Skewville - Slow Your Roll

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

19 March – 24 April 2011



photos: NoLionsInEngland

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


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


London, 2011


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




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




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




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


YO! - YO backatcha!


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




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


Honey I shrunk The Kids/Brooklyn Flavor/Open Daily


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




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


All In A Day's Work


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


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


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

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


Sucks Either Way (Detail)


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

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





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




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

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

Brian Adam Douglas - Due Date

Black Rat Projects
Rivington Street,
London

10 Mar - 7 April 2011

photos: NoLionsInEngland

I first came across Brian Adam Douglas’ gallery work in a project room installation at The Leonard Street Gallery in 2007 and was knocked out by it. Poo-Tee-Weet from that show remains one of my favourite pieces art.

Poo-Tee-Weet, London 2007

Brian Adam Douglas has made many visits to London and under his alter moniker Elbow Toe frequently gets up on the streets with pastel drawings, short poem stanzas but most notably paste- up original art of stunning quality and beauty. I have a fond memory of Elbow Toe several years ago comparing the tension of even wheatpasting in New York to chilled out daytime high street pasting in London.

London, 2007

Brian Adam Douglas’ latest UK show at Black Rat is his first London solo show, having already been exhibited in almost this form up north at Warrington Museum late last year. There are 17 original paintings and 12 preparatory sketches. The originals fall into two distinct formats, those on paper with negative space background and those on wood panels with generally full colour background, the artistic style is virtually identical in both forms.

Previously, Brian Adam Douglas’ distinctive studio work was based upon intricate lino cut images featuring twisted figures with multiple jointed limbs and stylistic references to classical forms of figurative painting . Often the work would be confused with art from Swoon or Denmark’s Armsrock. Now we are more familiar with his “trick” of creating collages of finely cut shreds of coloured paper in such a way that from any distance greater than about 12 inches the result looks like a beautiful traditional brush painting. The device is stunningly executed but no mere gimmick.

After Goya

(titled “The Family Pet” when shown at the Warrington Museum. Curious)


The title of the show clearly defines the core theme throughout the work (with one exception), something which the artist ambiguously describes on the night as grappling with the issues of trying to become a parent. We can’t be sure whether this alludes to the mechanics of the formative processes or the lifelong struggle of nurturing a baby human from smeared greasy new-born to first wage slip, but the distinction isn’t that significant when it comes to reading each of the paintings, a label that we will stick to for convenience.

Rites Of Spring

My own allergy to negative space is blown away by the works on paper in this show. In most cases the absence of background throws focus on the form and content of the central image, whereas the full colour compositions tend to have as much intrigue, meaning and food for thought as the painting subject itself. Look at the McGee-esque background to PTW from 2007 above.


One of the beauties of the art is that each picture has picks out a doubt, concern or paranoia that every well intentioned parent feels at some point or another but doesn’t articulate anything like as well as Brian Adam Douglas paints it. In “Tradition” below, the point seems to be paradox between the new parent feels himself blindly stumbling into parenthood without a route map blind to the guiding hand of his immediate forbearers.

Tradition (detail)

Assume Crash Position is a gentle humorous allegory on the notion that whilst life starts with parenthood, at the same time there is a part of existence that ends with a crash. Give the man oxygen

Assume Crash Position

With the meaning being a matter of one’s own interpretation what one sees in an image, Sweet Dreams provides a dilemma, is this tender nurturing of a loved one, or an insidious implanting of the seed of an idea into the woman, or even literally the seed? Both messages sit happily alongside each other in my mind and doubtless you can come up with other different interpretations. It’s a beautiful painting whatever it means to you. In Sweet Dreams you can also see the artist's charcoal construction lines, it's probably no accident that where these remain a feature of the finished piece they add hints of motion.

Sweet Dreams (detail)

Looking at a couple of the full colour collage on birch panel paintings, Bears shows a couple of parents struggling with a beast, an inconvenient clumsy oversize un-cooperative helpless beast, which just about hits the nail on the head. The microphones suggest paranoia, the sense that one is under scrutiny and making ones mistakes in full public gaze. Avoid that by not slapping your kids in the supermarket aisle;-) One thing I found un-necessary in this picture was the spilled paint, it may be another significant detail whose meaning I miss but I’m afraid I just see an art cliché specially beloved by the urban fraternity. Brian gives us another interesting conundrum by pluralising the title.

