Sweet Toof - Sweet Revenge

Sweet Revenge - A retrospective showcase by High Roller Society

at The Colour Works, 117 Wallis Road, Hackney, London E9 5LN

11 August – 19 August 2012

all photos NoLionsInEngland except DaveShocko and Myriam JC Preston where stated

Sweet Toof solo shows are as rare as hen’s teef. There was the curious basement outing at Kings Cross, London in 2008 followed last year by shows in quick succession at Arch 402 in London and the “Dark Horse” show at Factory Fresh in New York. This comparatively low rate of gallery bothering allows Sweet Toof to provide dental hygiene care to some stunning pieces on outside walls like these seen recently in London.

Sweet Toof w/ Numskull (Aus), Mr Penfold

Sweet Toof w/ PINS

In a warehouse space barely the width of a beaming smile from the Olympic Park on the other side of Regents Canal, High Rollers Society staged this collection combining a retrospective of older works including some from the New York show previously unseen in this country with a small number of new pieces. The first impression looking into this cavity was the scale of the enterprise. Paintings, prints, wall pieces, sculptures not to mention some very impressive breakdancing in the middle made great visual candy .







Sweet Toof’s reputation has been built on the huge number of friendly gummy grins on walls, rooftops and toilet cisterns all over East London for more than a decade and Sweet Toof brings the spirit of that furtive art indoors spraying murals directly onto the gallery walls, fixtures and fittings.

Sweet Toof w. PINS

Looking at the new works, this magnificent new 2.5m wide 1m high canvas contains signature Sweet Toof magic ingredients that make his work so appealing, this work-in-progress shows he knows still how to hit that sweet spot.

HW (work in progress), oil on canvas, 257cm x 100cm

There are intriguing elements from real life in the painting, the building with the SWEET HANGOVER on the parapet looks very much like the building whose rooftop was weatherproofed with an epic collaboration with PINS (video here). The leanover may represent a blue print for idea which sadly now is unlikely to be realised as a block of apartments and retail boxes has since been built feet from that building. The architectural landscape includes some distinctly New York elements such as the water tower. Sweet Toof also checks some artists with whom he is known to have painted in London including PINS (UK), SMELLS (NY), Mobstr (UK), TEK33 (BC) and Monkey (BC).



Also new are two minatures in the same style as a series which appeared at Nell Duff gallery a few years ago. They are like rococo Sweet Toof affordable original canvasses.




Above photos: DaveShocko

The last new works as far as Graffoto is aware are both called Lovers. The regency attired skeletal couple crackle with a conspiratorial affection, they are definitely comrades in arms for some no good fun.

Painted wood panel

AP, hand embellished Linoprint, photo Daveshocko

The Factory Fresh show last year included several works that had been seen at Arch 402 in London but the pieces on show tonight that haven’t been seen before in a London show confirm that NY got a classic Sweet Toof show.

Bright Lights, Big City, oil on canvas 18" X 24"

Sweet Vanitas, oil on panel 16" by 13"

The great thing about a retrospective is the chance to see work from shows you missed. “Stand and Deliver” and “Your Money Or Your Life” is more than an Adam Ant lyric, it’s a before and after pair of paintings in which the dandy highwaymen bite off more than they chew when the victims fight back. The highway men should have read the signs, the passengers have swashbuckling toofy grins too. These were shown at the Burning Candy crew show “Candy Shop” in 2010, also put on by High Roller Society.

Stand and Deliver, oil on canvas, 236cm x 115 cm

Your Money Or Your Life, oil on canvas,

At the two UK solo shows there have always been sculptural pieces present. Sweet Toof enjoys applying teef and gums to almost anything where the result is a comic disfigurement of the object. 3D pieces aplenty have been assembled for this collection, including the “Vagina Dentata” whose name ensures its continual presence since 2008 in the upper region of “most viewed” photos on my flickr account.

Roll On, woodcut with sepia wash; Stampede, oil on canvas; large toof brush

photo: Myriam JC Preston

Burning Candy Sculpture

One of my favourite paintings is Battle Of The buff, an irreverent taunting at the futility of the constant sanitising of areas where colourful wall art is one of the few redeeming features of the area. The vibrant colour and cheekiness in the skeletal expressions balances out the dark and macabre “day of the dead” element present in a lot of Sweet Toof canvasses. Super nice to see the original of this.

