A number of other artists had either escaped my attention on previous visits or had done their shit since Saturday lunchtime. A sand artist had set up in the sandpit area, for a fiver you could get your picture taken sitting on his sand sofa. The staggering liberty here was his sofa totally covered Banksy’s tag leopard which would deny one of the best pieces of the show from all today’s visitors. Get out of it!
Reports of carnage - unfounded
unknowns – love the linking of the toddler and the rocket
This lad must have been about 12-14, great stencilling and impressive images:
Tonch
Regular graffoto fav The Krah
Focus
SPQR
great bat placement - unknown
Well worked – AME72
What a pile of shit. Suspect Dicky and Smif (D*Face hackers) [update: Not Dicky & Smif. and everything else written is made up as well.]
The whole event was worth running!
More pictures from the access all vandals area here:
Write up of the main artists area in the previous blog entry, and pictures from the main artists here
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.
Known names seen in the spray-it-yourself area included Jef Aerosol, The Krah, K-Guy, TEK13, Mr Brain-washed (but he was everywhere), Snub, Hush, Hutch, C215, Asboluv. These regular practising crims were jostling shoulder to shoulder with a horde of enthusiastic stencilists from the beginner (I’d never sprayed a can in my life before) to the staggeringly accomplished. Here’s a selection of some of the highlights.
In the main drag, Blek had passed through, dropping a few very familiar Blek images. A number of other artists had either escaped my attention on previous visits or had done their shit since Saturday lunchtime. A sand artist had set up in the sandpit area, for a fiver you could get your picture taken sitting on his sand sofa. The staggering liberty here was his sofa totally covered Banksy’s tag leopard which would deny one of the best pieces of the show from all today’s visitors. Get out of it!
Reports of carnage - unfounded
unknowns – love the linking of the toddler and the rocket
This lad must have been about 12-14, great stencilling and impressive images:
Tonch
Regular graffoto fav The Krah
Focus
SPQR
great bat placement - unknown
Well worked – AME72
What a pile of shit. Suspect Dicky and Smif (D*Face hackers) [update: Not Dicky & Smif. and everything else written is made up as well.]
The whole event was worth running!
More pictures from the access all vandals area here:
Write up of the main artists area in the previous blog entry, and pictures from the main artists here
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.
Saturday 3 May 2008
Cans Festival
Leake St, 3 May – 5 May 2008
words/pictures: nolionsinengland.
LA got its elephant in the room (has anyone else noticed the “Elephant In The Room” drawing added to Banksy.co.uk, curious since everything else on his site is publicly seen work), Notting Hill had the rats, Waterloo’s tunnel hosted possibly the finest selection of global vermin to ever paint together in anger.
Banksy’s Cans Festival is one of the most electric and eclectic shows of art I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. With a glorious cluster of major Banksy murals to take in, several aspects of the Banksy pieces are worth mentioning. For execution, the graffiti cleaning squad buffing the cave painting is breathtaking. Whilst the murky cave painting details echoes previous Banksy cave painting exercises (British Museum), the trick on the eye that the cleaner has sprayed a swathe of the wall clean is just spot on. A little amusing detail is the red hand silhouette implying that primitive homosapien had spraycans. Nice to see the Banksy tag on a wall piece again after such a long time.
Banksy – Caveman
The battered Budha on close inspection is nursing a shiner, has a bloody nose, has wrenched his neck and has his left fist swathed in bandages, Banksy’s comment on the beatings, suppression and state bully-boy tactics in Tibet. This picture doesn’t get close to showing the quality of those details.
Banksy – Buddah
The CCTV tree installation echo’s many previous installations, pictures and the recent One Nation under CCTV piece. Skilfully and wittily Banksy deploys a burned out wreck of a car wrapped around the tree supporting the cameras to make the point that all the video footage in the world will only record crime, not wipe it out.
Banksy – CCTV tree
The Beach Hut installation is more than just a chill out zone, it echoes and perhaps takes on Tracey Emin’s similar beach hut piece from the 90s. The structure is actually a child’s toy play house, which would give it a relevant relationship with the Noddy car on bricks next to it.
