Banger Art - Part II

13 Jun 2012 - 1 night only

then Lovebox Festival, Victoria Park, London

15 Jun - 17 Jun 2012

all photos NoLionsInEngland,

In case you missed Part 1 of Graffoto’s news and views from Banger Art, check it out here (opens new window or tab or something) for background and loads of artwork.

Eine, Will Barras, Aida, Sweet Toof

Did you know Pablo Delgado also painted? News to us but a reliable source identified these coarse and somewhat KKK channelling figures as by Pablo.

Pablo Delgado

Matt Small paints anonymous humanity, defusing the stereotype and reducing the inferred intimidation. In this show Matt paints on car bonnets and doors, revisiting a format he showed at Black Rat Press in early 2009 but let’s face it, there aren’t many forms of reclaimed metal that Matt hasn’t daubed. Matt’s technique is based upon blending various immiscible oils and liquids on a level(ish) surface then dragging the fluid around to create the image. A little information about his technique is quite irrelevant of course as these hanging works serve as a jolting reminder of the colour and beauty in Matt’s portraits.

Matt Small

One of the first examples of Will Barras’ work this keyboard botherer came across was a battered van at Cans II Festival in 2008, his stunning char-a-banc at this show was an even wilder and willowier series of ethereal wispy human and equine figures on a smoky abstract background. Should black, greens and cornflower yellows work together in a Ridley Walker-esque frieze of gothic post apocalypse characters and mad animals, perhaps not in theory but behold the beauty.

Will Barras

The underground car park is huge, let’s take a guess and say it might have fitted 60 to a hundred cars in the architect’s utopian scheme. Pillars, pipes and weird skanky flooded side rooms break up the space. Transits, that is lines of sight rather than Ford vans, offer all kinds of beautiful interactions between cars, installations and art on the walls.

The eyes have it: Jorge Rodriguez-Garada, Matt Small, Sweet Toof

The Borrowers style miniature figures of Pablo Delgado have been populating the streets of London for over a year now but the pavement level dwellers have suffered some tragedies with spectacular lorry jack-knifings and terrorisation by Aida’s oversize dayglo queen of the jungle. It has the look of a cult B movie in the making.

Aida, Pablo Delgado

The car decorated by Pablo Delgado features a hugely intricate mankind-as-plague tableau. The human population squeezes out the animal kingdom and to escape their self inflicted overcrowding the humans scramble up the passenger side door (dear America, right handed drivers would find drive-by shootings easier with the steering wheel on the other side) and in through a hole in the window, to reappear out another hole on the driver’s side where they expire in free-fall, greatly improving matters for the rest of nature which now have more room to graze. As a fully thought through coherent composition executed in pain-staking detail, this stood out in exceptional company.

Pablo Delgado - passenger side

Pablo Delgado - side where the steering wheel goes

Back to Aida, the Princess of Screenprinting has done a masterpiece of pop art with more than a hint of glam with a glittery neon zoological kaleidoscope, perhaps the spangley gun on the dashboard even hints at gangstaaa! Rising to the challenge of the novel medium, Aida brought her screens with her and sprayed through the image with aerosol stencil style, bet that’s easier said than done..

Aida

Group shows generally give us the willies with many ill-combined artists chucking in lackadaisical “cluttering up the studio” pieces but in Banger Art, all the artists worked on site for days putting in shitloads of time and creativity. There is not a single crap “dialed-in” performance in the cavern. In the case of the artists whose work is familiar to us (sit down Dan Hillier, Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada) the concept was much more taking the refinements of the studio art to the car park rather than the usual cash-in taking the street into the gallery, except of course for Matt Small who routinely paints rusty metal in the studio. Good art deserves a great environment and this grubby neglected underground bunker provided a perfect ambience for art on wrecks.

Dr D

The potency for street art to play a positive role in a regeneration programme has been discussed before and specifically was one of the elements in justifying the use of the St Peter’s estate car park facility.  I am a little inclined to be sceptical and cynical about this but there is no doubt that the wave of positivity around this event, where the door was open and residents mingled and marvelled, creates a lasting impression that feeds into the necessary positive sentiment about the area.

There was something so right about this location for this spectacle, it will be interesting to hear from anyone how these cars fit in in their second incarnation at Lovebox festival in London’s Vicky Park this weekend, link up your pics in the comments below.

The texture, scale and colour of this show made it incredibly photogenic. More photos meaning other photos not used in this blog are here.

