Hell's Half Acre - Lazarides Group show

Leake St,
Waterloo
London
12 – 17 October 2010


All photos: nolionsinengland


Hells Half Acre promises to be a Halloween-ish subterranean wandering loosely based upon Dantes’s inferno.

You enter off Leake Street, now one of London’s premier graffiti halls of fame and therefore generally only worked by visiting writers from Prague and New Zealand. The transition from graffiti assault to Circles of Hell central you enter through a short brick lined cave where Dave Choe has been let loose directly on the walls. (er - perhaps i got the wrong impression, just hold on a mo...)


David Choe


Top highlight inside is the art taxidermist Poly Morgan’s almost luminous explosive cluster of stuffed pigeons. In a more radical and interesting world, this would be available in Ikea.


Poly Morgan


Conor Harrington has a set of 5 huge canvasses hung in the arc of a circle like something you might chance upon at night in a wood clearing just when you were beginning to believe you had passed the “virgins sacrificed here copse”. Harrington’s work is just made to be shown in this kind of moody The moody dank cellar vibe sets off the lush tones of Harrington’s work to vibrant effect, as usual.


Conor Harrington


Ian Francis’ work comes on in leaps and bounds, though I would now struggle to tell the Chloe Early from your Ian Francis in an “eyes-wide-open-but-labels-covered” test.


Ian Francis


Laz is your consummate leveller with none of the usual “don’t breath/ don’t photograph” preciousness, the website promises “Interaction with the works will be encouraged as part of this multi-sensory experience” though the only interaction I can recall was getting Lady NoLions’ camera wet in a drizzle installation across the width of one of the caverns. Apparently from a certain angle with the wind in the right direction it captures the light and splits it into its spectrum components though, as a visiting gallerist assured me, “it’s quite difficult making rainbows”. No photo.


Sphere with hypodermics – possibly Paul Insect?


Anthony Micallef’s work is getting more impressionist and darker with the increasing affinity for charcoal, like the Harrington the utilitarian backdrop really allowed the work to pop.


Anthony Micallef (fairly certain)


With a decent art show the experience is the objective dear boy, not the art education. So it’s a pleasure to confess that I couldn’t pin down a large number of the installations to an artists and then reading the blurb after the show, couldn’t identify half the artists’ names on the sheet.



(I thought this was Charles Kraft – but he’s not on the list) - UPDATE - Anthony Micallef - thanks "anonymous"


Mark Jenkins hanging humanoid chrysalis artefacts passed me by, they need pretext or context, are we looking into a human battery incubator or the pantry of some vampirish food preserver, dunno.


Mark Jenkins


Jonathon Yeo’s infamy rests on portraits collaged from clippings from porn mags. On this occasion he has pulled of a trompe d’oeil consisting of several layers of perspex with collaged nude clippings on each layer which for a person of a particular height, viewing from a particular point dead ahead combine and resolve into a pair of praying nude females. Tapping into lust as one of Dante’s circles this piece is amusing and delightful, if just a tad gimmicky.


Jonathan Yeo

There were many video installations in various terminal offshoots from the circles of hell, the one which captured the eye and the theme of death, torment and decay was a trio of what appeared to be back projected petris dishes with writhing maggots. You feel like standing there egging the buggers on to hatch.


Unknown (to me)


This is the hedonistic green shoots of the London art week, the week where bedlam meets capitalism in the name of decoration. The anointed PV’ers were a phenomenal clash. Italian suit-wearing suave faintly Mediterranean guys and their willowy black dress wearing Tasmins rubbed shoulders with un-shaven artists and the usual suspect forumite Laz fetishists. Graffoto – the blog that is proud to be plus 1! (thank you dear friend and “invitor”, you know who you are).


Vhils


The curation and staging of this show is superb, as you would expect from Lazarides. I was reminded of the Faile Lost in Glimmering Shadows show in that old school or Paul Insect's Poison in the old Kings Coss baths. Dwell on the quality of the work and the dream-like nature of the staging as overall I think this show may actually not live up to the hype, the creation of false expectations. This is an “experience” event and the experience is probably a bit conventional and tame when something more fiendish and macabre seemed to be promised by the allusions to Hades, not to mention the dire warnings that under 13s are going to need adult comfort and counselling. I suspect my kids would prefer to go to the London Dungeons.

