Now the Cheltenham Festival may have been and gone but if you live anywhere near the area here’s a hot little tip for you. We’re exhibiting a few pieces alongside other artists such as My dog sighs, Korp, Dice 67 and Zabou at the Urban Arts exhibition at Chapel Arts on Knapp Road in Cheltenham. It’s running from this Friday (25th March) until the 16th April. It’s always good to make it down on opening night if you can – some lovely artwork, a beer or two and if anyone asks you can sound like you’re doing something cultural. It’s in the balance at the moment whether we’ll be able to make it or not but if we do we’ll see you there…
If you are in the mood for a free beer, some spanky new art and are in the vicinity of Weston-Super-Mare this evening then you could do a lot worse than heading along to Studio 10 for a quick look at the group show that is opening this evening. You can view work by a whole host of top flight artists (including our fine selves). The show runs for 4 weeks so there’s no excuse not to get yourself down…
It’s been a while since we’ve gone out to a gallery show and I could hardly resist going to My Dog Sigh’s ‘Can Man’ show at the Pure Evil Gallery so it was time to don my ironic glasses and hit the East End. My Dog Sighs is involved with Free Art Friday and likes nothing better than dropping his cans and other work on the street for people to find – but this time they’re all indoors. There was an edition of 30 of his small cans, various other larger cans and a few canvases. They were all framed nicely, priced well and looked great on the wall. I think my favourite pieces were the bigger catering size cans, the smaller cans with woolly hats on and the can which was wearing a burka. Great stuff all round and we wish him all the very best. The show is on for another 10 days so if you are in the area you should definitely pop in.
My Dog Sighs - Can Man show @ Pure Evil Gallery
Can man complete with little woolly hat
Larger can man (although it's tricky to tell size with nothing to compare scale...)
Burka can
After a couple of drinks and a swift chit-chat with My Dog we headed off to Stolenspace for a quick shufty at Roa‘s new show ‘Hypnagogia’ (which, i’ve found out, is the name for the state between being awake and being asleep). Roa’s work is impressive as ever and I like his work on bits of wood/furniture. Although saying that if i had to choose between his street work and his gallery work I’d take the street work every time. If i had a large industrial building he could work on I would invite him over and ask him very nicely if he’d consider doing a huge Manx cat for me…
It sure was a busy night in the old East End last night! With so many new shows on and free beer to be quaffed it would be rude not to. There seemed to be a gallery show just about every couple of steps. I had originally planned to go and see Evol at POW and then along to SPECTRA I just because i really like Katrin Fridriks. Naturally I forgot to take my camera so links and images from the interweb will have to suffice.
First up we headed to P.O.W to check out the very talented EVOL and his mini tower blocks. Although why we had to queue when the place wasn’t full i don’t understand (or is it just to make the place look more busy/popular?) I was a little gutted as i first saw some EVOL pieces on cardboard a few years ago and was quite taken with them but unfortunately had no spare cash. Back then they were going for a few hundred quid and they are now selling for around 10 grand! It’s good work if you can get it but unfortunately a little rich for my blood…
EVOL @ nu-art
There was plenty more on offer but the only pieces that really caught my eye were the Jimmy Cauty ‘Riot in a Jam Jar‘ series – of which he had 3 or 4 maxi-sized ones on display complete with flashing blue lights on miniature police vans (I had previously only seen them in actual jam jar sized glass jars).
Next on we moved up to Stolenspace at the Truman Brewery for a group show. For me the stand out artists were Kai & Sunny, D*face and Rose Sanderson. All the pieces were a little more affordable than POW and there were some very nice examples. I particularly liked a piece by Rose Sanderson called (I think) ‘Contemplation’ which featured a load of starlings sitting on a ghostly branch (a picture can be found towards the bottom right on this page). There was a huge (120 x 170cm) Kai & Sunny print called ‘Wild Flower’ that I particularly liked. I can’t find a pic online but if you follow this link and scroll down you should find it.
I’m not usually a huge fan of D*face but did particularly like like his Flutterdie collection (one example of above) which were like fantasy taxidermy. I also liked the big Flutterdie prints that were done on aluminium. I thought they looked splendid.
Next up on our busy schedule we decided to pay a visit to Futuretense presents SPECTRA I at a nice large venue at 28 Redchurch Street. I was looking forward to this one as it features the lovely works of Katrin Fridriks which I really covet and my new favourite find of the evening (whom i’d never heard of before) – the brightly coloured work of Lee Baker. The colours on his pieces positively glowed and the photo beneath does them little justice…
Finally on our way back to the tube we nipped into Xenz at Blackall studios. Overall the quality of work was good but I wasn’t blown away. I think my favourite piece was actually one of the smaller ones of an orchid.
Overall I had a great night out seeing some new stuff and swanning around the East End. Sometimes i’m real glad to be living in London.
If you’ve been down to Brixton Market any time recently you can’t help but notice the proliferation of quality independent food and drink establishments like Franco Manca and Honest Burger (to mention just a couple). So when we were asked if we’d like to paint up some walls in a new bar and tapas place called Seven at Brixton we jumped at the chance.
As usual, we ended up working to a pretty tight schedule and despite not having a confirmed design until Wednesday and the bar having it’s grand opening on Friday (4th Nov) we just about managed to pull it off. There are 4 more artists who have worked on spaces upstairs but we snagged the downstairs corridor which worked well for us. The photograph’s don’t really do this one justice and it’s difficult to get a feel for the whole thing without good photographs – which i’m clearly unable to get…
The corridor walls already had a lot of texture as the place hasn’t seen a lick of paint in many a year so we decided it best to go with what’s already there and make the most of it. The design consists of seven hands reaching up with lines of thread coming from each nail and all the threads converging on a big 7 sprayed on the wall.
Anyway shooting decent shots in such a tight corridor is definitely a challenge too far for my meagre photography skills and this one is definitely best viewed in the flesh. It will be up for at least the next 3 months so you should get down while you can… For more info you can check their blog
We were invited up to Coventry on the weekend to do some spraypainting for the Herbert Museum as they are soon to do a street art prints exhibition. We only managed to come up with a design towards the middle of last week and so (as ever) didn’t exactly leave ouselves much time for the cutting and general preparation. The concept was fairly simple in that the model (me!) would be opening a carboard box marked ‘Herbert’ and a concentrated beam of light would be coming out of the box (which is meant to represent the contents of the Herbert) that would ‘blow your mind’ and turn into a multicoloured stencil explosion after passing through the prism of his mind. High concept indeed…
After an early Saturday start and a couple of hours drive the weather wasn’t great but was at least beginning to look up. Thankfully however we were working under a large gazebo-like tent so the few showers that did turn up didn’t even make us pause. After the boards were put together for us we set to work.
There were also a few other artists painting some boards as well including Pahnl, AsOne, Newso and Ame 72. All in all it was a great day out. We didn’t get to see all that much of Coventry and the little we did see I really quite liked. The ruins of the old cathedral (that were destroyed during the blitz) were particularly nice. On the downside thought there were bouncers outside a couple of the city centre pubs by 10.30am which i took to be something of a dubious sign…
We were the last to finish our picture but by the end of the day the weather was glorious and we had managed to gather a pretty reasonable crowd to watch us putting the final touches to it. After we had finished the guys from the Herbert said that our piece would be finding a new home inside the gallery – which is nice!
Big thanks to Dom and Jess from the Herbert for sorting everything out for us!
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