Attention Spam - Hong Kong Happenings

ATTENTION SPAM - 14 November - 10 December

Cyclops, D*Face, David Bray, Vesna Parchet & Word to Mother

Schonei Main Gallery
21-31 Old Bailey Street
Central Hong Kong
MON - SAT 10.30am - 6.30pm
http://www.adaptagallery.com/

A special blog post and props going out to our friend and fellow blogger Selph ESP http://espvisuals.blogspot.com/ for what looks like it will be an absoloutely amazing project.

D*Face

UK Adapta have just set up their satellite gallery project known as Adapta Gallery and the first show called "Attention Spam" will be in Hong Kong next week, Thursday NOV 13th. They have imported 5 British artists: D*Face, Cyclops, David Bray, Word To Mother & Vesna Parchet to HKG to go bombing the streets, as well as maybe attending the preview perhaps for a refreshing cold beer afterwards.

Cyclops

David Bray

Vesna Parchet

Selph has expressed his extreme joy at getting to go out and hit streets with some of his idols and contemporaries, we should receive exclusive film footage of their happenings upon his return to the UK all being well.

Burning Candy Show

Sartorial Gallery, London
15 Oct – 11th Nov 2008
photos NoLionsInEngland unless stated

Something of huge significance is afoot when you open your week-to-view pocket diary (luddite alert) on Monday lunchtime and find that despite clashing with an England world cup qualifier there is there is barbed wire around a Wednesday evening do. That event is the Burning Candy show, christening Sartorial Gallery’s new premises in the apparently “growing art location” of Kings Cross (street evidence: one ancient Obey Mao paste up and a Tox 03 tag).

Having some art schooling allied to a hardcore collective spirit it is not surprising that Burning Candy – or Before Chrome, various pseudonyms are interchangeable – get some highly accomplished emulsion and spray pieces all over East London, not to mention Bristol and various other locations. The dilemma is not so much where to find evidence of the street pedigree as to sift and shake and generally reduce the selection of street piece down to a short list of photos.


Burning Candy, Brick Lane, London. Photo: HowAboutNo



Burning Candy, Regents Canal, London. Photo: HowAboutNo


First question to be addressed is what and who is Burning Candy? A tight collective of street artists centred around Sweet Toof, Cyclops and Tek 33 but occasionally extending to Rowdy and recently also Gold Peg. In contrast, most of the works in the show are attributed to the individual members with just a few given as joint between Sweet Toof and Cyclops.


Burning Candy feat Rowdy



Burning Candy feat. Gold Peg



Burning Candy/Sickboy, photo: HowAboutNo



Burning Candy/Mighty Mo, photo: HowAboutNo


On the streets the most obvious characteristics of a Burning Candy piece are those gums and the skull, though attribution is not always as obvious as it seems as occasionally if one member’s signature element is required but that vandal is missing, his federate crims will happily fill in the piece in his style.


Burning Candy & DScreet


Turning attention indoors, the most striking piece upon entering the space is an installation of text and tags on a variety of bits of wood mainly sign boards, though car body panels and toy prams are also thrown into the melee. The installation has a higher typographic content than the typical street work.


Craft Spasms


The show is delicately balanced between sculptural pieces and paintings, though the physical space is bisected by a floor painted cri de coeur which also repeats in small details in some of the installations, highly relevant giving the Stalinist buffing underway on London’s East End streets in recent months.


Fuck The Buff


Although Burning Candy are a tight knit crew and gets up as a single entity, the hand of each individual member can usually be distinguished. Sweet Toof’s work is characterised by a cartoonish aesthetic, plenty of anatomical detail, an un-expected amount of detail such as in painted cloth fabrics and of course those gummy grins, without which the Sweet Toof work could be seen as referencing the Mexican dia de los meurtos.


Daisy Daisy I, II and III – Sweet Toof


A quartet of large canvasses present himself and Cyclops as some pair of muttering old codgers who, thanks to the gums, obviously have a wicked sense of the bizarre, Cyclops and Sweet Toof ARE Statler and Waldorf.



Bloody Critics – Sweet Toof


A repeating theme in Sweet Toof’s work whether on the streets or indoors is a pre-occupation with innards. On the streets the most notable example is this manacled skeleton on the site of the “This Is Not A Bar” squat, apologies for the obstructions in the photos but those intestines reach the floor then meander around the architecture – the character looks like he is plagued by serious gut rot.


Burning Candy, Sclater St, London


Gizzards are worked in amusing ways into many of the Sweet Toof paintings though the comedy muff on some of the scarier looking sculptures doesn’t bear close examination


Bad Guts – Sweet Toof


A Burning Candy creation featuring frequently on the streets is Lenny The High Roller, his components parts are usually gums by Sweet Toof, skull head by Cyclops and sometimes hats or other decorations by street luminaries such as DScreet and Sickboy,


Love And Hate – Sweet Toof & Cyclops


Sweet Toof’s work seems to be the most prominent within the show though, as with the street work, it is possible that elements are contributed by the Burning Candy cohorts.

