Wednesday, 19 March 2008
Friday, 7 March 2008
Arofish "Scrapped" Solo Show
New Cross Gallery, 6 March - 31 March, 2008
It is definitely worth packing the Kendals Mint Cake and blowing the dust off the prismatic compass and navigating your way down to New Cross, the gallery is actually only a couple of hundred yards from New Cross BR station. And you’ll have plenty of time for a trip to the Maritime Museum after. Virtually all images guaranteed to be wife/partner/child friendly but hopefully Arofish has not lost his knack for simultaneously keeping it real. Set aside an hour to visit www.arofish.org.uk to find out more about Arofish and his exploits and observations inside Iraq, Beirut and Palestine, this will not be time wasted
New Cross is a place outside London, Sarf of the River. The underground doesn’t go there any more. Taxi drivers charge a fortune and get lost. On the A-Z it is in a wilderness zone marked “Beware dragyns”.
The first indication of any artistic endeavour is a stencilled bird skull on the façade of a starkly lit, small (north of the river it would be “bijou”), plain fronted (minimalist) shop. This inauspicious location was the right place to find ”Scrapped”, the first solo show by Arofish.
Arofish is one of our most ideological, independent and right-minded partition defacers. He also seems to come from the school of elusive-is-the-new-high-profile, not deigning to attend his own opening – we think. Efforts to expunge evidence of his identity extend to scratching out his own name and date of birth from the capture certificate acquired in Iraq, offence: “Anti coalition grafiti” – their spelling, not mine.
The main elements of the show are a variety of familiar Arofish images on found objects, a couple of prints released at the opening, a wall mural and an montage of images deployed by Arofish in various middle eastern states.
Let’s deal with the originals. One of the newest images having made its debut a few weeks ago on the streets of Shoreditch is Strawman, a metaphor for a disguised viral propagator of lies and harm. This Strawman on metal plate is crucified on a cross, has a crown of thorns on his head and birds looming menacingly on the arms of the sacred religious symbol. The target appears to be religion, specifically cross worshipping Christianity and the evils of evangelicism. However, until the mystery of the one leg is resolved perhaps the true meaning lies somewhere else.
The first indication of any artistic endeavour is a stencilled bird skull on the façade of a starkly lit, small (north of the river it would be “bijou”), plain fronted (minimalist) shop. This inauspicious location was the right place to find ”Scrapped”, the first solo show by Arofish.
Arofish is one of our most ideological, independent and right-minded partition defacers. He also seems to come from the school of elusive-is-the-new-high-profile, not deigning to attend his own opening – we think. Efforts to expunge evidence of his identity extend to scratching out his own name and date of birth from the capture certificate acquired in Iraq, offence: “Anti coalition grafiti” – their spelling, not mine.
The main elements of the show are a variety of familiar Arofish images on found objects, a couple of prints released at the opening, a wall mural and an montage of images deployed by Arofish in various middle eastern states.
Let’s deal with the originals. One of the newest images having made its debut a few weeks ago on the streets of Shoreditch is Strawman, a metaphor for a disguised viral propagator of lies and harm. This Strawman on metal plate is crucified on a cross, has a crown of thorns on his head and birds looming menacingly on the arms of the sacred religious symbol. The target appears to be religion, specifically cross worshipping Christianity and the evils of evangelicism. However, until the mystery of the one leg is resolved perhaps the true meaning lies somewhere else.
My long-time favourite Arofish is Alas My Ship, perhaps this appeals to the nautical ephemera spotter in me. The problem with rendering this or any image on found modern sailcloth is that the material is designed to minimise stretch for achingly technical reasons we needn’t go into. The consequence is that it doesn’t take to stretching on a frame terribly well, and this one looks a bit wrinkled and puckered round the edges. The piece wasn’t for sale anyway. The least worse of a pretty bad set of pictures on this camera is the only one with the slightest glimpse of Alas My Ship. If anyone has some decent pictures I could feature here for due credit and glory, please drop me a line.
Another great street image recently revealed is the Plague Doctor. This simply is a beautifully cut stencil image which has looked stunning in every execution. The show version on an arc of aluminium is the mirror image of those previously seen on the street.
Queen and Country features the bug-eyed death-merchant pilot seen previously on the Eject and Survive print, this unique version has been sprayed on metal.
One piece which wont be affected by the oxidisation threat is Untitled, a parody of the self serving munificence of suits “assisting” the third world poor by providing them with arms and fuelling their guerrilla wars.
Stray Cats and Bag Ladies is a gorgeous touching image, this time on a lipped rusty steel plate rather than the wooden headboard seen at The Leonard Street Gallery last year.
Angel on a swing on shiny metal looks lush, and whilst one of these does bless chez NoLions in the form of the pearlescent print version, the resonance between the angel with her wings and swing, and the descending troopers gripping their parachute cords has always seemed a bit obscure.
