Hunto - The Graffiti Cubist

The Rag Factory
Heneage St, London
19 – 22 Nov 2009

all photos: Howaboutno (where noted) and NoLionsInEngland

Nothing really prepares you for the colourful orgy contained in the world of Hunto – The Graffiti Cubist. Internet searching doesn’t reveal much evidence of street style, Howaboutno among others captured this rare London piece in the Wick.


Hackney Wick with Twesh, Pharos, Saro (not in shot); Photo stolen from HowAboutno


Hailing from Italy, Hunto often paints with Heavy Artillery’s Italian representative Mr Wany, the London piece above was painted in the company of Twesh, also of Heavy Artillery. As a graffiti artist Hunto is a character man rather than a letterform purist.

A Rag Factory booking cock-up has forced the Hunto show to a utilitarian white cube about 100 yards further down Heneage St from the main Rag Factory site but at least the lighting is slightly better than the typical graff art cow-shed/dungeon/on-the-stairwell-down-to-the-pub-toilets space.


Hunto – The Graffiti Cubist


Hunto is showing a collection of canvasses, a mixed media painted-wall-plus-props installation and a beguiling set of screenprinted line drawings. His basic form involves character canvasses in lurid colours, cubist style with views from different angles collapsed onto a single plane (as opposed to intersecting flat planes and shapes).


The Hug


The first cursory glance will take in a collection of cubist faces with multiple viewing angles of various portrait figures. Closer inspection heightens the tension when erections and penetrated orifices become apparent. Finally, the penny drops when what at first looked like “urban art” splashes and dribbles are found to represent milky cum shots. All over the place!


Happy Time (7 pieces)


Hunto celebrates the joy of sexual abandon, multiple couplings and the erotic first crack, the moment when the budding relationship is consummated. The Bride is splattered with an excess of man juice, either she has had a traditional hen party or perhaps the catholic and horny Italian groom has been forced to wait until the first night.


The Bride


On these canvasses Hunto has used spraypaint almost exclusively, colours are generally flat, bright and blocky with just the occasional fade.


Eve


A corner installation features an amorous couple preserving their dignity by daintily discarding their underwear while they fumble around eachother’s bodies in that excited state brought on by the “your bedsit or mine” one night stand.


Hunto Installation


The bright and bold canvasses make the most immediate impact but the line drawings really show Hunto’s artistic skills. He certainly has the eye for rendering dynamic sex, passion, excitement and groups of bodies in a flat cubist style though the composition is more analytical and detailed than the relatively simple canvasses.


On The Bed



The party


One pair of canvasses stand out for being stylistically different, Hunto adopts a Basquiat style use of scratchy lines to outline the cubist subject which unsurprisingly is what newpaper reports would refer to as “a sex act”, done over a fractal colour layer.


First Meeting


Hunto seems to comment on contemporary casual sex in which a woman’s sexual favours are now cheap currency, evident in the Break in which the woman indifferently flits between a cigarette and a cock, we see a cityscape behind her perhaps signifying that she is so un-concerned she can’t be bothered to draw the curtains.



Break


This show is a treat for the eyes and a stimulant to the loins. I like the fact that Hunto has not forsaken his basic graffiti tool but he has confidence in his art and doesn’t feel any need to yell “I’m graffiti”, there are no references to his graffiti roots such as contrived dots or tags. The whole show has a strong style and a strikingly clear and consistent theme. The canvasses are brash and skillful but for me the drawings are among the best new work seen this year.


Title unknown dippy hippy line drawing


The art may be a little saucy for display in a family home but then again, it was the Italians who made nudity commonplace with their renaissance. It’s amusing to find that even in the hands of a cubist (f’naar) the masculine member still comes out looking like a toilet door graffiti cock.



It's not porn darling, It's art: pics here

The Thousands

Opening This Wednesday, "The Thousands" is a celebration of the gallery work of some of the top street artists in the World curated by RJ Vandalog. Artists to be shown include

Adam Neate
Aiko
Anthony Lister
Armsrock
Banksy
Barry McGee
Bast
Blek le Rat
Burning Candy
Chris Stain
David Ellis
Elbowtoe
Faile
Futura 2000
Gaia
Herakut
Jenny Holzer
José Parlá
Judith Supine
Kaws
Know Hope
Nick Walker
Os Gêmeos
Roa
Sam3
Shepard Fairey
Skewville
Swoon
WK Interact

Vandalog has developed an unrivalled coverage of what is new, news and fascinating in the world of street art. The energy he has brought to covering the street art scene on a daily basis is a tour-de-force, digesting his Vandalog blog in the form of a daily email has become required reading at Graffoto towers. Where one person gets the time and energy from is a mystery.