More photos here


Vhils

Mike Ballard - Whose Coat Is That Jacket You're Wearing

Walker's Tailor
157 Robert St,
London, NW1 3QR
8 – 23 October 2010

All photos: nolionsinengland



"I woke with a bolt this morning. I had been dreaming about the night my jacket went missing. I could see it all in the dream. Where everything and everyone was in the pub. M and E were sat at the table as I got up to goto the loo. My jacket hooked over the back of the chair. As I enter the loo, M goes to the bar, and starts chatting to two girls, while he’s waiting to be served. Elliot goes over to join hime (sic) and help with the drinks. In that split second A guy moves over to our table, squeezing through the crowds, grabs my coat and is out through the door, all while I am still pissing. It is the night everything changed." MBSC:JC/200.19


Ever wondered what kind of kunt lurks in a bar with the objective of stealing your personal property? Well Mike Ballard has created an art spectacle proposing “I am that kind of cunt”.

Mike Ballard has spent ten years taking his twisted and silent revenge on an innocent(ish) society. His story is that ten years ago a prized jacket was stolen from him in a bar. His grief and rage prompted him to go on a larceny spree, stealing coats in revenge against that silent unknown threat, the bar dipper.


Walker's Tailor


Now Mike is contrite, seeking to right his wrongs and to exorcise the demons. “Whose Coat is that your jacket is wearing” is a display of 200 coats Ballard stole during this 10 year campaign of shame and evil. Turn up, you might find yours and if you do Ballard wants you to have it back.

There is a twist of course, you have to be able to rigorously prove it is yours. Ballard never stole to profit, or to clothe himself or even particularly to inflict trauma and pain on any individual victim, he stole as revenge. He would then photograph every jacket, note the date and record the contents of every pocket. So can you remember what packet of sweets and phone number written in lipstick was in the jacket when it got stolen? Ballard has it all catalogued on a secret indexed card database and you just have to get the description of those details right to get your coat back.

"Fashion Week is here again, and loads of after parties going off. There’s always some dizzy intern working on the coat check" MBSC:JC/200.125


The show itself takes place in a tiny shop, seemingly formerly a tailor’s workshop, A densely packed forest of jackets hang down from the ceiling, you have to stoop low to move around. Hanging from each jacket is a kind of dated looking luggage label, each of which has an entry from Ballard’s diary.




The first sensation that hits you entering this cramped space is the smell, a whiff of damp mustiness falling off a collection of wet weather gear that has been stored away for too long in a dark cupboard.

The art within this show has to be perceived as a number of layers. Firstly, the tight packing of the clothes obliges you to see the aggregation of the individual deeds, the woods rather than the trees. The artistic desire to create a shock is partially satisfied with this overwhelming sense of the total misery represented by all this stolen property.




Ballard has structured the experience so you can’t really take in the details of individual garments but what you can appreciate is the next macro level of detail in the experience, the individual; statements tagged to each jacket. These reveal the real art of the show in the detail of the personal confessions, the insights into the mind and bizarre logic of the serial coat purloiner. One thing missing from these written vignettes is any sense of shame or guilt. Quite often the message is one blaming the victim and the words lead us to conclude that Ballard has actually never stopped blaming himself for whatever lapse or buffoonery on his part led to the loss of his jacket.




Of course there is way more to this than merely running a lost property locker. What Mike Ballard is saying is let’s see how much you can take, how sanguine can you be about the notion that celebrating other peoples transient misery is art and here we zoom back out to the” big idea” level of his art. It certainly has a shock factor. It is verging on performance art, and a very cerebral performance at that. Ballard is putting himself in the firing line (metaphorically if not always literally, it may not actually be Mike Ballard in the space at any particular time!) for the moral indignation of the many and of course the special fury of the few should any victims actually find their coat among the Ballard trove. In terms of the personal danger Ballard might be placing himself in this is almost up there with the conceptual artist Chris Burden who had a mate shoot him in the arm for art in 1971.

Let’s not forget the risk of police scrutiny Ballard may attract. Stealing coats is theft, thieving on this scale goes beyond petty, who is to say that Ballard won’t find himself assisting the Met with their enquiries some time soon.