Ella (surprise guest)

With so much to see and so many ways to see it, there are several other great photo sets out there and each has a number of unique pieces not repeated in the others, check out HowAboutNo, Hookedblog and LDNGraffiti

Matt Small, Zac Walsh – This Is Us joint show

Signal Gallery, London

11 March – 1 April 2009

all photos: NoLionsInEngland


Londoner Matt Small, nominated for the BP Portrait award in 2001 shortly after graduating from the Royal College of Art, has a compact and colourful joint show with Manchester boy Zac Walsh at Signal Gallery in London.

Matt Small has been a darling of the street art aficionados though if it wasn’t for the urban grime suffusing his work that might be a puzzle as he never works on the streets. Over the past three years Matt has shown extensively in the specialist street art galleries, predominantly Black Rat Press and the late lamented Leonard Street Gallery.

In the previous shows the dominant subject has been the human face. Matt is well known for taking his inspiration from the anonymous citizens who shimmer briefly across his vision and through camera lens before passing on with their lives, usually unaware of their subsequent immortalisation in the distinctive riot of colours which give his portraits contour and expression.


Kaz, found car bonnet, BRP show Mar 09.


Back in 2007 Matt Small gave an amazing demonstration of how he works on flat surfaces, mixing oil based and water based paints then dragging the immiscible colours around the canvas, creating beautiful portrait from the violence and chaos of the squirming liquids.


Leonard Street Gallery live painting, Nov 2007.


The key pieces in this Signal Gallery show are undoubtedly the trio of urban landscapes. Paradoxically for someone so strongly linked to portraiture, these micro communities are actually devoid of human beings though not necessarily lacking humanity.

“These landscapes are from my journeys around town. I find there is something beautiful about these estates. You can walk through them and think they look horrible, you never see anyone but in each house there is a drama going on, there are thousands of lives being lived, there is a lot more than just the outer walls.


London Estate 2, Matt Small


In creating these Matt has used basically the same technique to mix and apply the paints on the metal, the effect is a vibrant colour and windswept motion to the essentially static subject. The pock marked surface of buildings seethes with life reflecting the hidden dramas contained within.


London Estate 3, Matt Small


Whilst London Estates 2 and 3 are essentially 2D paintings, in London Estates 1 Matt has transplanted a meccano styled system of layered laminar deconstruction used in creating some of his 2008/09 3D portraits. This creates a sense of depth and perspective and yet at the same time conveys the kind of down to a budget cheap as chips utilitarian contruction found through-out the 50s and 60s council block estates.


London Estate 1, Matt Small


The canted expanse of grey metal at the bottom of the painting gives a phenomenal depth to the tarmac foreground. The side view below illustrates the complexity of the geometric transformations Matt Small has performed to achieve the incredibly convincing relief effect when view head on


London Estate 1 (detail), Matt Small


At Mutoid Waste’s One Foot in The Grove 2009 show under the Westway, Matt Small took advantage of the bleak blasted concrete walls under the fly-over to preview a completely new style, face portraits created in relief on concrete. There portraits are created using a mould to achieve the basic relief form then cutting lines into the cement surface before it sets.


Concrete Relief Portraits, One Foot In The Grove 2009, Matt Small


The Mutoid editions which were coloured using a simulated tagging (never going to please graffiti writers that one), responding to the space which has legendary status as the UK’s first graffiti hall of fame whilst referencing to the cultural background to the world these kids inhabit. For this show the concrete is sepia toned by the trademark explosion of colour is absent, which seems to emphasize a kind of aboriginal featuring in the portrait which hadn’t really been obvious before.

"I like the surface effect giving the feel of age and texture. I love the idea of materials that you find in the street, cement and metal, it's another way of appropriating what we see in our urban environment"

Unusually, this triptych places the portrait face into a housing estate background.


Jason, Matt Small


The sense with Matt’s larger shows has been an almost intimidating and overwhelming press of faces, crowding in on you from their car bonnets and dismantled freezer carcasses, so many bodies exerting claustrophobic intimidation that you feel you need an escape. This time the increased variety and quality, inversely related to the reduction in quantity has allowed a fresh appreciation of Matt’s work. With a grand total of 5 pieces in this show Matt demonstrates the broader themes and techniques his work is exploring these days and with these has staked a claim to be one of the (few) truly important artists to come out of the urban art scene.