Graffoto is privileged to be involved in presenting a display of about 50 photos from the combined library of HowAboutNo and NoLionsInEngland at The Thousands, many of which haven't been published before.

The idea is to juxtapose the gallery art and installations with examples of work on the streets of London by the most of the featured artists.

The show also sees the launch of RJ's book "The Thousands: Painting Outside, Breaking In" again we are honoured that this features a modest photographic contribution from ourselves, we can't wait to see the finished article.

Entrance is free, details of location and opening hours are as per the flyer, see you at the opening - refreshments by Brewdog

Panik - Changing Faces

5 Nov – 28 Nov 2009
Sartorial Gallery, London

Panik ATG aka Mr P (and now – also known as Jack Murray) has been a feature of London streets for a decade or so, currently as a key member of ATG and formerly as a member of the now defunct London Frontline.




His second solo show this year has opened at Sartorial Art Gallery in the small project space which was previously earmarked as Tek 33’s Writers' Bench space.




As a bomber Panik has a pretty impressive ability to access rooftops and various other walls.


Panik ATG, ARXS


As a painter, Panik rocks a highly coloured a tribal geometric style tending towards a cubism with acid colours vibe.


Untitled


There are three larger canvasses, of which this gorgeous Basquiat influenced work blew the eyeballs off my face.


Free n Easy


The earlier show at Pure Evil gallery was characterised by a couple of nuggets surrounded by a large degree of untamed chaos, consisting primarily of the Panik dub at manageable canvas scale, this show is a far more accomplished artistic achievement and confirms Panik’s ability to leave the large scale street stuff behind and produce “art”. Having become accustomed to many recent shows incorporating pieces which the artists failed to sell last time out (which actually is a blessing, remember the bad old days when you walked into the PV to find every piece of shit had a red dot), it is also a relief to find that apart from one editioned print everything here is new (or at least, wasn’t shown in the Pure Evil gallery show).


Take Time To Dream

More pics of Changing Faces art here

Tinsel Edwards, Twinkle Troughton, Meter Maids!

Irate motorists in Shoreditch and Hoxton took a hammering last Thursday as a blizzard of parking tickets were issued in a blitz on cars in the area. The usual sealed sellophane wrappers warned that it was illegal for any one other than the driver of the vehicle to remove the ticket.




While on a lunch break constitutional Graffoto caught un-expectedly up with a pair of wardens leading the onslaught on parking in the area. From behind there was something familiar and saucy about the cascading black hair, the seamed stockings and the red stilettos and catching up our suspicions were confirmed.




It was Twinkle Troughton and Tinsel Edwards dressed to kill as meter maids – pulses raced I can tell ya, if only real traffic wardens looked like this.




The very realistic cellophane wrappers turned out to contain not a ticket but a limited edition signed piece of mini art titled “It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times”, featuring a closed UK high street institution, Woolworths.




Loss of jobs, industries and insecurity are a wide-spread reality for millions caught in the recession fall-out yet one senses a ray of hope in Twinkle adn Tinsel's sentiments, a possibility that within the recession people do find the inner reserves to rebuild, recover and grow. Out of the negative coming a positive.

Imagine the shifting emotions of a driver thinking they’d picked up a parking fine only to find they’d actually been gifted a piece of free street art. Again, out of a negative coming a positive.




So there you have it, Twinkle and Tinsel make an event of giving out free art, cheer up at least two wandering wage slaves (Graffoto doesn’t run on fresh air you know) and throw around complex ideas about emotional polarities into the bargain.

Heavy Artillery - Haters

Prescription Art Gallery
Brighton, England
22 Oct 2009 -

all photos: NoLionsInEngland


Heavy Artillery, awesome top end graffiti writers have opened their first whole crew show in Prescription Art’s gallery in Brighton. This show takes place in a distressed and dilapidated former music library with scene-of-the-crime tripod lighting, unlit external toilets and no running water, so a graff crew is bound to feel comfortable.