"Were the answers to be found in this long war of the will against the power of taboo? I doubt it so I took another and another and another" MBSC:JC/200.161


The added ingredients in this conceptual layer cake include the idea of catharsis through public humiliation and also the challenge to a Society which incarcerates as a punitive measure – can you forgive me? If you can’t forgive the reformed coat thief, then what’s the point in prisons because you will clearly never forgive nor forget anyone who has been through the “that’ll teach you not to do that again” system of correction through punishment.

The reaction to the announcement of this show has firmly focussed on the big concept, both public (via the internet, that lovely dis-intermediating tool for direct and un-censored expression) and press have homed in on the clash between the artistic concept of creating a shock spectacle out of stolen property and the personal risks taken by the artist in revealing this despicable history.




Ballard is unique in creating a art concept that exposes him to vilification and possibly violent retribution, it is fascinating to watch and interest provoked in his concept has gone world-wide. With this particular genie now out of the bottle it is possible to run with a whole new genre of “Look I’ve been naughty, me” concept art performances.

"Why put your coat in a locker then not pay the 20p to lock it. It doesn’t make sense for the sake of 20p. You will from now on though" MBSC:JC/200.92

To test the integrity of the back story, and to dispel the notion that even the facade with its tangentially linked and convenient name might be a sham fabricated by Ballard, with a little “due diligence” on the internet Graffoto tracked down a photo of Walkers Tailor in its genuine previous life.


photo from online business directory here

Open during the huge draw that is London’s Frieze art fair, this show is very close to the Frieze site, about 10 minutes walk from the Frieze entrance if you cut through Chester Terrace to Albany St, or about 20 minutes if you walk the long way round past Great Portland St tube station. This is likely to be more confrontational than anything you are likely to see in that tented world of the surreal unreal.

Graffoto has been a champion of Ballard’s art, his immersive room experiences and the quality of his canvas paintings and light boxes have always been exceptional. There is nothing on sale here which actually isn’t new for Ballard but still this show is a totally new kettle of aquatic lifeforms. It is a show big on concepts and big on risks. It’s a show designed to be controversial, intended to shock and bound to provoke extreme reactions. The crime of stealing coat is a very intimate one, the property is personal and in virtually every instance the victim and perpetrator are in the same room at the same time. Should anyone identify their jacket, respond to the provocation and give the artist a slap, we will be at the front of the queue pointing and saying “you got what you deserve”.

"B. just called me and said she had her handbag stolen. Shit!!!....what the fuck, I’m raging but what can I say. I hope she never finds out what I’ve been doing. " MBSC:JC/200.39

we are merely vermin

A brief retrospective on the Souls on Fire (SOF) lads, and a special mention for Vermin who has his own show this month

All photos by shellshock


“If human beings were shown what they're really like, they'd either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves“ (Aldous Huxley)


I’ve always been partial to a bit of the Souls on Fire (SOF) crew. They make you work. It’s not a picture of a decent looking woman, or a 6th Former’s clumsy political message. They make you wonder what it is in their art that you like. It makes you delve into your inner core to worry about yourself and your own frame of mind. Am I a bit mad because I like this stuff? Don’t answer that question….

I wanted to do a short blog on their work, and when I had a look through my photo archive I realised that they are slightly elusive and their pieces were rather thin on my ground. But it’s still nice to raid the archive and show a smattering of their productions in Bristol.

SOF mainly hail from Frome in Somerset (pronounced ‘Froom’, like vroom, and NEVER ‘Frowm’, like gnome, although more and more newsreaders seem to be doing that) and consist of Pen, Boswell (who used to write under the name ‘Warp‘), Vermin and Rowdy. They mainly write and paint in Bristol and as you’ll see from my slightly random photos they also often work on their own, plus collaborating with other writers, some of whom may not be obvious choices.



Boswell & 3rd Eye - St Werberghs tunnel - August 2008


Pen & Rowdy - St Werberghs tunnel - August 2008


Here’s a few from the Mina Rd tunnel in Bristol a couple of years ago. Boswell does his customary ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ type creatures, but 3rd Eye has his ever so slightly fluffy edges with cartoon-ish characters (still maybe not a cartoon for the kiddiewinks though...).