Banksy – Beach Hut
All told, there are 6 or 7 Banksy wall stencils, and at least four, possibly six installations. For sake of brevity a link is provided lower down to a more comprehensive set of pictures but let’s not forget, Banksy isn’t the only can-slinger in town.
Eine’s recent east London pixilated “HELL” is echoed with its obvious partner word HOLE. The word hole obviously also can be associated with the word SHIT, which has been added by roller above it and in a non-Eine style suggesting someone else's intervention. Sweet.
Eine
NY's Faile are present big time, a monstrous cast metal door has been given the treatment with no fewer than ten major Faile stencils, and a Faile van rammed into a concrete wall has its flat tyre being hastily hand inflated by a addidas three-striped yob with an exploding head. Other minds think the car and the exploding head stencil are completely un-related, but if they are then this just becomes a pointless car covere in re-hashed Faile motifs.
Faile
Logan Hicks, also from NY, has done a pair of awesome photorealistic walls, bringing a whiff of NY into this heaven-in-hell.
Logan Hicks
Asbestos has a pair of fish-tailed pink Zebra trying to flip-kick their way off the walls, quite unlike anything I have ever seen from Asbestos on the streets.
Asbestos
One of the beauty of have time to peruse such a galactic array of talent is that previously mysterious street pieces suddenly become attributable. Among this lot, the anonymity of the un-tagged leaf-carrying ants is revealed to come from the hands of Dotmasters. Our Ant messengers this time tell us ”What a Load Of Rubbish” (possibly this piece below should be attributed to Dotmaster’s alter ego Bagsy).
Dotmasters
Pure Evil’s reputation will be further enhanced by the stunning quality of his collection/installation of a variety of but by no means all of his recent output. Street lights shine through the suspended Pearly King stencil sheet making it stunningly luminescent and the Mash-up latex bunny girl, bunny hands, neon evil bunny and butterfly wings rocks the show.
Pure Evil
With delight the presence of Cartrain can be confirmed, this is a good thing since firstly he is at least as “real” as any of the artist here in terms of being out there all the time and getting up, and also like all of us he can only learn and get better when rubbing shoulders with art and artists of this calibre.
At this early stage (hours after the opening) there are a large number of, to me anyway, un-known artists and this is part of the thrill of this show, we learn all the time folks until we close our minds, then we die. Here are a further highlights with quite a few un-attributed pieces, feel free to share if you can identify any.
Sten
Orticannoodles
MBW
Daniel Melim
Unknown
Broken Crow,
I don’t agree with the view that “this event is what graffiti is all about”, or that this is Banksy “keeping it real man”. This is about a whole bunch of things including Banksy being a great artist, with an un-rivalled ability to speak humorously through art in a way ordinary people can relate to; about a diverse range of talents and subjects opening our hearts and minds to the quality currently being achieved in street art. It is also fully authorized, legitimate and frission free, it has nothing to do with risk, danger or law-breaking spontaneity and those key elements make graffiti even more admirable. Sanitised anti-establishmentism anyone?
Banksy
The point was un-intentionally illustrated by the security. Minutes after the gates opened a city gent mannequin in pinstripes wearing white shoes with a white briefcase stuffed with twenty pound notes was hung by the neck over a wall on the tunnel exit ramp. In terms of execution the quality was right up there with Banksy, the political point was a laser-guided sniper shot and indeed the situation was reminiscent of Banksy’s Disney Guantanamo stunt. A panicked steward radio-ed for help, and tried to usher us away from the scene of the crime saying “No, don’t look; not part of the show; it’s illegal”. Moments later three security guards, doing what security guards do, arrived, hacked down the doll, frisked it, gave it the kiss of life, trousered the money and took it off in an ambulance. Sorry, I mean they threw it away. But the point was this un-authorised and un-regulated rule-breaking intervention was exactly what street art is about, far more than the art on show in the tunnel. If this wasn’t Banksy, he has a damn fine imitator (rumour says "George").
Unknown “illegal”
A portion of the tunnel, actually the slip road up at the end, is relatively clean at the moment and it seems the plan is that anyone who fancies trying out a stencil can come along and throw it up. It will be interesting to see how this pans out, hopefully by Monday evening a whole new slew of un-sung talent will have revealed itself.
