We were asked to come up with some decoration for a hip hop/bling party so we put on some phat hip hop and set our little minds to work. As the party was for two gentlemen who were both celebrating their 27th birthdays we came up with a Hot 27 theme (obviously clearly ‘inspired’ by the logo for the Hot 97 radio station) and went from there. We came up with a 3m x 1m banner, a hip hop hall of fame, a big Hot 27 sign and various other bits of ephemera to really give it that New York A list block party feel! Oh yeah, and we used up a couple of cans of snow spray for that indoor graf feeling.
After our successful venture to Mannifest (see here) we were approached as regards an interview for the Manx Independent, a newspaper on the Isle of Man. Being the fame hungry slack-jaw’s we are we jumped at the chance and proceeded to pour our hearts out to the inquisitive reporter. After a little cajoling i even included a picture of us (well, it’s an illustration) but that was as far as i was willing to go. A street artist must do at least a little to protect his anonymity after all…
Keen eyed readers will note our plea to be big in Japan. If you could possibly help us sort this out please get in touch as we would sincerely love a trip to Japan – and everytime i think about it i can’t get the song ‘Big in Japan’ by Alphaville out of my head…
Cheers
id-iom
The top of the article has been cut off due to the fact that it wouldn’t quite fit on an A4 scanner bed. The title for the piece is ‘Sholto and Hugo make their mark on London’ and comes from the Manx Independent on Friday 24th September 2010. Click on the image for a larger version.
I have always told Hugo that he was adopted. Now perhaps i have some hard evidence to prove it… It appears that he has more in common with Shepard Fairey that would seem apparent at first glance.
We never knew where Hugo came from but now it appears he must have been shipped over from the US (or maybe they were both born in the UK and Shep was taken to the US!) Not only do they both dabble in street art, they both have diabetes and they both fancy themselves as dj’s (although i’ve got to say that DJ Diabetic is a particularly uninspiring name!) Coincidence? I think not. Point proven. Case closed.
I have nicked one photo below but for more proof all you have to do is follow the link here
‘Wha’ gwan?’ is a phrase often heard around our neck of the woods so i thought i’d do a little tribute to our Jamaican bredren. I have always liked the sound of patois although it can sometimes be a little difficult to understand. I will probably do another little post once this has hit the streets but i haven’t quite decided where it should go yet. I’m pretty much spoiled for choice around Brixton but a good placement would be ideal.
I thought it only fair to include a Lion of Judah on there too as a nod to Haile Selassie (we have cut a stencil of him before as part of our celebrity heads series – see here).
I was just having a quick look through our Flickr page and realised that although i have already covered our work at the White Horse pub in Brixton I hadn’t posted the original image for the round 2 piece that we adapted to work on the wall. Strangely the inspiration for this piece came from a toy horse that was bought at a market in Spain that had such magnificent packaging that he just had to be purchased. I can’t imagine the toy passed any safety inspections and was probably covered with lead based paint but i had no intention of sticking it in my mouth. He even had some text on the box which had been badly translated into English (i’m guessing from Chinese). The text reads:
‘Flips the tail, horse runs
Truly scamper action’
The toy and packaging were magnificent in their crappiness but it did supply us with hours (well, minutes) of entertainment whilst drunk one night and at least we managed to get some artwork out of it. All in all i’d say it was a pretty good toy. It’s just a shame we don’t have a picture of the toy or box for you to marvel at. I’ll remember to do that next time…
We were recently asked to take part in a project called ’90 minutes’ for drinks giant Diageo. I have already covered our involvement and the piece we did here but we have just got an update from the PR company involved which shows us some of the other pieces that were created by various other artists. Now i’m going to reserve judgement on some of the pieces that were entered and just let you make up your own mind…
Following a show at Diageo’s HQ near Wembley they are going to be taking 11 bits of work out to various places to do 90 minute art exhibitions at various London locations.
This one is (obviously) inspired by the song ‘Rhinestone Cowboy‘ by Glen Campbell – but giving it a little up to date twist. It’s a screenprint on A3 paper with hand-painted pants and added rhinestone goodness. Unfortunately now that i’ve put the words ‘rhinestone cowboy’ down on paper (so to speak) I can’t get the bloody song out of my head. I suppose I should have guessed that would have happened. Oh well, I suppose I could have something more annoying running riot in my brain – perhaps ‘Blame it on the weatherman’ by B*witched. That would certainly count towards self-decapitation…
I can’t wait until we’ve got the screenprinter out again as i’ve got plenty of t-shirts & paper and a whole load of ideas that need to be used up. Hopefully sometime soon…
Cheers
id-iom
id-iom
Title: Like a rhinesone b-boy
Media: Hand pulled screenprint with hand finished pants and a couple of added rhinestones!
I’m not sure how many people will remember the ‘This is your brain on drugs‘ anti-drugs campaign that was part of America’s War on Drugs campaign and was widespread on American TV in the 80’s but that was pretty much my inspiration for this piece.
Come on kids – see if you can work out how many drug reference I managed to get into the bottom part! That is if your brains aren’t scrambled from all the high powered skunk you’ve been smoking!
There was something of an id-iom outing to the East End last night to quaff some free booze and check out some of the competition. After a quick preparatory pint at the Griffin we headed to Nychos new show at Pure Evil Gallery. I wouldn’t say that Nychos is particularly my style but i thought some of the work was good – I particularly liked a couple of the screenprints and also the wall he did downstairs (which unfortunately we failed to grab a photo of !)
After Nychos we headed just over and down the road to see SPQR’s new show at the Signal Gallery. Plenty of new work going down and there were a couple of firm favourites – I particularly liked the kids with the baseball bats (below) and also the framed collages which are definitely something a little different. Overall the show was pretty busy and it is well worth a look. The policeman getting the ice cream from the van was very Banksy-esque but that’s no bad thing. It’s definitely nice to get out every once in a while to have a drink and socialise. I’m sure i should do it more often…
Since moving to London many moons ago we seem to accumulated a disproportionately large stable of PR friends. Now i’m not certainly not knocking them as I love them all and they have come in handy on more than one occasion but i’m just not entirely sure why this has come to pass or what it says about us ! Anyway, i digress…
We were commissioned by one of our friends who works for Six PR to create an image that was to be printed as an A1 poster for her office wall. It was to be PR related and had to feature the Six PR logo. That was pretty much as far as the design brief went. From there on in we just did as we wanted…
The background features the CV of the person who commissioned it turned into binary code and the Old Man has the Six PR logo for his shining left PR powerblast eye. There are also 6 sixes in different colours in the background to really drive home the Six PR point and that’s pretty much job done. I’m sure that makes it sound like it was less work than it was but coming up with the plan is always the toughest part.
The most annoying thing with this project was trying to remember throughout that the poster was going to be printed up at A1 and so the file had to fairly massive to ensure the image didn’t pixellate at all. At least we got there in the end.
Cheers
id-iom
Go to our flickr page here for a larger version of the image.
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