Cans Recycled - First Peek

Off the back of a bogus tip off on one of the more decidely dodgy streetart forums this morning, myself and nolions hot footed over the Lower Marsh for a "Banksy print release"...... no surprise that it turned out to be complete and utter bollocks, we at least got a sneaky peak over the barriers and can share these exclusive pictures with you

So clear presence from Part2ism, the on of the long shot of the tunnel looks like a Cept on the orange background from what I could see, but lets wait and see!

EDIT: Here ya go HAN, a few more of my snaps

Cept

SweetToof

Inkie, Sickboy + Zosen, ATG Crew, M-City

Such a beautiful word:

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.

WK Interact Show - Elms Lester

WK Interact hails from France but is based in New York and has about 20 years of street art practise under his belt. No surprise then that, unlike a certain relay team [this was written a day or two after the US relay team played some version of pooh sticks], practise pays off in a gorgeous display of moody, tense and dark street art. WK Interact has a strong pedigree as an artist getting up on the streets, he estimates his puts out about 75% illegal street work and comparatively limited amount of studio work, apparently this show represented close to a year’s output according to someone who just made that up.


photo: "WK Skater" by Luna Park, NY. huge thanks


Walk in the door and straight away, like a javelin between the eyes, “Caution”, the first comparatively small piece prods you awake and presses home this is a special collection of work. Using collaged elements of wood, photographs and painted figures, this builds around warning/danger signs, a common fragment of New York street life.


Caution


The next piece, a big big landscape board with lots more wood nailed on, introduces the familiar vibrant dynamic fast moving balaclaved terrorist figures with the added bonus of a Clark Kent look-a-like having his neck broken.


Left Or Right


Many pieces are set on background collage of period American photos that bring to mind a 1960s ideal of a future-tech life, the optimism of race into space technology development, white shirted scientists with brylcreemed hair and retro/kitch American autos. Of course no genre respecting artist is going to omit the obligatory “found” elements, crude pieces of short chipped and worn strips of wood are daubed and nailed on. All of this forming a context for the customary dynamic speed marked villains.


Control Yourself


WK Interact presents these athletic and sinister figures in scenes that speak of the streets. Common elements through the work include cut-away exploded engineering diagrams representing real “proper job” activities, skulls, bar codes and numbers indicating the digitisation not of society but each individual – we are all becoming numbers, stand up and let us be counted.


Behind The Door


Crime Scene


What you can’t see from the photos is the texture of the surfaces, the relief of the layers and the number of heavy, almost dangerous objects incorporated in the composition. A red fire bell signifies the warning signs people should have detected prior to JFK’s assassination, a rabbit trap invites you to stick your fingers in, a high voltage regulator demands you turn things to HIGH on “Voltage On or Off”.


Voltage On or Off (switch thingy half way up on right)


The artist who illustrates the dynamic of his work by tapping it, rubbing it and drumming it is a rare beast, WK Interact sees the added objects as invitation to the viewer to touch and tweak, though no one was particularly keen on the gin trap.


Beware Of The Animals


It would be cool to say that whilst WK Interact’s work, replete with masked terrorists and fraught with undercurrents of tension represented the opposite side of the coin from Lister’s colourful superheroes on white canvas, WK Interact’s view was that Lister’s figures portray a seedier more sexual evil view of life.


Not seedy or sexual


To avoid doubt, neither the pieces on show nor his street wheatpastes are based upon stencil techniques. So there, a real artist. Elements of the collage seemed to touch on the paste on and tear way Faile method. Gimme deep sinister symbolism over cartoon pop art Lichenstein homages any day.


Photo: Wallkandy – huge thanks as well


Eye grazing in front of individual works yields an appreciation of the depth of the work, there’s a lot of meaning to be excavated from the movements and moments in each picture, this is much more than instantly gratifying eye candy. People there were saying “oh yeah, his work has really moved on”, which is an odd way to view a show which didn’t include a single peep-hole corset.