The central motif of the show is She Walks In Beauty, a porcelain-skinned mini-skirted skinny waif-innocent seeming reduced to marketing herself by her looks, menacingly set against the back drop of a defaced police incident witness appeal board. An original version dominates one end of the gallery (pic below), a framed AP of the limited edition print run is hung to the right (pic above) and the images repeats in the show posters which adorn the street window. Curiously, the intensity of a series of dark slashes across the incident board appears in identical geometry but to differing intensities in the three forms, clearly a function of the different production techniques. The large unique version has been enhanced by some indecipherable marker pen tagging, its absence from the poster and the screenprint suggest this was added afterwards rather than found and smacks of straining too hard to annex further street cred for an already sufficiently cool piece. For the record, the screenprint is ed 25, three colours screen printed with the red added by hand by Arofish. The AP had an Arofish blindstamp but not the tag, curious.
The sharp contrast of the Strawman print is fantastic, sadly it may be destined like many other pieces vaguely negative on religion to be un-acceptable in front of the kids at home and shunned at work.
The beauty of Arofish’s images lies in the quality of the stencilling, originality of image, avoidance of the obvious metaphor and the way a particular message is softly transmitted without getting too strident or resorting to too many of the currently vogue-ish clichés. The only skulls on view here belonged to animals
The beauty of Arofish’s images lies in the quality of the stencilling, originality of image, avoidance of the obvious metaphor and the way a particular message is softly transmitted without getting too strident or resorting to too many of the currently vogue-ish clichés. The only skulls on view here belonged to animals
It is definitely worth packing the Kendals Mint Cake and blowing the dust off the prismatic compass and navigating your way down to New Cross, the gallery is actually only a couple of hundred yards from New Cross BR station. And you’ll have plenty of time for a trip to the Maritime Museum after. Virtually all images guaranteed to be wife/partner/child friendly but hopefully Arofish has not lost his knack for simultaneously keeping it real. Set aside an hour to visit www.arofish.org.uk to find out more about Arofish and his exploits and observations inside Iraq, Beirut and Palestine, this will not be time wasted
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
The Krah - Upcoming Show
What do we know about The Krah? Most apparently, at least to alley way loitering photographers and graff art affectionadoes, he brightens the walls (and other found objects) of London and Athens with his un-mistakable style of art, an abstract fantasy character world populated by multiple faced limb deficient organo-cyborgs. The Krah works alone or with mates, and work in the wild can be rendered freehand using spray and marker pen or on paste-up. Low nipple count.
Brick Lane Crack den, with b. and Littll
He (or she?) has released a very striking limited edition print. One copy graces the NoLions collection.
The Krah has produced other indoor pieces, at least one is available (at time of writing) by hunting through his flickr photos.
In The Sky
Untitled
And now, the latest news is an up-coming show at the Gallery Of Pure Evil in Leonard Street. Thursday 22 May 2008. It's in the diary.
Brick Lane Crack den, with b. and Littll
He (or she?) has released a very striking limited edition print. One copy graces the NoLions collection.
The Krah has produced other indoor pieces, at least one is available (at time of writing) by hunting through his flickr photos.
In The Sky
Untitled
And now, the latest news is an up-coming show at the Gallery Of Pure Evil in Leonard Street. Thursday 22 May 2008. It's in the diary.
Monday, 3 March 2008
Oh F@*k And Bugger, I almost forgot the Monday Update!
Seeing as I did it last Monday, and stuff is finally hotting up (i.e. I have enough new stuff to show)
Lets do this. . . . . .
Lets do this. . . . . .
Banksy Back In Tahhhhhhhhhnn Again
Between us we have managed to get a few of them, certainly turning out to be a Banksy heavy 2008 :)
Friday, 29 February 2008
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.
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.
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?
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 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
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.
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.
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
Sleevefacery
The floundering efforts of two blokes with no talent or ideas of their own to copy an idea tried out by thousands of others. The mercifully brief lunchtime photo session was interupted by from time to time by proper artists Mau Mau, Beejoir and Pure Evil, who all left sniggering.
NoLions' exhibitionist streak was flaunted again, which is surprising considering he has so much to be modest about. He seemed to think he could shamelessly strip off and pretend he had the physique of a 10 year old boy but the reality is he looks like he has just eaten a 10 year old boy.
The no doubt soon to be extremly lush, but currently dank wet cellar under Pure Evil's studio was the setting, whose warning shot as we cautiously descended the rickety woodworm rotten stairs was "watch out for any puddles, that's hydrochloric acid". . . . . . .
NoLions' exhibitionist streak was flaunted again, which is surprising considering he has so much to be modest about. He seemed to think he could shamelessly strip off and pretend he had the physique of a 10 year old boy but the reality is he looks like he has just eaten a 10 year old boy.
The no doubt soon to be extremly lush, but currently dank wet cellar under Pure Evil's studio was the setting, whose warning shot as we cautiously descended the rickety woodworm rotten stairs was "watch out for any puddles, that's hydrochloric acid". . . . . . .
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