HipArt ExPreSSions Show

Brick Lane Gallery, London
3 Sep – 8 Sep 2008

Cycled over to Brick Lane to see the HipArt show at Brick Lane Gallery, stopping to photograph loads of paste ups by The Krah. None of them were repetitions so big props for that but one stupid consequence was arriving in Brick Lane with a camera battery wheezing asthmatically, those batteries just can’t keep up.

You can get all conspiratorial if you wish about the number of times Pam Glew has been mentioned here recently but the simple truth is her scary chicks on flags rocks and she’s been busy in galleries here there and every where (and we don’t have any, so as always no self interested bigging-up here). All her stuff tonight looked a bit brighter and livelier that the originals seen recently. One worth mentioning is the print edition “Crime Scene” downstairs, she’s used some really fussy posh printer bloke apparently and the surface texture, visible even under glass is quite impressive. Don’t be fooled by the price tag, after a bit of probing Pam yielded that this included the frame and was quite a bit cheaper without the frame, good if you hang your prints with blu tack.

Breaking off only to demonstrate the rudiments of opening free bottles of beer (the bottle opener you shall be using, Master Grafter), the eye was caught by K-Guy stuff downstairs. K-Guy always has some thought out well developed idea in his pieces for which huge respect. The execution of this “Shop Till It Drops” with its handle with care, absolutely no refunds message is quite superb, the un-usual matted chipboard kind of material giving a great texture.


K-Guy: Shop Till You Drop


The idea is sufficiently different that the use of a shopping trolley doesn’t really feel like a steal. Unlike the adjacent “Bird Of Prey” with its wings and guns which does feel like a recycling of a significant portion of the street art cliché library.


K-Guy: Birds Of Prey

Lots of irony in the place, sorry, I mean Irony, including the frequently seen on street walls choker girl in a lush edition of 4. Favourite Irony piece on show was the Mind The Gap.


Irony – Mind The Gap

It was nice to see Maya’s work in real life for the first time though it didn’t really have the attention grabbing ability of her street work, seen in many flicks online. Perhaps comparatively simple stencils need a bit more than a cosmic background when transferring to walls indoors.


Maya – Super 8 Simon


Speaking of clichés, there’s not much further down the barrel to go when DogByte’s disco balls hanging off helicopters makes Static look like a pioneering conceptual guru.

Kendra Binney, new to these eyes has doe-eyed females on a glossy rinsed out herbal green background.Gorgeous colours, worth checking out.

The cool thing about this show was its affordability. If you have a tight budget and fancy something streety and a bit classier than number XYZ from an edition of 700 bought off ebay for an arm and a leg, it is quite possible from this selection of artists to find something like an original canvas or very low edition artist-finished piece in the couple of hundred price range. Not true in every case though.

It has become apparent that hardly any of you read these words, you all just skim over the pictures and as at this point the batteries rolled over, so here endeth the wordy bit. Which is just as well, how many more hirst spots rip-offs and gun details can we possibly hack. A demain and allons y au Titifreak! (actually, if it wasn’t for a major over-riding domestic engagement, I’d have a huge dilemma with Titifreak in Soho vs Stencil History down in Brighton, and don’t tell me do one Thursday and one Friday cos Friday is already booked for Zezou at Pure Evil’s – more Brazilians around here at the moment than a yummy mummy’s bring-and-buy bikini sale.


K-Guy – Love Hate

Cans2 Recycled Revisited

One of the unique charms of London’s art galleries is their enlightened welcome of members of the public who can add their own enhancements to the displayed works and correct the principal artist’s shortcomings. Actually no but in the case of the Leake Street tunnel there ain’t no stopping anyone with a spray can getting their piece up.

A swift return to the Cans Recycled site just 8 days after it opened revealed a number of large scale additions, a bit of going over and a lot of additions to the all-comers exit ramp area.

Sweetest new piece is undoubtedly this one by Petro


Petro



The roadworks have been completed since last weekend and the removal of the fenced off holes permits better shots of pieces in that area. It is much easier to see how the head of Conor Harrington’s horse connects to the fire-breathing mouth of AlexOne’s dragon.


