Skeleton Cardboard: Still Not In Use

BSMT Space
5D STOKE NEWINGTON ROAD
LONDON N16 8BH


Skeleton Cardboard doesn’t make art show aficionado’s lives easy. In fact he could be said to drive people to death as the skeleton count on the street and in the gallery piles up thanks to his art and at the same time his exhibitions are always almost impossible to find. Graffoto is here to help with the later.


BSMT in use (sign may vary)


In 2015, Skeleton Cardboard staged a 2 day pop up art show in someone else’s front room in Shoreditch to a non-existent barrage of publicity. Skeleton Cardboard converted the living room into a dead room, Graffoto chanced upon the artist luring unsuspecting unfortunates in and upon escaping with its life intact, wrote Skeleton Cardboard’s last rites, link here. Curiously the current BSMT show has the same title as the 2015 dance macabre.


Redchurch St, 2015


That "rite up" looked at Skeleton Cardboard’s street art, his collaborations and his free art giveaways so this time by way of update here are some hand finished prints and a recent collaboration he did on the Shoreditch streets with another Graffoto favourite Donk:


Calvin St, 2018



Fashion St, 2018


There is a brilliant irony in the placement of that collaborative print on the wall pictured above, there are 3 skulls in the frame yet none of them are by Skeleton Cardboard, genius!

BSMT’s basement gallery has taken on the appearance of a subterranean charnel house with the accumulation of a hoard of freshly dead skeletons.




The frozen grins of the reanimated cadavers are a façade masking their disbelief at our modern ways. Their bony brains are bamboozled by the dire warnings that constrain and limit our risk averse, arse covering life.


Danse [sic] Macabre/Internet Connection required





Ironically, the newsphere has for the past week been following the consequences of a judge deciding that an international food purveyor was to blame for a young girl's death because they sold sandwiches with inadequate labels, so perhaps Skeleton Cardboard’s characters are right to fear the morbid possibilities contained in these stark product and lifestyle notices.


Not In Use/Not Evolving


Skeleton Cardboard’s humour extends to a lovely self-deprecating mockery, the skeletons are delivering advice and warnings back to the artist, it's either a huge “no fucks given” self-confidence or someone’s self-doubt and paranoia is being hung up to the light.


Refresh Yr Head/I Can't See The Point



Refresh Yr Head/I Can't See The Point (Detail)



Refresh Yr Head/I Can't See The Point (Detail)


BSMT’s basement has two alcoves which have in the past few years have provided artists with plenty of scope for installation fun but they seem almost purpose built for conversion by Skeleton Cardboard into some kind of occultish crypt. Other observers have identified “Day Of The Dead” inspirations but Skeleton Cardboard is, perhaps unintentionally, pastiching Haiti Vodou (voodoo) shrines.







Deletions, crossings out and corrections form the basis of colourful abstract compositions from which the skeleton and the skull are absent, so empty coffins perhaps though the title, 0111, may be a binary representation of something deadly or more likely something rude.


0111



Just About Holding It together


The host for this plague of rigor mortis is BSMT Space and this week they are embarking on their first foray into the Art Fair world. They are one of the galleries exhibiting at Moniker Art Fair which goes from strength to strength and is expected yet again provide a fresh take on the urban art scene. If finding the actual BSMT Space is too challenging or too remote, Skeleton Cardboard is going to be featured on BSMT’s stand at Moniker, along with other long established Graffoto faves Sweet Toof and Ace.  A nice little sweetener is that thanks to BSMT, readers who make it this far into the post in time can get a 30% discount on the Moniker ticket price using the code LDNBSMT30 at the checkout, do shoot them a courtesy email (info@bsmt.co.uk) to let them know.

The origins of the artist’s handle lie obviously in a fetish for drawing skeletons but let’s not forget the other part of the name came from the preferred material used to put these skeletons out on the street, so it’s good to see cardboard appearing on the walls and indeed in the shrines, they may be skeletal but there is life in them bones.

Links:

Skeleton Cardboard instagram

BSMT Space website

Moniker Art Fair website

All photos: Dave Stuart

Conor Harrington: The Story Of Them And Us

HENI Gallery
1st floor
6-10 Lexington St,
London W1F 0LB

(press the buzzer!)

14th September — 13th October 2018


It’s art week in London, a bunch of clever and many not so clever arty people meet a bunch of artlessly rich people in large tents to exchange money, business cards and air kisses but if you’re reading this you probably don’t fall into either category. Artists from the world of graffiti and street art are increasingly smashing down the door and gatecrashing the party and if you are in London this week, have a break from the stark and snooty “yen, euros or dollars?” gallery cubicles and make your way to Conor Harrington’s show close by just off Soho.

Conor's latest series of painting presents an almighty tussle, an epic struggle; it’s left versus right, it’s red versus blue, it’s socialist versus capitalist; it’s politics and it’s gory, it’s dirty and it’s beautiful, and you have a ringside seat.


L-R The Blind Patriot (Red), Blind Patriots 2, Meditations Of A Royal Ringmaster, Blind Patriots 1, The Blind Patriot (Blue)

In the first room we have to our left the forces of red and to the right is the blue army but Man United versus Chelsea it ain’t. We have posturing, we have fine clothing, we have brogues that look like the butler just finished polishing them and there are flags.