Bears

In a show of constant delights, the stand-out canvas is “The Memory of You is Never Lost On Me”. Measuring an enormous 2.1m by 1.4m. The central character, recently bereaved (I was told) is engaged in a kind of memorabilia purging and we see across the painting the echoes of various key moments in his life. Immediately to his right, a woman I take to be his wife embroiders a beautiful tablecloth on which sit boxes, possibly piles of note and further right again in diminishing scale denoting reducing significance to the narrative, we see a child playing with a piñata, nursery toys and curiously positioned, almost slightly surreal old fashioned toys like the stick and hoop. The beekeeper is a motif which comes up several times in the work, in this case the young lover is becoming married and his new wife enacts a Greek wedding ritual by dipping her hand into a pot of honey symbolising sweetness and fertility. The bees swarm up and through the smoke from the burning of the man’s reconciled memories, where of course they would become drowsy. Would it be too obvious to suppose that it all starts with the birds and the bees?


The picture explores a theme similar to the novel “Any Human Heart” by William Boyd though it was evident this is happy coincidence. The last time I felt a similar desire to just stand and absorb and ponder the many different facets of a painting was in front of Picasso’s Guernica in Madrid.

The Memory of You is Never Lost On Me

Visiting American street artists bring to the London urban art honey-pot a rare level of intelligence and intrigue and occasional new world migrant to mention in this context would be Swoon and Judith Supine. Less often mentioned is Brian Adam Douglas, a.k.a Elbow Toe though on the basis of this show that ought to change. Due Date is a truly epic show, one of those rare occasions where engaging with the art at the opening took precedence over the socialising.

Graffoto could and would love to go on and on sharing its thoughts on each and every single painting but that would spoil things, as well as being rather tedious. Instead, check out the full photo set on flickr, let Graffoto know your insights.

Postscript for anyone curious regarding Elbow Toe, Elbow Toe is alive and well and before the show opened placed a new piece of hand coloured art on the streets, or the tow-path to be more accurate. In case anyone should question the taste - these photos were taken before the natural disaster (and Fukushima man-made disaster) in Japan. Very clairvoyant.

There is an ever increasing gap in style between Elbow Toe and Brian Adam Douglas and we hear there are unlikely to be any Elbow Toe prints in future.

This Too Shall Pass

This Too Shall Pass (context)

Black/Light - Roa, Phlegm, Robots

Bussey Building, Peckham Rye, London, SE1 54ST

25th Feb – 5th March 2011

All photos: NoLionsInEngland


Headed way down South of the river last night, really far south, way off the map to Peckham for this week’s Roa show alongside Phlegm and Robots. Roa is up everywhere but this was my first encounter with the wizardry of Phlegm.

Roa hardly needs introduction, his epic birds and beasts display feathers, veins, innards and bones on many a London Wall. He rarely does small.




In case you missed his first London solo gig at the Pure Evil Gallery, read the Graffoto snapshot here

Plegm however is long established, prolific up North and around the continent but rarely if ever sighted in the capital. He has a similar monochromatic palate to Roa, he is more suited to older crumbling walls and the insides of derelict buildings, not unlike Roa and it is easily to see why artistically he works well paired alongside Roa.




The venue starts with a claustrophobic courtyard at the end of a long passage off Rye Lane. The lumpy and irregular lighting, random shape, the ancient brickwork and the looming tower of a workhouse-like building create a classic environment for these two to populate with enormous beasts, skinny people and a Phlegm trademark wobbly looking glass. The building was “when it was built, one of Peckham’s tallest buildings”, according to the web, a wildly extravagant claim to fame it struggles hard to live up to.




Strobing trains rumble past every few minutes making the painted figures leap around the walls like a flickering gothic horror story. Like a bizarre fairytale fabricated to scare the living nightmares out of the kids, this enclosed urban canvas creates the sense one might be trapped inside a walled castle with radiated zombie animals and sundry carcasses for company.