Pen writes his name like he’s under electric shock treatment and Rowdy shows his ‘other style’; that of ethereal impressionist abstraction (it’s not all crocodiles and painted rocks you know)


Boswell and Pen - The Deaner - July 2009 (with a sliver of Kato on the left)


Boswell and Cheo close up - The Deaner - July 2009


Boswell and Cheo - The Deaner - July 2009

Over the other side of town, I’ve found a few in the archive from the Dean Lane skate park in July 2009. It’s no surprise that Boswell and Pen mutually work together (top photo), but let’s be honest who would have expected Cheo and Boswell to be able to sit on a wall in sync!? Somehow they pull it off, rather like a nice cop / nasty cop routine.


Vermin and Mr Jago - Stokes Croft - September 2010


Vermin - close up - Stokes Croft - September 2010

Finally, I’ve pinned one down from Vermin (a.k.a Dale ‘vn’ Marshall), painted this summer with Mr Jago round the back of Stokes Croft (the self proclaimed ’cultural quarter’ of Bristol). The emotion and fluidity in both of their work shines out for me.

I think it might be my Asperger’s leaning, but I could lap this stuff up all day. I find the abstractions and fantastical meanderings mesmerising, and I‘ve never been afraid of a bit of darkness and emotion. It‘s probably therefore no surprise that my favourite canvas was done by Crie, from the Trans Pennine Nomads (TPN) crew; someone I’ve blogged on several times before. And no visitor has ever had a bad word to say about it (yet.... Nolions & HAN have never been round to my gaff...lol)


My Crie canvas

So, I’m looking forward to ‘Room 101, The Fine Art of Graffiti‘, which is Vermin’s first solo show, opening this week. It showcases 101 oil paintings completed in 101 days this summer, as well as five additional show paintings and site-specific installations. Details are on the flyer below.



The room 101 theme obviously draws parallels from George Orwell’s novel, 1984, as well as Dale’s personal experiences and ongoing battle with his own mental health, including stays in a secure unit. His history and life story (visit here for details) is in equal parts amazing, shocking and totally understandable when you see his art. 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 story and his soul.

The show also has a dedicated website here

Papal Bull

Pope In London - Street artists rise as foretold

photos Nolionsinengland except S.Butterfly where noted


Benedictus episcopus servus servorum Dei, Pope Benedict, Bishop, Server of The Servants of God, etc etc is in the UK to give us a bit of a telling off and to enjoy one of the most expensive inter-city long-weekend breaks on record (Twelve million quids worth is the accepted estimate of his inclusive board and travel deal). Graffoto was a little disappointed that the opportunity presented by the elections in the UK this Summer passed by un-remarked by most of the street art/anarchist community, perhaps with the honourable exception of Dr d, so it is encouraging to see this papal visit has stimulated the minds and exacto knives of a few stencilistas in London. For anyone not familiar with the circumstances, the two protest themes hinge around expense and paedophilia cover-ups.

Top prize goes to the ever thoughtful K-Guy who placed controversial work in a couple of spots designed for maximum visibility to the papal entourage and all passing Catholics. K-Guys is at his best when presented with a toxic cocktail of politics, religion and hipocracy and the quality of his political work is sustained in this hear-no-see-no-speak-no cannon-ised monkeys. Reducing the pontiff to the level of a primate and mocking the Church’s inability or un-willingness to properly and clearly address the horrendous crimes committed within its sanctuary by a few (“Paedophilia is a sickness, they were “ill”), this work pulls no punches.


K-Guy “see-no-hear-no-speak-no”


K-Guy placed a version of this image on Thursday night on the Popemobile route to Westminster, Graffoto made a detour on the way to the day job on Friday morning arriving just as one chuffed-to-bits cleaner removed the piece off the streets. 0-1 to the buff.


I’ll ‘ave that


K-Guy was motivated to go one better for the Pope’s benefit on Saturday (today), placing a second specimen inside Hyde Park where the Pope was due to lead an open air séance or something. Wonder if it survived until the vigil, certainly thousands of Catholics will have got the message if it did.


K-Guy


SPQR also addresses the popular theme of papal cover-ups, this splendidly executed work referencing the less than transparent internal investigations supposedly carried on by the Catholic church. Being placed on a gallery wall miles from where the papal retinues and the flock would gather renders this effort a tad futile but to be fair to SPQR, he was presumably rather busy with a solo show opening at Signal Gallery that night.