Conor Harrington/AlexOne



Xenx’s flora and fauna fantasy land can be captured in all its glory – ultrawide and leaking across the floor.


Xenx




Xenx



Mode2 has also been in town.


Mode2




Mode2



Prize for the most confrontational going over goes to London’s Oker who have sprayed over the crisp piece left by Bristol’s What Crew (Richt, 45RPM).




Will Barras’s car piece was done on cardboard in-fill to the windows, and those bits of cardboard had been signed on the back. That was recklessly mentioned on one website and un-surprisingly it is now a very windy windowless ride. All the other vehicles are beginning to look like some has taken a sledge hammer and angle grinder on their daytrip to Waterloo.

More pictures of these plus other throwies in the flickr set 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.

The Foundry Underground Art Show

The Krah stands out among his Greek compatriots for several reasons, whilst he is one of the few male Greeks that hasn’t failed a sprinter’s drugs test in the last 4 years at the same time he has tested positive for having a seriously good time. He persuaded many of his friends from Greece and London to participate in a wacky group show in the old underground car park at Shoreditch’s Foundry bar.

Recently new to these shores is Australian artist Shannon Crees. Her combined multi-pigmented flesh tones, lush faces and montaged coiffures look lush, quite the star of the show, though you’d want a promise that the artist would touch up if the pieces started to fall apart hung above your radiator at home.


Shannon Crees



The Krah decorated a seriously big painted laminate board not with his usual hybrid mutoid Krahworld characters, just their abstract tentacle bits. The composition captures a sense of flow, of immersion and descent to the depths of an alien octopus lair. Deeply sweet as usual.


The Krah


One special bonus was catching up with Athens street artist Fors even though most of the pieces looked like a retina challenge for the kaleidoscope generation.


Fors



Pam Glew’s brooding and disturbing distressed horror flic chicks on flags beguile in a very very dark way. They are just so damn big, hopefully Pam will find a set of those small hand-held flags the crowds wave when returning American heroes like Earl Hickey drive through town. Interestingly, what was described as “discharge medium” at Black Rat’s charity show earlier this month is now translated as “bleach”, which is a relief.


Pam Glew



Cans 1 resulted in a surge of commercial screenprint, giclee and canvas activity from many of the artist involved. Anyway, if you short-sightedly thought that was a bad thing it would be grossly unfair to tar artists at this show with the same brush – The Krah, Copyright, Pure Evil, Shannon Crees, Richt and 45RPM all decorated tunnel walls at Cans Recycled – since this group was put together before the artists had been told about Cans Recycled (we are aware of one who was given just 2 days warning).

What Crew members Richt and 45RPM did some graphic doodles on montages of old 7” sleeves, not a single owl in sight.



Richt - 45RPM. Contender for worst show foto ever


Among the shot vacuum packaged cans, Blam has un-earthed a vintage tube map and paid
tribute to recognisable generic London sub-species.


Blam - London Calling



Rugman continues to mine children’s cartoon imagery though Minnie’s risqué provocative posing would raise eyebrows in most nurseries. Curious how this image draws you in yet when Bast does a Smurf with a 10 foot cock you can’t even look at it, how does that work? This camera was not tainted with such faux porno imagery so satisfaction must be derived from the mice, skulls and swaztika cliches here.


Rugman



Another gorgeous mini collection-ette was a set of drawings on cardboard boxes by (possibly – tbc) Lotz, they seemed to arrive halfway during the evening and they definitely left before the end and ended up on the street. Notwithstanding the serial offences under the Street-Art Bandwaggon Prevention Act, these were sweet.


Lotz of boxes


This show had a really enjoyable vibe and a ton of cool folk in attendance. The wackiest part of this former bank cellar space is that although the ramp down to the car park has been blocked off, the car turntable at the bottom has not been immobilised which lends itself to heaps of turntable surfing and centrifuge related beer slops, not to mention even a piece of lego art toppling as the whirly gig nearly rose off its spindle. Every gallery should have one.


The Turntable Surfah Crew – just a whizz

Other artists appearing at the show included Copyright, Pure Evil, Snub, Hutch, Mr Gauky, James Johnson, the 5685 and more. More pictures here.