Inside the building, 10 flights of footstep echoing institutional stone stairs and through a heavy pair of dog-legged curtains brings you into a blacked out timber floored loft space commandeered by Phlegm and Robots. The door staff offer you hand held torches on the way in, health and safety obviously forbids that you should blunder around in the dark and bump your head.

Three coarse built but imaginatively fabricated wooden man-robots spread arms and link hands to tower over the cautiously stepping observers. A Phleg wall painting with an added out-of-scale 3D townscape emits eerie and un-nerving rings and ticks. The town appears to be carried of the back of a Phlegm figure who appears to be cradling a prismatic multi-faceted abstract geometric cloud in his hands. The work of both artists combines in a sinister and yet satisfyingly threatening way. The Robots have more than just a touch of the wickerman about them and the scrawny hooded Phlegm figure looks like a fugitive from a post apocalyptic mutant zone.




Neither handheld cameras nor flash photography could convey anything like the mood of this creepy dark installation, so no photos, sorry.

Trying to feel your away around this without the torch is recommended, enjoyment and wonder grows as eyes get accustomed to the dark and in the meantime, enjoy the fun of bumping into other timidly tip-toeing creatures. More art experiences should provide this kind of accidental tactile encounter.



A note on practicalities, the flyer talks of 4 nights of art, bands and such and apparently you’ll get stiffed with a cover charge in the evenings. It’s not clear if the place is open for free viewing before the ents start. Perhaps email them to enquire because it’s a bloody long way to venture from civilised parts.

Space Invader Chequered Past

all photos: NoLionsInEngland


Three or four years ago, I can’t recall precisely when, I spotted an Invader mosaic piece from a taxi as we swept through one of the higher back streets of Monaco. I didn’t have a camera on me and there was little sense in going back. On subsequent trips I brought a camera but the chequered Space Invader was no longer to be found at the spot where I thought I had seen it.

Earlier this week, I climbed up a steep and winding set of alleyway steps from the corner at Saint Devote and emerged into a back street to find the same Invader still there.




I was gobsmacked. It turned out that I had been looking for it ever since on a parallel street next block up the hill, a street with the same characteristics of a dropping sweeping downhill left handed corner, but I always went along the upper road, not this slightly lower one.

Monaco is a very sterile tightly controlled kind of community, not the sort of place I take much joy in visiting but there happens to be work there. I assumed that the zero tolerance of anything un-authorised by the prince suffered the obvious natural fate of illegal street art in this principality. So to find this cheeky little invader still intact now feels just incredible. A quick search on flickr located a photo of this piece dated June 2007 so it certainly has lasted longer than most of its London compadres.




The other reason like this is the very deliberate association it has with a chequered flag, who hasn’t heard of the famous grand prix, just about the only Formula One race a non petrol head like myself might bother watching. In the background of this picture, the left right avenue of trees is actually Boulevard Albert 1er which is the straightish start/finish straight for the grand prix, the pit line is just this side of the trees.




So, for its contextual referencing of Monaco’s most famous asset and the fact that it has somehow survived this long, I love this little (encore) find.

ps - photos by phone

Hastings & St Leonards Moth Project

Eagle eyed residents of Hastings and St Leonards may have noticed the sudden crop of giant geometrically patterned moths appearing on walls around parts of both town centres recently.

The reverse graffiti being the work of a UK artist called Moose, one of the people to have pioneered the movement of "Clean Art" where stencils are placed and then a cleaning solution is applied to leave the fairly permanent, but still temporary form of art.

Moose a.k.a Paul Curtis, was one of the team of people behind the Leeds based Soundclash and he also promoted the Soundclash club nights at which Andy Weatherall was an early fixture and Tricky made a rare and reputedly dreadful early DJ appearance.

Moose says of his vision and how he began making clean art of his own "I just saw marks on the wall where the shoulders of unsteady drunks and the fingertips of curious children had exposed the shiny White tile" And with only a pair of socks as his tool, reverse graffiti was born.

Moose has been doing this for over ten years now and has worked on many commissions often highlighting various health and awareness campaigns and St Leonards certainly needs some help there! It's high quantity of dirty walls means it has the higher proportion of Moths over it's Hastings neighbour.