Heavy Artillery Haters


The derelict feel and distressed textures of the large single room floors and cavernous basement create an ideal ambience for graffiti art. Upon entering at ground level the first explosion of colour and elaborate writing comes from three floor to ceiling pieces by Giroe, Gary and Roid. Giroe and Gary look more or less exactly as they would on a street wall, a crisp clean riot of colour.


Giroe - large piece on multiple canvas matrix


Roid’s writing outdoors takes the law of the letter and throws the law away, deconstructing the alphabet to the point of virtual illegibility to all but the most tutored eyes so it is a surprise that for this indoor show he has gone for a less wild word form, making the lettering more legible whilst setting them against a backdrop belching comic style smoke trails.


Gary, Roid – large pieces on multiple canvas matrix



Roid

Another bit of Heavy Artillery info, there are twelve members of the HA crew, 9 of them have work in the show – Alert, Rench and Relay missing. Upstairs the standout piece is a combined mural and installation by HA’s friend INSA. Its centrepiece is a dulled down version of the chrome arse from his “Looking For Love In The Wrong Places” show set into a circular black and white vortex flanked on either side by female posteriors , each caressed by a hand whose nail paint features a mash-up of the classic INSA pink, black and white stripy heels, a pair of which adorned a suitably willowy lady enjoying the show. INSA has enjoyed a trigonometric exercise by creating a visually complete circle drawn across a floor and ceiling each intersecting a half cylinder recess, a interesting multi-dimensional draughting challenge.


INSA – Live The Dream, Feel The Magic


Giroe, aka Jiroe in the world of graff which encourages writers to vary the spelling of their name for greater opportunity to play with letters, has created a multi-media portrait which is mainly spray painted on the wall but the eyes are light up by swirling projected fractals, whilst the teeth change colours in a way that would have dentists taking up drugs. Very psychedelic.


Giroe


Gebes has done the half-height burner on wall and integral canvasses thing, several of the canvasses are filled-in outside the graff outline with fuzzy coloured strips, a motif which re-occurs in Gebes more abstract – give or take the occasional inter-galactic astral carrot - canvasses.


Gebes



Gebes


In the basement HA crew are a touch more focussed on art created for canvas rather than across it. That said, Storm has a graff styled “S” with a faded fill and “Heavy As” tag on canvas which almost looks as if it might have been surgically extracted from a full Storm dub. If graff elements in your home is your thing then this or two other canvasses with HA tags might be picked up for only slightly more than the original release cost of a TOX print.


Storm "S"


Mr Wany has contributed three diminutive canvasses each featuring a single surreal character that share a pinched face appearance with characters often featured Mr Wany’s external walls. Letters are woven into the work both visibly and also in a very subliminal way deeply disguised in the paint, the lettering is so light it has the appearance of vestigial remnants of painted over previous work on the same canvas.


Mr Wany Red Line/W Lion/Alien God


One end of the cellar consists of a dirty wild urban graff tableau created by Odisy complete with discarded cans on the floor, picture the crazy archaeology of colours you get on an illegal wall built up from generations of throwies, tags and characters, all of which can be made out in the aerosol mix. Four large portraits on canvas blend into this backdrop but have been hung tilted from the ceiling about 2 feet forward from the background – Odisy wants to separate his art from the graff.


Odisy


Stepping back from the work reveals the characters as actually integral with the mural behind. The secrets of Odisy’s art alter ego, Alex Young are really kept close to the chest in this show with only one example of his pointilist style tucked away two floors up between INSA and Gebes.

At the opposite end of the cellar, one of the highlights of the show displayed on a rough mural featuring an assortment of his characters are the decks, canvasses and paintings on found materials contributed by Nylon, the second non HA writer and artist to be honoured with an invitation to share the HA love. A particular favourite for its rich colours, heavy paint and rough surface texture is Zulu. In the flickr show set (link below) is another pic showing the lush surface finish to better effect.


Nylon – Zulu



Nylon - deck


Twesh has been full on writing his name on a basement wall in his usual catenary style with outrageous variations in the proportions of his letters, taking one example the word stretches to scratch three canvasses, one pair, a diptych just about embrace a fragment of the “T”, the other feeds off an apparent explosion of particles (Structure 01.mb) blowing into a graphic of modernist architecture.