The Blind Patriot (Blue)



The Blind Patriot (Blue), detail


Pick a favourite colour, red or blue? You can’t win though, either way someone is going to poke you in the eye and kick you in whatever passes for your genitalia for picking the wrong one.


The Blind Patriot (Red)


This thunderous struggle takes place in a very formal, clinical and orderly space. The pristine surroundings blush at the violence erupting all around us, like a vicar trying to apologise to both sides when fisticuffs break out at the wedding party.


Codebreakers Trying To Crack The Kingdom


Let’s make no mistake this display has masculinity, testosterone and belligerence, aggression and knuckleheaded stupidity right through it. Rather like some of our politicians.


Meditations Of A Royal Ringmaster (detail)


It is entirely appropriate Conor is coming out fighting during what is known in the UK as party conference season, in real life news the forces of blue on right are tearing themselves apart over very stupid ideas. Meanwhile the red party beat themselves up caught between a vaguely sensible proposition supported by some of the party but opposed by the other half of the party who feel it’s not commie enough and so prefer the same outcome the nasty wing of the blue party wants. The enemy of my enemy is still my fucking enemy, so there is no negotiation in these canvasses, you get smacked right in the face.


Meditations Of A Royal Ringmaster


Conor’s colour palate is exuberant and dramatically romantic, lush passionate colours are applied with bold sweeping gestures;


Confessions Of The Self Saboteurs


In some places there is regal solidity while in others there is a complete breakdown as energy flows through the participants in the drama.


Blind Patriots 2



Blind Patriots 2 (detail)


Battle is joined with the protagonists flailing at eachother using their flags, like a bar brawl in a matador camp.


The Hunter And The Haunted


Conor’s art schooling began with graffiti writing before a period in formal art school, not much remains in the way of graffiti stylings but those amazing specimens of Conor’s street art are reflected in the drips and splatters of spray paint in many of the works.


L-R Confessions Of The Self Sabateurs, A Holding Pattern And Dark Disco, Codebreakers Trying To Crack The Kingdom


In a lovely video by Andrew Telling Conor discusses his tools, techniques and the thinking behind the subject matter.


The Story of Us and Them - Conor Harrington from Andrew Telling on Vimeo.


It is a week of madness and indulgence and money this week in London. Admission to Conor’s show is free!

Links:

Conor Harrington website

Conor Harrington Instagram

 All photos: Dave Stuart

Greenpeace Wings Of Paradise Street Art Campaign

Late last week whilst contemplating a new piece of graffiti on Great Eastern Street an amusing diversion arose as a small gaggle of folk rolled up with a pushbike laden with rolls of blue backed paste ups and proceeded to bish bosh a lot of gloopy paste onto virgin building site hoarding.


"Here will do"



Work in progress


Taking advantage of the fading Shoreditch light, these proto-vandals hijacked a small segment of the public visual canvas in support of a Greenpeace environmental campaign. Rainforests are being devastated across Papua in pursuit of increased palm oil production, the consequence is loss of wildlife habitat, collapse of biodiversity and displacement of communities.





Murals depicting images of the Birds Of Paradise have been painted by street artists in cities across the world including Tokyo, Geelong, Long Beach, Oakland, Berlin, Breda, Viena, Melbourne, Bondy, Wellington, Taipei and here in Shoreditch, London by Matt Sewell, below.


Wings Of Paradise by Matt Sewell



Wings Of Paradise by Matt Sewell (detail) - Bird Of Paradise



Wings Of Paradise by Matt Sewell (detail) - Forest Burning



Wings Of Paradise by Matt Sewell (detail) - Logging


This idea is to put up images of the Bird of Paradise replicating their colourful plumage, their flight and their life and thus to promote the conversation about the need for action to halt the eradication of their lands and habitat. You're welcome.




Curiously the London campaign started with the Matt Sewell commissioned legal piece of artwork on the so called Shoreditch Art Wall but then Greenpeace supporters/activists extended the action with a flock of non permissioned paste ups on walls from Brick Lane to Old Street.




Art over flyposter adverts is always commendable but rarely long lived!




The stark geometric background adds bit of drama to this pair of Birds of Paradise.




Two separate teams were spotted in Shoreditch that Friday evening, pasting proficiency may have been variable but the important thing is getting the message up




The Greenpeace campaign appears to have taken wing as a vibrant Bird Of Paradise in Sell Out’s distinctive expressionist style was spotted on Brick Lane today, suggesting that other street artists are independently picking up on the campaign.


Sell Out


There is always room for campaigning political street art, particularly when it comes with a novel legal-illegal combo strategy and picks up momentum in such an unusual way.  More importantly, its about contemplating the harm being wreaked in pursuit of palm oil production, time to act, time to look at palm oil consumption.  More information on the Greenpeace website here

Links:
Greenpeace website  
Matt Sewell website
Sell Out instagram

All photos: Dave Stuart

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


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.


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



genuinely brutal!




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.


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, 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!”


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.




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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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



Future - Lovepusher and Mr Cenz



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.


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.


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.


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.”


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.


Smooth ankle v. pebble dash foot? Tizer detail


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