There are currently 7 locations where the moths are living, hopefully those numbers will increase over time and maybe even encourage more forms of art in unloved places. Each site has a different moth design unique in its complexity, all of the designs are also based on moths native specifically to the area.

The project has 100% backing from the council and more specifically councillor Peter Chowney (In charge of regeneration in the area) who has said "It's an exciting installation which has enhanced the Hastings landscape, it's also great fun to suddenly come upon one of these images walking around town"

More details about Moose can be found at http://www.symbollix.com/

Banksy Locations (and a Tour) Vol II

All photos: Shellshock


Remember Banksy Locations and Tours, a pocket size book produced in 2006 which detailed locations of Banksy street artwork? That was structured around around 3 tour routes of Banksy’s wall art in London that a lucky few experienced free of charge at the time, though a bit like the Sex Pistols at Manchester Free Trade the number that claim to have been on those tours now exceeds the population of the UK.

That was the work of Graffoto contributer Shellshock and we are pleased to announce he has done it again with the release this week of Banksy Locations (and a Tour) Vol II.




The significant difference between Vol I and Vol II is that Vol II addresses all the other areas in the UK where Banksy has been active EXCEPT the locations covered by Vol I. So that’s all “new” stuff then.






Vol II is a fascinating insight into some of the older and more provincial Banksy street art which London-locked folk like the rest of Graffoto don’t get to see. Though one or two of the London Banksys included in Vol II were only a couple of hundred yards off the routes of the original tours, they didn’t make Vol I simply because they involved too much of a route deviation to actually be included in Shellshock’s tours.




Stylistically it sticks faithfully to the blueprint established by Vol I, which is to say there are photographs, with locations, notes on relevant history and an update on condition – if it has any! Regard it as a kind of I-Spy guide to Banksy’s public works and the ideal sister publication to Vol I.

Vol II is published in hardback, making it harder wearing for those walking/cycling/charabanc tours.

This looks like a nice little stocking filler for any enthusiast of Banksy and street art in general.





Quoting from Shellshock’s own writing to add further colour and details on how to obtain a copy:

“It’s a whopping 380 pages of hardback book and includes his street work all the way up to this October. There was just so much more to write than Vol.1; there are more locations (over 135, of which almost half are still worth visiting), more news (especially on the more recent pieces), better photo ops, and a few flounces of creativity. There is obviously no hiding that it is very similar format to Vol.1, in that it is based on locations, my photos and info/history about the piece. BUT there is a little more leeway in Vol 2 because it is less tour based (the only tour is in Bristol, which is pretty good actually; a lot survives, including some very hidden gems), and although it rounds up a lot of locations in London that couldn’t be covered by Vol.1, a third of the locations actually come from Bristol, Brighton & the South Coast, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, and the rural West Country.




• Over 135 detailed locations of Banksy’s street graffiti, past & present
• A full walking tour of his remaining work in Bristol
• Information, random facts & idle chit-chat on each location
• Over 220 colour photographs, on 380 pages
• Snippets of art/graffiti by Eine, Faile, Inkie, Kato, Mode 2, BA / DBZ, & Rowdy
• 12% of [the] sale price donated to charitable organisations (24% when sold directly by [Shellshock])
• ISBN = 978-0955471230 / R.R.P. = £12.50

If everything goes ok and this winter weather doesn’t wreck it, I should get it on 7th December. It will obviously take a short while to get into all the shops, so if you fancy it soon it might be best to get it via the ‘net.

It’s on Amazon here (where sample pages are also viewable for free).

If you prefer to buy direct, then I’ll be selling it through my eBay account once they arrive. I've been on eBay for over 7 years now and still have 100% positive feedback.

Any sales via myself will get a couple of postcard flyers thrown in for free."


Shellshock is usually very approachable, so as a very nice inexpensive gift you could visit his eBay listing and ask him for a signed copy of Vol 2 with a dedication, all dispatched in time for Christmas [insert your religion/non religion's alternative day here] if you order quickly enough.