Twesh


The crowning touch in both sets of canvasses is Twesh’s calligraphy, written in diagonal layers, its curvaceous beauty is almost the diametric opposite to the wanton indecipherability of the graffiti’d name they spring from.


Twesh – detail


Prescription Art has a spectacular space in Brighton with perfect run-down grandeur for graffiti art shows and on all three floors the artists have made great use of the architectural nooks and crannies.


Roid, Aroe


The previous HA show at prescription Art in August was dominated by over sized graffiti names done over a wall and canvass melange and I had hoped to see more of the art skills of these graffiti writers, all of them are accomplished artists outside the graffiti genre. A large burner across a set of canvasses rarely results in anything other than crude fat cap abstracts whose individual composition is almost entirely an accident of positioning within the piece rather any particular artistic intention. Maybe the randomisation is a valid artistic device in itself but there is little doubt that this wasn’t meant as a significant conceptual exercise. Where the crew – and friends – have got out the acrylics and other materials the results have generally been exciting, it would have been great to have seen more of this.


Storm (word and cockerel), Gebes


The show is one for fans of graff and is a lot better for not behaving like it needs to create converts, when graff gets evangelical it tends to castrate itself and make tame, crowd-pleasing adjustments, thankfully Heavy Artillery haven’t felt the need to go down that route. The show title itself comes across almost as a challenge, you hate us and we don’t care.


INSA Heels (models own)


The un-even localised gallery lighting makes photographing this shit a bit tricky, it’s pretty certain that the colours showing up in the flicks are probably not the colours you would see with the naked eye in daylight.

Regrettably with a lot to gas on about this ended up too long to include relevant street pieces. Check out a big collection of the HA street work on Heavy Artillery’s crew flickr.


7th Letter (AWR/MSK crews aka Graffiti Gods, Roid and Aroe are members)


Likewise, Nylon’s stuff here. INSA has a website yer. Finally, this write up contains more photos of HA pieces that it does the art work, check my show flicks here for some more HA art.

Keep 'Em Peeled. . . Or Don't As The Case May Be

As that eternal twat Shaw Taylor used to tell us back in days gone by, onto another twat that needs to be kept an eye out for and had some polite words with.

From Flickr friend eddiedangerous http://www.flickr.com/photos/eddiedangerous comes this annoying story of street art theft - seemingly no one is safe, but currently hardest hit is the currently most active street artist - Kid Acne.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eddiedangerous/4029576457

Follow through to eddies picture on Flickr for the current discussion taking place, am sure it will grow - but this guy seriously needs a word or two in his shell-like to maybe tell him that we do appreciate it, and we mostly appreciate it being left where it is thank you very much!

For more pics of how great the recent batch of Acne "stabby girls" looked, view my Flickr pics here, Nolions pics here and the Kid Acne Flickr pool here.

Miss Van – Lovestain

Stolen Space, Old Truman Brewery, London
1 – 18 October 2009


all photos: NoLionsInEngland except W10 where noted


Miss Van - Lovestain


In a year which has seen fewer significant international street artists coming to grace the walls of London’s grittier galleries it is a relief to find a major artist prepared to stage a large scale show. Miss Van is renowned for the coquettish femine figures she calls her dolls or “poupees” and throughout this vast exhibition she doesn't scrimp with these gorgeous sultry beauties.


Miss Van - Lovestain


Sightings of authentic Miss Van originals are rare on the London streets and thus far, sadly, no sightings of new street Miss Vans have been recorded. This one from Ladbroke Grove goes back a few years, thanks to W10 for the flick.


Miss Van – Ladbroke Grove c. 2003 - photo W10 (thanks)


Lovestain is partly retrospective and partly new 2009 material and is presented within two separate spaces in the same block within the Old Truman Brewery. The new Lovestain material is in the smaller permanent Stolen Space venue.