SPQR – “Report Exposes Church Sex”


Much closer to the heart of the papal action geographically speaking is Nick Walker’s Cardinal Sinister placed on the walls of the Royal College of Art immediately outside Hyde Park. Nick Walker renders the Pope as a Blofeld-like evil head of a sinister organisation stroking the cat on his lap. We like the analogy to the head of a crime based organisation, the stencil has impressive scale and detail but we feel the Royal College of Art gains more through boosting its waning“edginess” quotient than Mr Walker gains for his imaginative composition.


Nick Walker "Cardinal Sinister"


We thank the ever vigilant Ms S Butterfly for photographing this effort by Raymond Salvatore Harmon (anyone like to hazard a guess at his religion?) aka RSH, location unknown. Perhaps the splatters of blood are a bit OTT but the few pieces by RSH we have seen recently have been almost violently dayglo, the point of the work is more important than the colour palate.


RSH – Suffer The Children (photo S Butterfly)

D*Face used the opening on Thursday of a retrospective show at Electric Blue Gallery, Middlesex St to mock the new religions of corporatism and branding with his logo cross (curiously, this time hung upside down St Peter style), previously seen at the 2008 aPOPcalypse Now show.


D*Face logo cross (aPOPcalypse Now, 2008)


The Pope angrily charged D*Face with what he called “Aggressive Atheism” but the bulk of the mainstream press have chosen to interpret the remark in the wider context of British Society.

Poster Boy In London

Dog days of Summer suck and taking a family holiday at the end of August can involve compromise. For me the compromise became apparent a couple of weeks ago when an calling-all-art-knobs email arrived announcing a Poster Boy multi-location book launch, one leg of which would be at the Pure Evil Gallery, London.

Within minutes, a sceptical buddy mail arrived saying “oh yeah – Poster Boy...one dude.....four simultaneous launches around the world [ish, London and 3 in the US] .... does not compute”. Fuck that I thought and got back on the kite board (kinda – day 1 is body dragging)....I wasn’t going to be anywhere near so best not to dwell on the inconsistency.

Reacquainting myself over the past couple of days with what’s new and what’s forgotten in the London street galleries I was really surprised to find Pure Evil’s gallery resonating with irrefutable evidence of a continuing Poster Boy presence - books, beer and cut out paste ups strewn on the floor.

Before checking out the PVs tonight I found the end of Summer transformed by Poster Boy action on the London streets. No, I don’t know when these interventions happened other than it was today..I was there sometime before, I was there sometime after, here are before and after snaps.






Obviously this is plain simple billboard hijacking. Other than where the eyes are allowed to peek through, these pieces involve complete advert obliteration. The message here is simply political. Spending 5 minutes photographing the hijacked billboards gave sufficient time to absorb the impact this un-expected off-message message was having. Every passerby and every car driver was studying the anarchist assault.







Thanks to dastardly bastardly agency creatives discovering that mimicking street art has a powerful resonance with a certain trendy target audience, my quest over the past few years to discover more Cut-Up Collective work lurking behind, around and on top of public adverts has involved me looking at more street marketing campaigns than any ad exec could dream of. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t Cut-Up Collective's intended effect!






I had thought, having never previously had direct contact with a Poster Boy environmental enhancement, that Poster Boy’s work was purely about advertising subversion, poster remixing with wit and generally an anti corporate propaganda theme. This may or may not be true, in a couple of years I will have finished reading the book, but Poster Boy’s London blitz is hugely political, a truly remarkable thrust from a dude whose country pulled out of its most recent/current/most public global fuck up only last week.




Poster Boy was arrested in an internationally publicised incident early in 2009, nabbed by covert police pouncing on an advertised private view of a Poster Boy art show. Poster Boy got sent down, or detained, or sent to bed early or something, yet the Poster Boy campaign actually intensified. It had both a windmill to tilt at AND a huge profile. Eventually, messages reached some critical nerve endings in some street art keyboard botherers and the question “if he’s inside, whose doing this schizz” was floated. Mainstream press speculated that the wrong guy had been arrested.