Butterfly Hatch



These pics can be seen in much better quality here, though I'd recommend Wallkandy's pics here

Ch ch ch changes. . . .

Regular readers may have noticed the few subtle changes at Graffoto towers, hopefully for the better!

We now have a subscribe function, where you can choose to be updated via email whenever there is a new post made. For the confused amongst you early subscribers, the title of the email that comes through was showing as "Over & Over" which is actually the official title of the Graffoto blog - for clarity this has now been amended so you know what you are getting and who it's from!

Remember if you'd rather not have the email updates, there is also the RSS link feed that you can add to your own reader software too.

We also await with baited breath the first post from our new staffer, Mr Shellshockphotos. . . A.K.A Banksy locations and tours man, A.K.A a general graf spotting LegEnd! This man pretty much invented the London graf tour, loads of which have been cropping up in various guises and publications this year...and he seriously regrets not patenting the idea a long time ago!

There are more changes afoot, all of which will hopefully make Graffoto a nicer place to be and still remain a good source of honest opinions and sightings of stuff on the scene by people in it for the love, not just cos they are being paid a hefty salary to talk cobblers...pretty much like I just have.

Stayed tuned!

Cans Festival - One More Sniff

Remember how news of the Cans Festival broke to us common plebs last May? Some posters, a list of artists too incredible to believe? In just 5 days time? Well, now we have a new mystery:

What could it be? Some have talked of something fresh, some have talked of The Grand Buff (actually I just made that up), as there is nothing concrete to go on and it case it is all about to disappear I thought I'd make one more trip to Leake Street this evening, just a month or so since my last visit.

Unlike some other graffiti festival sites I have been to where either the graff was taken away or the site remained sterile and un-touched since the event, Leake Street has generated a steady trickle of fresh stencil updates as well as territorial assault from graff crews. And based on some horror stories I have heard, some of those youngsters are quite viperous thugs.

A recent visitor has been Sickboy, adding a temple into Boris Johnson's gob and a collab with Spanish artist Zosen.

Sickboy and Zosen Fight The Power

It is good to see writers getting handy with the cans, personally I don't feel like its heresy for them to go over old stencil, its a force of nature.

Tizer - I put this one first because unusually I could read a bit of wild

That one above is HOT

"Google Codex Alimentarius". And to save you the trouble, this is what the website says: "The Codex Alimentarius Commission was created in 1963 by FAO and WHO to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme." Sounds as exciting as the EU's efforts to standardize the shape of bananas.

Ckeck the fate of Bansky's Caveman buff. Tags appear all over the cave drawings and the "buffed" area in Banksy's composition but none has covered the sprayer or Banksy's tag. It like no matter how hardcore or aggressive the writers want to appear, they're really convention abiding pussycats who can't actually write over an image of a human and have too much respect for the cool might of the Banksy brandname.

Tristan Manco has written in a recent art mag that some 651 un-invited artists signed up to have a go at stenciling over the first Cans weekend. Well many many more have turned up to add their un-regulated shit Among the loads of fresh stencils, one that caught my eye for good cutting, nice image and great colours was this, tagged "Onelegout".

Onelegout

So, is there a fresh wall of frame going up, is it the grand buff, is the site returning to Eurostar or is it just a minor clean up to make it look like it did that May bank holiday weekend? Lets see what Saturday morning brings.

Quite a lot more pics from this visit here, pics from the "official invited" artists at the opening here and for earlier relevant blog blurts see Cans Festival, Let Us Spray and diary of a toy at Cans aka "Banksy, NoLions, Eelus Group Show (or, Banksy - You Created A Monster)"

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.

Hot or Wot

My fave of the current Know Hope pieces on the street at the minute. Thankfully this one has been left alone.

Diggs We Are Shitting. . . .

The Krah http://www.flickr.com/photos/the-krah/ repainted a spot on the wall of The Foundry over the weekend and brought a new friend with him this time. Going by the name of "Fors" http://www.myspace.com/fors1

Hopefully we'll be seeing lots Mors very soon!