TEK 33 appears less frequently in the street works than Sweet Toof and Cyclops, mainly due to having better things to do in a Scandinavian sense. When he works on canvas he tags the piece using his real name, James Jessop, maybe Sweden has no extradition treaty with the Met. Tek 33’s three pronged motif is a familiar element in the Burning Candy street work though for this show, Jessop has taken Pink Panther from the film credits as his cartoon character of choice and worked the Pink Panther features into the three pronged tag



Jessop has baggsed three corners of the room for very large and acid bright canvasses, including this piece in reverence of late NY ‘80s legend Basquiat.


Samo – James Jessop
(nb The dog lost the staring contest)


Cyclops’ canvasses have a finer indeed almost academic approach, being cluttered with streams of conscious wordplay, invented band names and references to half realised situations and un-finished slogans. The text makes fascinating reading, in the way of someone slowly tuning a radio hears snatches of music and conversations before moving on.


Sons Of Super Significance - Cyclops


Cyclops’ typographic content doesn’t get in the way of ploughing an animator/cartoon illustrator furrow, particularly with the Peanuts characters Charlie Brown and friend Marcie who appear on canvas and in sculpture


Black Chicks - Cyclops


Moving on to the sculptures, a pair of stick characters extend limbs across the floor and will trip up the un-wary. The bodies are built up from what look like found objects including ancient brass oil cans, wood boxes (and sticks) and then erratically coated with a white paste and garnished with all kinds of shiny beads and objets trouve. The obligatory gums and skeletal dark orbs form the eyes, heads and teeth.


Vagina Denta – Sweet Toof



Hunter Gatherer – Sweet Toof


Burning Candy is mutated anomaly in being a graff crew with its origin and output more in a street art vibe rather than can control Puritanism of graffiti writing. This show accomplishes that rare feat in the street/gallery cross over of reaching an appropriate gallery standard quality of work yet successfully capturing the high colour and energy of their street work.


Burning Candy caramelised

Visit the dentist – pics of lots more gums, skulls and lady’s bits from the show here

Monday Update. . . .

Mighty Mo's Monkey is cropping up in an amazing array of places....well actually not that amazing as they are nearly always on top of a train bridge, but placement and execution are second to none, all done with a roller and a very long pole.

Parked my car IN FRONT of this billboard a few weeks ago, the wonders of Flcikr made me realise this was on the other side of it! A big fave for me of this style from the Burning Candy boys.

Eine Continuing to be bloody amazing, wonder if this will become a "wall" font?

Random weirdness in the shape of a photo with an astronaut called Ozzie and the text "To Donna, Love Bob". First one I found was left in situ for others to get a giggle from, then I found more and took one. Has the address www.todonnalovebob.org on it, which when visited prompts you to enter a unique code on the back of the photograph, asking for it to then be sent back to them with a promise of being contacted shortly.

I'll report back soon, if I'm still alive that is. . . . .

JR getting up at Truman Brewery, looking forward to seeing more of this at the Tate very soon.

And a half finished (or is it, I can never really tell with Conor) Harrington piece in progress on the entrance to the Truman Brewery, Brick Lane.

Souled Out - Beejoir, Mau-Mau, Cyclops & Kate Westerholt

Souled Out

The Leonard Street Gallery, 29 Feb - 22 March

Lets start with the artist whose share of the show has the highest quotient of street art, or perhaps beach art would be more appropriate.

Mau Mau

Mau Mau has gone more monumental on major themes explored in previous work, which is mainly that sound systems rock (and bump, and grind, and skank, and boogey), weed is good, tinged with his anti corporate, anti capitalism, anti branding stance. Poor old Ronald comes in for a hammering, on separate large canvasses being chased by a polar bear and eaten by polar bear pups. Mau Mau’s humour and skilful political targeting is verging close to Banksy-esque, particularly in the way that concept and idea is triumphing ahead of execution.

Mau Mau’s surf background comes to life in three series of skate decks, populated by girls, a pingu-like penguin and Paddington Bear and suited vandals. “Will decode html for food” indeed!





Three vertical dyptichs of gorgeous girls can be mixed and matched according to taste or, if you acquire all six, passing masturbatory whim, compare the photos below of the canvasses before hang and then hung. Mau Mau knows artistically how to handle a pair of breasts.



hung for show

On The Floor

(Stop comparing those photos now. )

Beejoir

Beejoir collapses into a soft leather chair, next to his tired lady, shakes his head and mutters “fuck”. Everyone wants a piece of him, he’s had enough of the feeding frenzy, of throwing editioned prints to the piranhas, religion bugs him and he’s not sure he even cares why, and he’s knackered from the massive amount of work that has gone into creating this show. Then, just when things seem like they can’t get any worse, the gallery have over-sold the “clearly a Virgin” A/Ps thinking there were five of each piece whereas there are only five en toto. How apt that show title now seems.