Battle Of The Buff, oil on canvas, 6ft x 5ft

A strong Sweet Toof image is about a lot more than just the teeth and pink gums. There’s the vivid colour choices, the swagger of the characters, the almost vaudeville villain attitude of the subjects and the sheer relish they display in committing petty crimes generally involving paint. In the hands of the characters, paint becomes a weapon while walls, rooftops and the great outdoors are the battleground, and the teef and gums are insouciant leers.

Duet, oil on canvas, 161cm x 115cm

The show runs thick with colour and humour, the collection of so many favourite works in one spot is great for the old fan and hopefully an eye opener for new visitors who may not be aware that street artists have talent. As the show is located at the heart of a parish noted for some of Sweet Toof’s finest naughty moments, any visitor can double up the visual delights indoors with the sight of some fantastic Sweet Toof rooftop works as far as the eye can see in almost any direction.

UPDATE: CHeck out the High Roller's Grin Gang wall of shame ; and it'd be crazy not to add these flicks to the blog

Foreground - "Hunter Gatherer (apparently "Vagina Dentata" is no longer)

Blind Man's Buff, oil on canvas

Happy visitors from all walks of life

Letterpress Printing - Alex Booker

High Roller Society

10 Palmers Rd

London E2 0SY

Sun 27 Jul 2012,

All photos: NolionsInEngland

Letterpress printing was the arcane image making experience available at High Roller Society this weekend.




Alex Booker, fine artist and printmaker has an ancient collection of letterpress block which he bought along, demonstrated and then let a crowded workshop loose on.

Alex Booker - Well Oiled!

Alex Booker - self prepared plywood Letterpress block

Twenty or so active participants at the workshop came up with a huge variety of different letter based vocabu=lettes to print. The idea is always the most challenging thing with art. Little Miss NoLions noticed she could use the letters to create an image as well as a word.,




After scrabbling around in the boxes of letters to make up the desired words or symbols, the first stage is to set up the letters in the frame. As with most things in life, it’s not a “skill” if it hasn’t got its own vocabulary so it’s not a frame, it’s a “chaser”. The key mental challenge here is to remember that what you see on the surface of the letters is the mirror image that will appear on the paper. So letters must be arranged in reverse order.




The letters need to wedged in place so that they don’t move around at the printing stage which would cause smudges and blurred images. Letters are secured in place using “furniture” which is another name for bits of wood ranging from long blocks to thin shims. Alex uses pennies as an easy source of wedges readily available to most artists but the final micro- millimetre adjustment to lock each row and column in place is done using an adjustable thickness metal wedge called, amusingly, a coin.





An oil based printers ink is applied evenly over the letter face, multiple colours can be used, the first colour is easily applied as the nearby letters can be masked, the second colour is tricky as obviously you can’t mask off the adjacent inked up letters .







Paper is carefully placed onto the ink, it is important that it shouldn’t slide once it starts to make contact with the ink unless you particularly like smudges.




Then rolling to ensure the ink transfers to the paper.




Finally, remove your paper to find out what letters you put the wrong way round and upside down and which letters you missed out.

Nearly a dinosaur

20 mins later - that's better!

Yup - you read the name change here first. "Egland!"


The beauty of this coarse printing process are the idiosyncrasies which appear in every print taken off the letterpress. Variations in ink application and pick up result in areas of fade and as the ink gets used, grain effects appear in the prints.




Even the masters can get it wrong, two geniuses of screenprinting, well, one anyway plus her young collaborator, managed to get all the letters in, they just spelled the “txt” chat abbreviations back to front!




This was one of the most interactive of the High Rollers Society workshops we have caught since we started going about 18 months ago. Thanks to High Rollers Society for putting it on and Alex Booker for equipment, demonstrations and master craftsman expertise.



As the event ended, we picked up our union cards, took a mandatory 23 minute cigarette break then headed off to picket a newpaper.

Brandalism

Photos: NolionsinEngland except Brandalism where noted

On Tuesday evening (writing on Thursday) news came through of a fresh Paul Insect piece on Hackney Rd, too late to grab a photo but never mind, there’s always Wednesday. Later that night a web link took me to the slick, well laid out website of anti corporate advertising campaign Brandalism.