CORKED - Not a cheap whine

28 Cork St, London
15 Aug – 25 Aug 2008

pics: nolionsinengland except where noted

A battered white transit van sits on Cork Street, “Vandals” it proclaims and sure enough it seems to have suffered a graffiti attack, cops and wardens eye it suspiciously anticipating a ram raid and in many respects they are right.

Bloody vandals

Urban art has bemused the “serious” crowd but hitherto they haven’t had to worry too much with it staying in its place in grubby East End galleries and transitory pop-up ghetto bazaars. Until now. Corked, the Urban Angel debut gallery show has brought a strange whiff to snooty Mayfair gallery land and that smell is the odour of street art, the chemical whiff of spray paint.




No regal gilded windows for this show, rather a wildstyle Zeus sculpted arrow bursts through the window threatening to penetrate one of (count ‘em) 2 Ferrari’s parked outside, Eine promises HELL within. Its not difficult to predict the rapid disappearance of Eine shutters off the Hackney streets when the price tag on this sprayed window becomes common knowledge among the sub-nation of shop owners.




Israeli Know Hope has chronicled on streets around the world the despairing interaction with a puzzling society of a gangly, insecure tee shirt covered character, distinguished by his long skinny arms, lost heart and melancholy expression.


Know Hope - London street p;ieces, Aug 2008

In the major installation, the un-named character sits entranced by a collection of old photos, kindling rose tinted memories of a by gone age which he hopes existed. Powered by the glow of this hope, confused scrawled noise on the TV screen intermittently resolves itself into a heart, only to distort again as he oscillates through doubt and hope.


Know Hope: "Generated by anything/Reminisce About Anything


This endearing bemused and slightly forlorn figure sits in several stunning framed collage pieces (one a partial light box), sometimes in lonely solitude, in others finding the solidarity of communication with kindred spirits. One fabulous piece shows our stringy anti-hero discovering the strength of bonding through linked arms, reflecting the power transmitted through the linked cables behind.


Know Hope: These Arms Are For Linking


After rocking the concrete skimmed canvasses at his London solo show last autumn, Eine has re-discovered the dayglo colours of his older bear images, which I never really cared for. Perspex is this year’s “found metal” (see D*Face, Pure Evil). The street playtime innocence of groups of Blyton-esque happy smiley children morphs into threatening and sinister subversion seen through the lenses of the ubiquitous CCTVs, the poor children are then overwhelmed by simple negative labels such as Vandals, Activist, Guilty done in that Hell font. Of course you can tell it’s street play, because of the paint spray background and drips everywhere.


Eine: “Activist”. Photo: Wallkandy


In addition to his window busting 3D sculpture, Zeus has three large compressed perspective skyscraper plans painstaking assembled in hand-cut card, one natural daylight coloured, one night time and one a blanched out magnolia – which interestingly is possibly the most striking of the trio. There are no winos, car wrecks or graffiti down at street level, c’mon, what kind of rose-tinted diluted reality is that! Anyone who was at the Open Studio last year and saw Zeus working on his RUN stencil won’t fail to appreciate the incredible work that has gone into creating these pieces and don’t worry if this time you can’t read the word spelled out by the building plan, it’s not that wild style has moved beyond your comprehension, this time there actually isn’t a word in there. Or is there? Blow your brains out searching!


Zeus: Untitled. Photo: Wallkandy


Labrona’s Rumours of War, an acrylic on canvas group of fleeing mothers clutching children heading in the opposite direction to goose stepping half-sized men with moustaches. This piece with its colourful cross between Picasso and a kind of tribal art feel is another show highlight, simply lush and gorgeous.


Labrona: “Rumours Of War”


Charming Baker takes a pop at a deserving target: molly coddled never-fail kids. Two young brats fail to fail with their dads as ghillies helping them shoot a strung up rabbit.


Charming Baker: “The Overachievers”


Hush continues a run of form with the manga and geisha girls, or we boys know it – wife-friendly wall porn. Manga tits are present and correct as expected whilst the Graff Geisha triptych is just stunning.