Thankfully, his work has been worthwhile, the product is stunning and the media diverse. Starting with the monumental FIX suit sacrificed on a cash cross, on 4,000 individual gold leaf papers and a cross of dollar bills, there is more than a passing suggestion that Beejoir sees it as himself on that cross. The combination of flat gold leaf and a religious symbolism reference old Russian orthodox iconography. Religion raises its head in an assembly of 60 handmade ink stamps, neatly framed in Perspex box which show the repeated word God in mirror image. The hole don’t-like-church-on-Sundays is taken to its limit with the “Clearly not a virgin” (above) Blurry Mary which challenges the viewer to determine is it the immaculate conception being challenged or your swallowing of the biblical text.

From religion it is not too great a leap to the theme of deceit. After blitzing the locality with spoof headlines from the fictional Believing Standard, Beejoir has assembled a series of small editions of newspaper stand banners proclaiming various subversive and situationist slogans. The ambiguity lies in whether the satirised target is the newspaper owning media moguls and their political masters propagating diabolically corrupt hogwash and consumerist rhetoric for the masses, or is it you for believing what you read? Beejoir asserts the latter. You decide for yourself if the art below is street, hall of residence or bachelor pad. Bringing the deceit and corruption to a pinnacle is the Lies , present in both original collage and stencil plus hand finish form and the pink lettered editioned print.

LV child is reworked as a fleshed out 3D bronze sculpture, the texture of the face not previously evident in the flat two tone of the print emphasizes an almost bovine resignation or silent despair on the victim’s face. However, would you want in your home a sculpture of a young chap who looks like he’s taking a poo?

Absolutely the stand-out piece of the show, directly assaulting the huge reputation of Tracey Emin by adding a bare midriff track suit top, leggings and a ton of bling, Beejoir has transformed an editioned Tracey Emin sketch into Trackie Emin.

Dominating one wall are uniform skulls, rank and file, pressed from flattened spray cans pop riveted onto chopped off spray-can bases, in one fell swoop solving a recurring dilemma for environmentalist anti-littering recycling friendly graffiti artists (arf). The grinning skulls hold promise of a life after death which curiously is for some the purpose of their religion, not that Beejoir cares about any. In anyone else’s hands the whole skull idea would be considered as a retread but for Beejoir this is new.

Further new direction comes in the trios of plastic roses with tightly furled flowers made from actual war medals, suspended in a plastic (paper weight) style casting. Although the totality of the pieces is presented in the shape of a cross, individually they are just very cute botanical specimens with a slightly subversive construction, but not in any sense “street”.

Beejoir has built an enormous following, his unsigned Beejoir picked up a “Wallie” at the 2007 Urban Art Awards. This show shows his growing fearlessness, a rebellion agasint the pressures to feed the masses desire for more and more re-sellable print stock, his clear progression beyond the pure street art and middle-finger-up anti-populist attitude rocks. His part of the show does not pander to anyone, least of all his print swallowing street art fan base, any passing iconic YBA, any deity, or any human. Souled Out? No one can accuse Beejoir of selling out.


Cyclops

Mutation is a rather ugly word, whose use invariably means corruption, modification and scarring, yet it is the key word that Luc Cyclops utters to describe the link bonding the work shown in his second foray in the TLSG project room. Charlie Brown has mutated into a one eyed Cyone, his misfortunate down trodden and manipulated persona now mutated to have one enormous eye. A series of blurry tabloid photos of the distressed tragic-comedy femme-fatale that is Brtiney give a third hand insight of how her predicament is set up, compounded and exploited in the pursuit of paper and magazine sales. Cyclops contrasts this with attractive collages of other feminine celebrities though there is a hint that faces are some that fractured.

The most consistent motif is the defacement of images by disembodied Mickey Mouse white gloved hands. This works best on the Spike, Mike, Ike (Lee, Tyson, Turner) hand finished stencils and stickers on wood.

So Much Space To Fill

This show underlines a major issue faced by TLSG, within the gallery they have the ability to present a huge amount of art under one roof. This show comfortably gives space to four quite diverse talents (Kate Westerhaus cross-stitch tapestry..oh fuck, how can I write about that, what do you think I am, a dress maker????) linked by the Souled Out Studios banner. Once again the TSLG mandate has been fulfilled.

I'm Not A Pavement Sniffer, I'm A Pavement Sniffers Son

Just a quick Monday update on street life (which may or may not become a regular "thing")..... I think Monday is too boring a day to do it, but at the same time I hope at least one or two pieces make you smile.




Firstly, Dave The Chimp with another of the now numerous pieces around Hoxton by himself. This being the second colab with Spanish laaaydeee Rabodiga www.flickr.com/photos/rabodiga

Then two new names (to me at least) and certainly both leave me wanting more "Sofiski" (as yet cannot find anything else on Flickr....I must remember that other websites do exist) and some nice stuff from "Mr Ace" (haven't yet looked further into weblinks thus far)

Some long awaited action on the streets from Beejoir in the form of "Believing Standard" Newstand Banners. He brought with him his Souled Out Studio cohort and partner in grime "Mau Mau".....both are in town for this week's Leonard Street Gallery Show (more to come from NoLions on that front soon!) It was good to see some of his amazing styles next to some of the best Cyclops stuff I have yet seen on the street . . .or anywhere for that matter.

And then to finish that little lot off, a really cool Sickboy tag :)