It would be great to show pictures here of every piece on show but sadly that would be taking far too much of your time, so please feel free to browse a much fuller collection by clicking here.
This whole show is free, like street art and graffiti should be but clearly a lot of expense has been incurred staging this so, to whoever is backing this, huge thanks.
words/pictures: nolionsinengland.
LA got its elephant in the room (has anyone else noticed the “Elephant In The Room” drawing added to Banksy.co.uk, curious since everything else on his site is publicly seen work), Notting Hill had the rats, Waterloo’s tunnel hosted possibly the finest selection of global vermin to ever paint together in anger.
Banksy’s Cans Festival is one of the most electric and eclectic shows of art I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. With a glorious cluster of major Banksy murals to take in, several aspects of the Banksy pieces are worth mentioning. For execution, the graffiti cleaning squad buffing the cave painting is breathtaking. Whilst the murky cave painting details echoes previous Banksy cave painting exercises (British Museum), the trick on the eye that the cleaner has sprayed a swathe of the wall clean is just spot on. A little amusing detail is the red hand silhouette implying that primitive homosapien had spraycans. Nice to see the Banksy tag on a wall piece again after such a long time.
Banksy – Caveman
The battered Budha on close inspection is nursing a shiner, has a bloody nose, has wrenched his neck and has his left fist swathed in bandages, Banksy’s comment on the beatings, suppression and state bully-boy tactics in Tibet. This picture doesn’t get close to showing the quality of those details.
Banksy – Buddah
The CCTV tree installation echo’s many previous installations, pictures and the recent One Nation under CCTV piece. Skilfully and wittily Banksy deploys a burned out wreck of a car wrapped around the tree supporting the cameras to make the point that all the video footage in the world will only record crime, not wipe it out.
Banksy – CCTV tree
The Beach Hut installation is more than just a chill out zone, it echoes and perhaps takes on Tracey Emin’s similar beach hut piece from the 90s. The structure is actually a child’s toy play house, which would give it a relevant relationship with the Noddy car on bricks next to it.
Banksy – Beach Hut
All told, there are 6 or 7 Banksy wall stencils, and at least four, possibly six installations. For sake of brevity a link is provided lower down to a more comprehensive set of pictures but let’s not forget, Banksy isn’t the only can-slinger in town.
Eine’s recent east London pixilated “HELL” is echoed with its obvious partner word HOLE. The word hole obviously also can be associated with the word SHIT, which has been added by roller above it and in a non-Eine style suggesting someone else's intervention. Sweet.
Eine
NY's Faile are present big time, a monstrous cast metal door has been given the treatment with no fewer than ten major Faile stencils, and a Faile van rammed into a concrete wall has its flat tyre being hastily hand inflated by a addidas three-striped yob with an exploding head. Other minds think the car and the exploding head stencil are completely un-related, but if they are then this just becomes a pointless car covere in re-hashed Faile motifs.
Faile
Logan Hicks, also from NY, has done a pair of awesome photorealistic walls, bringing a whiff of NY into this heaven-in-hell.
Logan Hicks
Asbestos has a pair of fish-tailed pink Zebra trying to flip-kick their way off the walls, quite unlike anything I have ever seen from Asbestos on the streets.
Asbestos
One of the beauty of have time to peruse such a galactic array of talent is that previously mysterious street pieces suddenly become attributable. Among this lot, the anonymity of the un-tagged leaf-carrying ants is revealed to come from the hands of Dotmasters. Our Ant messengers this time tell us ”What a Load Of Rubbish” (possibly this piece below should be attributed to Dotmaster’s alter ego Bagsy).
Dotmasters
Pure Evil’s reputation will be further enhanced by the stunning quality of his collection/installation of a variety of but by no means all of his recent output. Street lights shine through the suspended Pearly King stencil sheet making it stunningly luminescent and the Mash-up latex bunny girl, bunny hands, neon evil bunny and butterfly wings rocks the show.
Pure Evil
With delight the presence of Cartrain can be confirmed, this is a good thing since firstly he is at least as “real” as any of the artist here in terms of being out there all the time and getting up, and also like all of us he can only learn and get better when rubbing shoulders with art and artists of this calibre.