Dale ‘vn’ Marshall’s Room 101 revisited

Putting the erm… into Vermin


All photos by shellshock


“Given the state of the planet, humans, or some humans, must now be categorized as vermin” (John Carey in ‘The Intellectuals and the Masses -Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia 1880-1939‘)


I’ll spare you the weak reasons for the complete tardiness of this ‘review’ of Dale's show this October in Bristol. Soz, but I’m here now, so let’s just get on with it ‘eh? And finally I get to use the word ‘tardy’ in a blog :-)

Vermin (aka Dale ‘vn’ Marshall) has long been one of my favourite writers/artists, primarily as one of the Souls On Fire (SOF) crew throughout the late 90's and most of the 2000's, so I was especially excited when I heard earlier this year that he was doing canvases of his own work, and was then preparing for what seemed to be a very tardy [got it in again :-)] first exhibition for someone in his late 30’s.

The reason for this late blooming was presumably, at least partly, because Dale has led a life and a half so far, and by his own admission not necessarily a life you’d wish for when a kid. Dale’s personal experiences and ongoing battle with his own mental health, including stays in a secure unit, is in equal parts amazing, shocking and totally understandable when you see his art (visit here for more info). I don’t know Dale but I feel some connection through his art, maybe aided by us being from the same city. My own minor battles cannot be compared to his, but I do get a strong personal feeling from all of this, and my heart skips a beat when I dip into his soul.

I get the impression that during these dark days and nights Dale probably forgot that he was an artist. He also probably forgot he was a writer. And whatever inane discussions exist in the world about what a ‘writer’ really is and who is and isn’t a ‘writer’, I’d merely suggest that Vermin was and has always been a writer, even if it might not be as obvious as when a young lad does ‘Trax’ (or whatever) in large, basic letters on a scabby wall. Dale has a totally different style to that, but his work still (quite literally) oozes his name.

So ‘Room 101, The Fine Art of Graffiti‘ showcased 101 oil paintings completed in 101 days this summer, as well as five additional show paintings and site-specific installations and wall daubings. However faint it may have seemed to the casual eye, I'd say that all 101 canvases had ‘vermin’ carved into them, like ‘Blackpool’ in a stick of rock, or to use a far darker analogy, like a self-harming teenager with a sharp knife and a bloodied and scared forearm.







Although Dale is now happily studying at the historic School of Art at Coventry University, and has a great support network around him, he‘s obviously not going to forget his past quite so fast. The Room 101 theme obviously drew parallels from George Orwell’s novel, 1984, and was most evident in the institutional paraphernalia that was scattered around the venue. ‘Dentist’ chair and prescription drug cocktails with flashing light, a recreation of his hospital bed, a freaky video, maggots in a bowl, etc. When some people walked into the venue they must have thought… erm… what the hell is this!







The canvases were amazing, and although there are tinges of melancholy, brooding and inactivity, they actually mainly radiate hope, colour, passion, energy and thoughtfulness. Just like Don McCullin hates being refered to solely as a 'war' photographer, I imagine Dale doesn't want to be just seen as doing those pretty dark abstract murals. It was a really strong body of work. I know a few professional artists and to do 101 canvases in 101 days (um... that's one a day I reckon..?) is quite a stretch, especially with a rigorous quality control as well (I think Dale had about 30 odd others that didn't make the cut).

So now I can come on to the two canvases I managed to buy amidst the slightly undignified bun fight that occurred on the opening night. A lot of people had obviously heard about the show and some even travelled some distance and waited for quite some time (and/or pushed into the queues) in order to be there first to get what they wanted. Call it madness, peer pressure or dedication, or a bit of all three. I was amazed that I still managed to get my first choice of the 90-odd canvases that hadn’t been pre-reserved or were not for sale. I really wanted at least one that had ‘writing’ in it; a sort of hybrid of ‘pure’ art and a tag. That for me was something to straddle the two worlds they represented.

When Dale later took the canvas down off the wall for me he mentioned that he learnt a lot [about oils] when he was doing this piece. That was quite sweet actually - talk about personal service! How many other places does the artist take your canvas down off the wall himself? I actually wondered if he might follow me home and want to take it back :-)





My second canvas was from the more meditative pieces on the opposite wall. Yet it still has that slight tinge of violence in it.



More power to your elbow Dale. Hope to see more from you soon. And if you do fancy a ‘time share’ visit to your canvases, pop round next time you’re visiting the Royal Arthur [this will be explained in a forthcoming blog…]