Diggs We Are Shitting . . . .

Loving the new Grafter street works. You can definately see his style evolving with each outing and more and more details being added to the simple but elegant one layer stencils that made him famous.

His studio work seen recently at the Urban Angel "Corked" show, and then small outing at the recycled Cans Festival this weekend also go a long way to putting a "cork" in the gobs of the Grafter haters thinking all he was capable of was simple stuff, some real emotion showing in his "Shoe Shine" piece. Very evocative and many have said in the style of Chris Stain, but in my book Grafter wins as his characters dont have abnormally sized heads*.

@ Cans Festival "Recycled"

"Shoe Shine" - Urban Angel original piece - Pic courtesy of Nolions..."tarted" by HowAboutNo!

* This is in no way intended to be a dig at Chris Stain in any other way than I think his characters should be a tad smaller and situated at ground level...they tend to scare me in the same way those bumblebee things with babies facies in the back of the News of The World Sunday magazine do.

Alphabet Soup - The Cans 2 Letter Hunt

I haven't seen any comment anywhere else so I am begining to wonder if I am reading too much into the letters in the tunnel! Anyway, without doubt the Cans tunnel has a Hunt The Thimble game involving each letter of the alphabet, I have only found 23 - could someone return the E, the F and the G please.

[edit: the following comment kindly provided by Copyright on flikr photos: "some of the letters were painted early on, as relatively small peices over old work, as the day went on and more artists turned up, a few of the letters got painted over by bigger pieces."]






The full set of letters (except, dammit, the missing ones) are in this flickr set here

London's legendary and elusive NoNose was obviously in the tunnel today judging by the flotilla of flourescent sputknik potatoes (yes - there is an e in the plural) and the dayglo ciabatta.


More Nonose here

The NoLions brat pack decided that the SweetToof (pic in the post below this one) has one bad tooth and is changing it for a good tooth. Perceptive little blighters, but that won't help them when I send them up the chimneys.


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.

Cans Recycled Opens

Leake Street tunnel re-opened this morning to reveal a lush kaleidoscope of freehand spray graffiti and ensemble of burnt out cars. Crowd control barriers not required this time - no crowds! No ice cream vans, no posters, not even any staff, just a no-fuss “ok, at your leisure look at what we’ve done this time” vibe.


Lucy McLauchlan


Cans 2 presents a teasing little treasure hunt for us…an alphabet “learner” (“A is for ATG”, “K is for Kool Skool) of letters sprayed at various points in various styles. Having identified a mere 15 letters on first visit, the presumption must be the full alphabet is there, ya just got to find ‘em. [update - now up to 23/26. when you have finished enjoying this post (thats an order!) read the subsequent post about the Alphabet hunt here or check out the flickr alphabet soup here]




The original un-missable “Gentrify This” hoarding by Insect has been done over by a wonderful piece of reverse graffiti consisting of torn layers of advertisements, which by the face portrait and technique shouts Vhils, though this needs to be confirmed.


Vhils


The West Country is well represented in the first few yards of the tunnel, with the first of several owls by 45RPM, a pair of Inkie laydies and next to them a Mau Mau bo-peep allegory on the public fear of graffiti (its not the graffiti that makes places scary, it’s the scary people doing it!).


Inkie



Mau Mau


The eerily quiet tunnel is haunted by the ghost of the May bank holiday festival, this time the one name missing appears to be Banksy, there isn’t any particular piece which might make you think of the freehand pre-stencil Banksy from the mid 90s and Walls Of Fire Bristol days. Though of course, this may be wrong. Attribution is a challenge at this early stage of the “reveal” (unless you are an insider with a list or an awesome global graff expert), though we are reasonably confident of the identities attributed in this report, if you go to the related collection of picks on flickr (link below), the names of many artists probably should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Alexone opened a show of new work this week at the Stolen Space Gallery in Brick Lane, some liked it, others were indifferent. Response to Alexone’s new piece in the total must be a unanimous wow! Compositionally Alexone’s firebreathing dragon blends into the adjacent Conor Harrington horse rider thought the join is fudged by an explosion of gold paint. The pair together look gorgeous


Connor Harrington, Alexone


London based Greek and long time favourite The Krah has worked a sinuous organo-robotic piece intertwined with his more recent plague victim aliens. Slightly surprisingly there is no sign of his Athens buddy FORS who by recent evidence on London streets (well, outside The Foundry Bar actually) is known to be around.