A Matt Small show couldn't be the complete experience without at least one piece looking like a deranged madman was let loose in at scrapyard with tubes of paint


Darnell, Matt Small



Zac Walsh

Zac Walsh and Matt Small have known eachother since Royal College of Art days in the late 90s and as the friends both work in portraiture it isn’t too wild a leap of imagination to see how a joint show can make sense. Stylistically Zac brings a much cleaner and rich finish to his work. The works were created when Walsh was invited by the Holland Park Opera to attend operas, a new experience and to paint a reaction to the dramas. Zac wasn’t a fan of opera but was inspired by the geniuses creating the opera and the complexity of the narrative and staging.



Francesca Da Rimini, Zac Walsh


In Don Giovani, Walsh reacts to the controversial ending where Don Giovanni gets dragged into hell. The figure at the centre of the painting is the artist and the statue of the Commendatore which drags him to hades comprises stone grey coloured photo collages of Walsh’s own forearms. The circles in the middle of the horns are Dante’s map of hell and the drama is set against the background of a crucifix. A lot of the opera’s symbolism gets onto Walsh’s canvas.


Don Giovanni, Zac Walsh


Whilst the characters depicted come from the opera, Walsh has used close friends as the models giving the artwork a personal relevance as well as a lesson in dealing in people’s egos (“my thighs aren’t that big!”).


La Forza Del Destino Zac Walsh


The pictures combine photo collages with a very saturated colouring in the painting, not to mention the occasional bit of spray paint. A knowledge of opera isn’t essential for the interpretation of Zac’s painting, suffice that the evident richness and classical beauty permits the paintings to stand up to the un-snobbish scrutiny of the non-opera buff.


Fidelio, Zac Walsh



Pelleas And Melisande, Zac Walsh

Black Rat Press Print Show

Rivington Street 16 Feb 2008


With domestic interiors across the land filling up with prints from street artists, Black Rat Press have blessed the inquisitive and acquisitive with an education in the back stage aspects of the artists work. Sadly, the Rat couldn’t make it to BRP’s Print Show opening so will remain ignorant of how Matt Small suppresses the DTs to scrape a sharp object in smooth curves across an etching plate.

The walls however contain a good variety of new and familiar prints from most of the great leaders of the revolution, in no particular order (but willing to promote or relegate for gifts) these are Swoon, D*Face, Blek Le Rat, Matt Small, Nick Walker and Slinkachu.

In addition to prints released on Valentines day, D*Face has produced unique variants on dead Che, this time the luscious unique Che collage on ultra commie red background has a further inner skull tearing its way through the surface Che with skeleton hands bursting through the paper of the surface Che. Dead Che also appears in three colourways on burnished steel, wildly bling and strong wall mounts required!

D*Face

Tastily displayed are a set of Swoon very limited edition (20 I think) very hand finished prints called Baba Yaga (the wild woman, the witch, the mistress of magic – google expert). When Swoon hand finishes to make each edition copy different it isn’t the old “on this one that line is 1mm longer” trivial differences, each of this Swoon edition did look radically different, compare the two below. Baba Yaga has the wisdom of the years gouged in her wrinkles, not page 3 material.
Baba Yaga - Swoon


In parallel with the familiar but still stunning multicoloured portraits, Matt Small has worked on 6 light boxes, which weren’t actually turned on at the time of viewing. The paint run effect looked a bit messy and the usual capture of the subjects’ distrust, boredom, sullenness or suspicion is not quite there but these may well look spectacular with the light actually on, we shall return! [edit - rubbish! linoprints on VCRs, not lightboxes. Doesn't make them any better to these eyes. Sorry - NoLions] Several other Matt Small prints in the usual rich multi colour splatter are shown and an interesting etched line drawing black on cream paper, apparently Matt wasn’t impressed with the multi-colour version.

Matt Small Linoprints on dead VCRs


Six different Blek le Rat rat monoprints, all unique, looked the nuts with their rats clambering over a bleached background. The gun toting Space Cowboy, intimidating in posture and size, remain available having been seen at the White Noise show.

Blek Le Rat



At the time of viewing several blank spots on the wall were getting the BRP illumination effect – wouldn’t we all love to be able to light our collections at home like that – hopefully the missing Nick Walkers will have filled these spaces.

The Slinkachoo night time lover’s lightbox looked sweet, the out of focus background echoing the lovers’ oblivion to their surroundings.

Slinkachu



This show does what it says on the tin, a strong collection of prints and artists has been assembled for the benefit of those not quite in the league of commissioning one off canvasses direct from the artist, plus a bit of education for us rude mechanicals to boot.

"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.

http://www.tlsg.co.uk/

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