The objective is to rail against mind manipulation on a galactic scale by the advertising strategies of global brands. Or as Brandalism has it – “This exhibition is about trying to open up questions about the ills created by advertising, the false needs and destructive desires it attempts to instil in us, and it is about trying to reclaim some of the spaces taken from us. “.  An impressive list of 24 artists from UK and abroad have taken over billboards in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds to, oh irony, promote their campaign.

Ron English, “Unicorn Flesh”, Manchester – Photo from Brandalism website

You can’t help a further chuckle at Brandalism’s media savvy strategy to spread it’s message fast and far, truly it picked up the tools of its oppressor. The website, the feature on Vandalog, the mainstream media coverage in the national daily Independent and London’s Evening Standard smack of just more of the same PR planning as the mega corporate. One of the artists on the Brandalism list is Jordan Seiler whose work disrupting commercial ad campaigns has achieved global publicity in the past. In NY, a large scale campaign against illegal advertising eyesores was hugely successful, who’d have imagined in a locked down hood like NY such a problem existed. Graffoto also shares and applauds his pops at the most successful anti establishment media manipulator Banksy. Brandalism channels the spirit of NY PublicAdCampaign best with this hoarding by Space Hijackers pointing out the ruthless and grotesque control by the Olympics Committee, using he law to crush un-licensed use of phrases it deems itself to have exclusive monetising rights over, plus – if true – the allegation that this site is actually illegal too. You could hurl a javelin from this spot into the Olympic park at Stratford.

Space Hijackers, London – Photo from Brandalism website

The first flaw in the campaign is that complete obliteration of the existing paid-for ad means that there is no sign of who is actually being targeted. You want to see a bloody nose but this looks like a punch thrown against a shadow. As evidence of the evil corporate is missing this begins to look like artists advertising themselves. The work of Poster Boy, Zevs, Dr D, Ludo and Cut Up Collective (are they still active?) covered this angle by modifying the original advert leaving little room for doubting the corporate target.

Bill Posters, Manchester – Photo from Brandalism website

The media blitz and consequential high profile may have been Brandalism’s undoing. Wednesday arrived (AS PREDICTED, HERE, ON GRAFFOTO) but the Paul Insect piece hadn’t lasted, papered over by an “official” ad for Macmillan Trust. Damn.

Paul Insect, former site of

As it was – “Jamphel Yeshi”, Paul Insect

FYI – Jamphel Yeshi, Tibetan living in exile in India, burned himself to death in protest against Chinese rule in Tibet.

KennardPhillips survived the day, beautifully juxtaposed with an un-holy alliance of two brands currently exerting a vice-like legally enforced grip on public messaging space in London.

KennardPhillips

Leo Murray had gone the same way as Paul Insect, covered over with the same MacMillan Trust ad.

Leo Murray – gone already

Leo Murray in situ – Photo from Brandalism website

Artists annexing public space without permission are exposed to the charge that they are in effect advertising themselves, that is nothing new. Broken Fingerz’ stunning piece is signed in his usual style by UNGA, unintentionally ironic in a campaign against excessive brand promotion.

Dirty Beards – Broken Fingerz

Brandalism’s associated media campaign ensured its own demise, they tweaked the tail but then hung up neon signs saying they’d chopped the head off. The billboard owners couldn’t let such high profile annexing of their lifeblood run, they had to act immediately. Advertising industry suits barked that they would not let the blighters get away with things, as covered at length here. As one says: “"We want to squash it as quickly as possible and return to normal", adding that the OMC took the activity very seriously and was prepared to issue a cease-and-desist order.”


Intriguingly, the mad ad men are forced to admit that their clients are guilty of using the same space ambushing tactics as Brandalism “Nike is a brand sometimes associated with ambushing. Now they [Brandalism, I think] have ambushed the ambusher”. In fact, this “borrowed guerrilla” approach has been recently used by a shopping website in an ad which fooled us less well informed street art fans into pondering if the ad was in fact dogged. You take their spots, they bite your style!




With a little less of their own media blitz perhaps the art and the idea would have survived longer. This opportunity has been lost in favour of a high viz short sharp shock approach.

The radical is the new conformist, a career in marketing awaits.