The Krah


The only Cans Mk I pieces from the original invited artists which are still in place are the Vihls reverse graffiti pair of faces (hurray!), Banky’s gorilla painter, the Faile wall stencils, and Pobel’s man trapped in shopping trolley. Oh – and all the people’s wall stuff is untouched.


I Wonder


The honour of vandalising the car wrecks this time is shared by Lucy McLauchlan, ATG Crew, Zeus and Dotmasters among others (ie. – no idea who they are). ATG play with the taxi, a shady looking passenger with his feet up gets driven around by a masked bandit, both by Alex One, whilst on the other side they reprise the “ATG love Ldn” piece seen earlier this year on the End Of The Line wall in Shoreditch. Lucy McLauchlan attacks the car with more abandon and dash than is usually seen in her characteristic crisply painted face-scapes, the characters present sterner, less alluring faces than her usual svelte pristine beauties, and there are no birds.


Lucy McLauchlan


ATG, hardcore graff crew that they are, live up to their rooftop portfolio, popping up all over the tunnel up in the eaves and high above other pieces, fostering in the imagination an indifference to the control of the organisers which is true to the spirit of graff writing.



”A Is For ATG”, Asure (ATG Crew)


WordToMother has a piece with the painter character sitting in front of a modern city of towers with smoke belching cooling towers in the foreground. Opposite that, rather than conventionally declare his love for a maiden, WTM boasts the maiden loves him (though it could also be a homage to his actual mother!).


WordToMother


Pure Evil brings the sprit of rebellion to the show with the stolen slogans of Thomas Jefferson and even climbing into the roadworks to spray “I am so underground” in the excavation. Naughty puppy.


Pure Evil


Busk has taken over those two slanted walls previously hosting the luscious Logan Hicks pieces and done some really tight photo realistic portraits.


Busk


An enormous cloudscape with birds and infinitely tall trees is instantly recognisable as pure Xenz.


Xenz


One piece we love but have no idea (yet) who it’s by is this smaller piece incorporating a trio of figures, a woman with some kind of gas machine or gun perhaps, a superhero and a fleeing woman/child, can hardly make head or tail of what it might be about but it looks delicious.


update: Will Barras


Near the Lower Marsh exit, two of London’s cutest vandals get their space in the spotlight. SweetToof, possibly in a collaboration, and possibly with Cyclops has done a very large face with pink gums as usual but clothes pegs instead of teeth! The character extends an arm over the roof of the tunnel and clasps another clothes peg whilst the other hand works a peg loose from the gums, some kind of nightmare self administered dentistry. Again, the static ambiguity means this creature could be filling his gums with improvised clothes peg teeth. CEPT has declared his love for spray paint in the morning (presumably meaning the 3am type morning rather than cornflakes and toast time).


SweetToof



Cept


Copyright’s curious absence from the initial line up at Cans Festival is corrected this time with a lush but ambiguously captioned Love War with three gun toting maiden with practise targets marked on their torsos.


Copyright


This piece with a pair of skeletons weeping over a scary eagle based animal whilst handing over diamonds (US exploitation of third world resources? – a always this is a complete guess) which is awesome for both the symbolism and the execution.


I-Lib, Dead By Thirty


A very coarse count suggests somewhere between 80 and 100 new pieces or work by possibly 40 or 50 artists. It’s a huge show, incredible that on the whole it was put up in two days. Beyond the sample of pieces shown or mentioned here is an awesome selection of top quality pieces, check out the much much bigger set of pictures on the link below.


L Is For London + Panik (ATG Crew)


What is the point? Well there’s loads. First simply is a response to the feeling that graffiti guys have no talent and can are at the limit of their abilities using stencils, well have a look now at what good street artists can do freehand armed with spray cans on rough walls. Second is to present an array of superb domestic and international graffiti and street art talents. Another is to enjoy, do it.



Get yer Cans 2 pics ere