At this early stage (hours after the opening) there are a large number of, to me anyway, un-known artists and this is part of the thrill of this show, we learn all the time folks until we close our minds, then we die. Here are a further highlights with quite a few un-attributed pieces, feel free to share if you can identify any.
Sten
Orticannoodles
MBW
Panda Dreams, by….?
Unknown
Broken Crow,
I don’t agree with the view that “this event is what graffiti is all about”, or that this is Banksy “keeping it real man”. This is about a whole bunch of things including Banksy being a great artist, with an un-rivalled ability to speak humorously through art in a way ordinary people can relate to; about a diverse range of talents and subjects opening our hearts and minds to the quality currently being achieved in street art. It is also fully authorized, legitimate and frission free, it has nothing to do with risk, danger or law-breaking spontaneity and those key elements make graffiti even more admirable. Sanitised anti-establishmentism anyone?
Banksy
The point was un-intentionally illustrated by the security. Minutes after the gates opened a city gent mannequin in pinstripes wearing white shoes with a white briefcase stuffed with twenty pound notes was hung by the neck over a wall on the tunnel exit ramp. In terms of execution the quality was right up there with Banksy, the political point was a laser-guided sniper shot and indeed the situation was reminiscent of Banksy’s Disney Guantanamo stunt. A panicked steward radio-ed for help, and tried to usher us away from the scene of the crime saying “No, don’t look; not part of the show; it’s illegal”. Moments later three security guards, doing what security guards do, arrived, hacked down the doll, frisked it, gave it the kiss of life, trousered the money and took it off in an ambulance. Sorry, I mean they threw it away. But the point was this un-authorised and un-regulated rule-breaking intervention was exactly what street art is about, far more than the art on show in the tunnel. If this wasn’t Banksy, he has a damn fine imitator (rumour says "George").
Unknown “illegal”
A portion of the tunnel, actually the slip road up at the end, is relatively clean at the moment and it seems the plan is that anyone who fancies trying out a stencil can come along and throw it up. It will be interesting to see how this pans out, hopefully by Monday evening a whole new slew of un-sung talent will have revealed itself.
It would be great to show pictures here of every piece on show but sadly that would be taking far too much of your time, so please feel free to browse a much fuller collection by clicking here.
This whole show is free, like street art and graffiti should be but clearly a lot of expense has been incurred staging this so, to whoever is backing this, huge thanks.
POST SCRIPT:
Cans Festival and its successor event cans II proved to be something Graffoto was to devote a lot of time and love to, far more than just this post. 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.
Friday 2 May 2008
Blam – Die!!! Spraycan
Blam Solo Exhibition
New Cross Gallery
1 May – 24 May
In the world of graff art, few pieces achieve a wider recognition beyond hardcore wall spotting fetishists but one piece known to many otherwise dis-interested Londoners is the Oscar The Grouch on a wall in Shoreditch.
photo: Howaboutno
Credit for this enduring and council-preserved piece goes to Blam whose show opened in New Cross Gallery tonight. Blam is also known for freehand photorealistic enormo portraits such as Rolf Harris in the possibly doomed Southbank skateboard graff space.
First impression of the items shown in this bijou utilitarian space are blimey, they’re small. At the very bottom of the scale are postcards and badges. Nuff said.
A sprayed and acrylic painted Russian doll set indicate a painstaking attention to detail and the faces look like they ought to be someone. This nagging familiarity repeats throughout Blam’s portrait work. Meeting him in person you can instantly pick out the bug-eyed, bearded, pearl-toothed self-portraits but apparently most of the others are based on random anonymous photographs.
Blam’s cartoon skills are un-leashed in a small collection of pen sketches.
Progressing up the size chain, monocoloured spray cans are vacuum-sealed in plastic and framed. Four separate cans feature one letter each from Blam’s name captured in relief below the surface of the vacuum wrap. Curiously, each can is priced individually so all the Alans, Lilas, Marks, Berts and so on will have to scrap it out for the can bearing their initial.
Graffiti and gun culture thankfully have comparatively little association, Blam brings the two closer together by killing spraycans for fun and framing them. A double barrel shotgun was used to pepper a pair of cans and their mountboard with holes and as Blam suggests, this would look ultra-cool with a high intensity light behind it. The shot trapped inside the can rattles, which could make quite a novelty baby toy. A white version features the entry and exit holes from a gunshot bang on the centre, quite a piece of marksmanship if performed after the can has been vacuum sealed to the mountboard (don’t try this at home kids).