Hush “Graf Geisha Tryptich”

Chillin with Hush - Corked aftershow

Romanywg gets a special mention for the oddest piece, the double bass that looks like a magician used it for sawing the box in half practise, in collaboration with French artist C215 and inspired by French artist Arman. It is worth having a look at the artists’ pictures of the piece under construction to see all the C215 pieces within the cuts between each section, link at the bottom.


Romanywg/C215 “Double Bass”


New name Michael Alacoque has produced a lurid set of skull faced dogs with ice creams on their heads and medallions. This is an allegory on the military establishment’s use of war memorials to both commemorate and promote war, I’m surprised you needed to ask. It is said many artists subconsciously paint themselves when doing an anonymous figurative work, Alacoque brilliantly contrived to actually look a bit like his sculptures with his bouffant hair and mascara.


Mikael Alacoque


This kind of show has no greater thrill when you confront in the flesh work by an overseas artist you hadn’t even heard of before and new but highly commended is young Brazilian artist Andre Firmiano. Three gorgeous canvas portraits echo a bastard offspring of Titifreak and Word To Mother styles, more please!


Andre Firmiani “Love”. Photo: Romanywg


Among familiar images of Mona and Toughen The Fuck Up, Dotmasters brings indoors the Burlesque Girl and his CANS “What A Load Of Rubbish”. Dotmasters have wisely, since these pieces are destined for the living room, decided not to overload with the authentic piss, vomit and dog-shit normally associated with a pile of bin bags.


Dotmasters "Load Of Rubbish"


Having experienced vicariously through the lenses of NY based flickr-ocrats the exquisite street works of Gaia and Imminent Disaster, the two are shown in different rooms here. Gaia’s Ourobus combines a nest of tail devouring snakes with a man devouring his own fist. Imminent Disaster’s wistful, seated, buttoned-up and extravagantly coiffured Ophelia looks like she can sit on chairs with the front right chair-leg sawn off. The viewer may ponder if the weight is meant to fall on the model’s own ankles on the box, in which case what does it mean?


Gaia “Ourobus”

Imminent Disaster “Ophelia”

Grafter’s work has somewhat polarised opinions but there is no doubt the quality of the stencils have come on leaps and bounds and he benefits hugely from moving away from photo-shopping nearly iconic images. The best piece, a Chris Stain like pair of smiling kids was displayed at the after-show venue .

Grafter

Inkie does what Inkie always does so well, beauties with labyrinthine tresses of hair.

Inkie

SHOK-1 contributes a set of two-tone takes on camera bodied flies, referencing the media’s obsession with celeb culture drawing paps like flies to shit. Several pieces are identified as “part of diptych, other half not shown” which leaves a mystery to be resolved.

Shok-1. Photo: Romanywg

Herakut – sad bat-masked squatting figures sharing a single tail. Hera’s loose brush work and Kut’s microscopically applied photorealistic eyes present and correct, watery-eyed pup missing.

Herakut “Right Before You Leave”

Two artists whose sweet work I would be remiss not to mention are Phillp March Jones:

“Beast 2”. Photo: Wallkandy

and Oliver Vernon:

“Red Swirl”

Urbanangel has unleashed not just strong works from old hands and great promise from new names, it has also launched its move to expand from the computer screen to global domination on the gallery streets. It has set a new benchmark for throwing a party and created a niche for itself by turning up in posh art twat land and preceding to blank the fine surroundings and do things its own way. The AfterShow party was memorable for …errrrrrrrrr…ummmm, actually I’d be surprised if many remember much at all, a gallery-shaped hole appeared in the London scene recently and Urbanangel are going to more than fill the space.

Several names haven’t been mentioned here, you can only read so much, so check out the excellent pics by Romanywg and Wallkandy to see more of the above as well as work by BEEJOIR, DANNY ALBECK, IAN STRAWN, PERIPHAL MEDIA PROJECTS, SNUG and VITCHE.