Although Graffoto believes these mysteries are best left mystique intact, it seems the answer was/is that Poster Boy is a multi-testicled beast and the authority had yanked its tail. Anyway, the gentleman in Pure Evil’s gallery tonight was without doubt in my mind the same guy in this famous youtube clip and he seemed to imply that Poster Boy is a collective.


Clip by “TheKSkill”

The book is a fundraising exercise to raise money for K.A.R.A .T.E - Kids Are Rallying Against The Empire – a legal defence fund for artists who may find themselves detained at The Man’s pleasure for changing the world without license or authority. When we look at custodial sentences handed down to visual environment enhancers then any funding to protect society from the stupid mistakes of its un-elected judiciary has to be a good thing.




Apart from funding a good cause, Poster Boy has a unique way of signing the books, if you look closely you might make out that he has whipped out his razor and incized through the frontispiece to reveal Poster Boy's name on the page behind. Cool. Signed copies available Pure Evil Gallery, London and, I would guess, from Frost Gallery, NY; Carmichael Gallery LA and AE District Gallery, Miami.


copyright - whatever


The book is a photographic collection of the work of Poster Boy, including many before and after shots as well as the photographic inspiration and sources behind the ideas. The introduction nails it, don’t know who the author is but it says “This book is a piece of hypocrisy....Poster Boy’s high-minded rabble rousing is starting to reek of bullshit. After all, Poster Boy detests the media but wholly depends on it as a medium.”

This post doesn’t fall into that trap as Graffoto prides itself on being a large, not a medium.

CEPT - Cosmic Interceptor

London Aug 2010


Graffoto had the pleasure of a morning with Cept as he freestyled a London shutter writing CEPT with an awesome intergalactic perspective buggering fill. Look too closely at the end result and you'll feel like you are about to fall into deep space.


Check the movie, in particular see some impressive backwards tagging at the end. Smoke a banana while you watch it.


Cosmic Interceptor from NoLionsInEngland on Vimeo.



Check here some of the awesome CEPT work Graffoto has covered in the past and as anything Cept touches may involve warping time and space, depending when you click this link we might throw in some future work too.

VNA Issue 12 - This Thursday 12 Aug 2010

Pure Evil Gallery
108 Leonard St
London EC2A 4RH


VNA Issue 12 launches this coming Thursday (12 Aug 2010) with a party at Pure Evil Gallery, London, K.O. 6pm.

98 pages (100 counting the covers?) are packed with features and photos. The cover artist ROA has screenprinted a unique image on 100 copies, his first ever screenprint whilst apparently the first 20 to storm the evil dungeon may get their mitts on a very special ROA VNA teeshirt.

Amidst the launch buzz there will be a load of ROA art on the walls, featured artist and Brizzle legend Mr Jago is painting live whilst adhoc low-fi scuzz rock groovers Pure Evil and The Prehistoric Man will be serenading all in the basement, check out “I can See Your Bra Through Your Top” here. The B-Side “I Can See Your Y-fronts Through Your Monitor” hasn’t been cleared for release. Refreshments by Kopparberg,

As a bonus, it very easy to walk the 50 yards to see the Rooftop Roa painted specially for VNA as a series of various vivisectionist states of internal dis-memberment.




Back to the mag, it just gets fatter and brighter, like some of its photographers. The emphasis is shifting towards artist interviews and photos with the photo-journal of street art and graff since the last issue confined to 4 double page spreads at the back. Booooo. In depth interviews and photologs include feature interviews with Bruno 9Li, Dave Kinsey, M-City, Kevin Cyr (paints tagged vans), The Yok, Mr Jago , Buff Monster and an Amsterdam OMT including an beer and chat with exactly 50% of The London Police, plus of course the Roa interview already mentioned


featuring the ever-lush photography of Ian Cox

If like Graffoto you prefer an album cover you can hold in your hands rather than an email confirmation that you paypalled 79p to iTunes, then make a copy of this lush little record of that most ephemeral of art forms yours.

If you can’t make the opening this Thursday, check out one of the many UK and international stockists (curious that in London there is no stockist North of Oxford St or west of Whitehall, where the PM and his Mrs are elbow deep into street art and graff culture nowadays). If all else fails, check out the shop on the VNA website.

Thanks to VNA and google, Graffoto may be busy for the next few weeks getting to know the Visiting Nurse Association.