Moving on to the portraits, eyes and teef, anger, tiredness and plaque are the big things to take away. Blam uses a photorealistic technique and style not dissimilar to German graff artist Akut, the puggish half of Herakut. Working to produce a show such as this whilst holding down a full time proper job means late hours, no sleep and bags under the eyes, which Blam doesn’t spare us in the middle “Stare” piece of the eyes canvas threesome.
Henry Rollins from an iconic mid 90s blood-vessel bursting red portrait is the loose source of the aptly titled Anger.
An Oscar canvas will undoubtedly suit the wall of someone seeking a facsimile of the iconic street image. It might have been the entirely average lighting in the gallery but this canvas appeared to have a distracting orange tinge around it.
Oscar goes pop in a dark but rich print in an edition of 15, its overall multi-coloured lushness makes one forgive the giclee production.
The appreciation that Blam is a street artist who has taken the spraycan as more than a tool, as the form for art itself accompanies us as we board the sleeper back to London. We look forward to seeing Blam rocking the streets largescale again in the very near future.
As usual, more photos here
New Cross Gallery
1 May – 24 May
In the world of graff art, few pieces achieve a wider recognition beyond hardcore wall spotting fetishists but one piece known to many otherwise dis-interested Londoners is the Oscar The Grouch on a wall in Shoreditch.
photo: Howaboutno
Credit for this enduring and council-preserved piece goes to Blam whose show opened in New Cross Gallery tonight. Blam is also known for freehand photorealistic enormo portraits such as Rolf Harris in the possibly doomed Southbank skateboard graff space.
First impression of the items shown in this bijou utilitarian space are blimey, they’re small. At the very bottom of the scale are postcards and badges. Nuff said.
A sprayed and acrylic painted Russian doll set indicate a painstaking attention to detail and the faces look like they ought to be someone. This nagging familiarity repeats throughout Blam’s portrait work. Meeting him in person you can instantly pick out the bug-eyed, bearded, pearl-toothed self-portraits but apparently most of the others are based on random anonymous photographs.
Blam’s cartoon skills are un-leashed in a small collection of pen sketches.
Progressing up the size chain, monocoloured spray cans are vacuum-sealed in plastic and framed. Four separate cans feature one letter each from Blam’s name captured in relief below the surface of the vacuum wrap. Curiously, each can is priced individually so all the Alans, Lilas, Marks, Berts and so on will have to scrap it out for the can bearing their initial.
Graffiti and gun culture thankfully have comparatively little association, Blam brings the two closer together by killing spraycans for fun and framing them. A double barrel shotgun was used to pepper a pair of cans and their mountboard with holes and as Blam suggests, this would look ultra-cool with a high intensity light behind it. The shot trapped inside the can rattles, which could make quite a novelty baby toy. A white version features the entry and exit holes from a gunshot bang on the centre, quite a piece of marksmanship if performed after the can has been vacuum sealed to the mountboard (don’t try this at home kids).
Moving on to the portraits, eyes and teef, anger, tiredness and plaque are the big things to take away. Blam uses a photorealistic technique and style not dissimilar to German graff artist Akut, the puggish half of Herakut. Working to produce a show such as this whilst holding down a full time proper job means late hours, no sleep and bags under the eyes, which Blam doesn’t spare us in the middle “Stare” piece of the eyes canvas threesome.
Henry Rollins from an iconic mid 90s blood-vessel bursting red portrait is the loose source of the aptly titled Anger.
An Oscar canvas will undoubtedly suit the wall of someone seeking a facsimile of the iconic street image. It might have been the entirely average lighting in the gallery but this canvas appeared to have a distracting orange tinge around it.
Oscar goes pop in a dark but rich print in an edition of 15, its overall multi-coloured lushness makes one forgive the giclee production.
The appreciation that Blam is a street artist who has taken the spraycan as more than a tool, as the form for art itself accompanies us as we board the sleeper back to London. We look forward to seeing Blam rocking the streets largescale again in the very near future.
As usual, more photos here
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