There seem to be a couple of recently new twists to the Miss Van style. The first development introduces the rather uncertain show title; a collection of images of pious, angelic and saintly females have been modified to look like clowns, each piece called an Inmaculada. Throughout the retrospective, none of the pieces shown are anything other than 100% Miss Van creations whereas a significant portion of the new material works on an existing image from some other source. An IMmaculada is a Spanish Catholic reference to the virgin Mary’s immaculate conception or, in the more literal interpretation of the Spanish devotion, “without stain”. The English prefix IN quite often in English conveys a sense of negative and opposite, think incapable versus capable, so Miss Van seems to be setting up her show to represent the opposite of the immaculate conception, a celebration of physical love. And you thought it referred to something disgusting didn’t you.


Inmaculada


Anyone else seeing Gene Simmonds in there? The subversion of religious imagery is taken even further in the bastardisation of a religious relief of Virgin Mary, and in this one the Miss Van-isation becomes almost sinister


Inmaculada statue


The second twist is that Miss Van has taken the circus elements seen in the 2008 series “Still A Little Magic” and morphed her poupees into clowns. Not clowns in gay, cheerful make –em laff mode but the sad eyes behind the smile kind of real-clown.


Lovestain 2


Obviously a pretty female remain a pretty female no matter what her mood and the most recent Miss Van poupees have been painted with a darker and meaner disposition yet without losing that femme fatale appeal. The lips are smeared in thick clown make-up a la Robert Smith but the puckering has collapsed and distorted into a snarl. Like the aloof but beautiful Goths you couldn’t approach at school, you can take one of these a beauty like this home but you know she’ll be a silent ice maiden, she’ll sniff at your interior decor, she’ll be expensive and she won’t get on with your friends but you’ll be her slave for life if you can possess her.


Lovestain 7


Present but not as prominent in as in previous work are the flaming straw coloured waterfalls of hair. Although mainly tied up in bobs or hidden under hats, the one instance in the new work where the hair is big, floaty and flaming it becomes a major factor in making Lovestain 5 the show-stopping painting it is, a single melancholy masqued pas-joyeuse sits with a fox to her left and a halo of candles but the hair sets a gorgeous golden tone to the painting and provides the contrast for highlighting for the milkiness of the breasts straining the harlequin corset. Whilst at some point the inner perve was bound to emerge, you’ll observe that no link is being made between the candle flame and the wax candle images and any symbolic connection to the show title. None.



Lovestain 5


Lovestain Retrospective

The retrospective part of the show picks up Miss Van’s story from 2003 with about 40 paintings on canvas and wood as well as a couple of installations. This larger space has hugely un-forgiving top to bottom windows on two sides and the consequence is that the space is a bit un-forgiving for laying out (even Downey’s street sign sputnik looked pretty lost and awkward in the vast truman brewery pampas)




The earliest female figures are less three dimensional, the hair hasn’t become the yellow abundance of the last few years and eyes are part open, almost suggesting an alluring flutter of the eyelids.


Untitled 64 – 2003


In more recent times, the figures acquire a more solid form, colours take a richer deeper hue, the hair becomes hugely significant and in almost all paintings post 2006 the eyes are closed and smudged. Animals appear in the composition, often conventionally as a companion, occasionally as guardians and even as possibly mythical or fantasy based symbolisms.


Flaming Bird 1 – 2007


The fox makes recurs in many on the later retrospective pieces though there is a period through 2007 where the female figures become inter-twined with skulls of horned beasts, both in the canvasses and on a trio of paintings on leather


untitled on leather – 2007


With many of the animals, though they look at first glance like either a fem-warriors battle headdress or dead animal stole, there is something sexual about the way the animals cover and embrace the women, so much so that the viewer is invited to speculate that the animals actually symbolise the male of the species.


Fox Hair – 2006


A significant installation Entering an almost enclosed changing screen under an hanging chandelier draped in flaxen hair, the observer is surrounded by voluptuous semi naked long haired beauties each bearing a single candle, their eyes downcast, they watch over the observer. It is impossible for a man to pick fault with this.


every changing screen should be like this


A retrospective involves dicing with fortune, danger lurks, will people hark back to days when the artist was fresh, vital and bristling, will any particular period be found wanting. No problem with Miss Van though, her style and quality are remarkably consistent and she retains in every painting a subtle but erotically charged appeal. If only she could have painted something on the streets.



Obviously with so much material on display the pictures here are only a fraction of the show, there is a fuller photo set of the new Lovestain material here and there are a lot more pictures of the retrospective part of the show here