London

Signal Gallery Presents: TRXTR “Pretty Lethal” (London, UK)

February 22, 2012 , , , , ,

TRXTR

 

Trxtr solo show – ‘Pretty Lethal’.

Date: 1st Mar – 24th Mar 12

The artist known as Trxtr has been building himself a very strong reputation on the Urban Art scene over the past five years, the evidence for this success being some recent notable auction results. He has shown his work in around the Bristol area and also in group shows in London and Los Angeles. This will be his first solo show in London

Trxtr believes that in using a wide variety of techniques, he can create the effect of spontaneity and freedom that he is aiming for. His own (incomplete) list of techniques used ‘Chemical, digital and Polaroid photography, high resolution scans, large format archival printing, collage, painting, drawing’ says a lot about where he is coming from. This is not an artist who is wedded to any particular medium, but for him a rather more Machiavellian ‘ends justifies the means’ approach is favoured. He sees purist attitudes to techniques and mediums as ‘Ludditism’.

The work Trxtr has produced for the ‘Pretty Lethal’ show at Signal is the culmination of this period of experimentation and creative self-discovery. The works will show us as an eclectic mix of atmospheres and emotions, as the techniques he uses to produce them. Their overall effect is disturbing and alluring in equal measure. Concerns about exploitation, globalization and corruption appear over and over again, but the tone is ambivalent. He is not preaching to us, but reproducing some of the sickly sweet images of commercialism in a way that it is genuinely hard to tell if he is celebrating them or railing against them. This interesting and unsettling approach has something of effect of Jeff Koons work.

The works Trxtr has produced for the ‘Pretty Lethal’ will make a very strong introduction to his work for London audiences. Like Koons, we may find that audiences are split, between those who can and those who can’t see beyond the surface seductiveness of the work.

 

Signal Gallery, 32 Paul Street, London EC2A 4LB
Opening Times: Tues-Sat 12-6 pm, and by appointment.

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Black Rat Projects Present: “Invisible Cities” Swoon, Banksy and Sheparad Fairey (London, UK)

February 15, 2012 , , , , ,

Invisible Cities

Our first show of the year will open on Friday 24rd February. Invisible Cities features secondary market works by Banksy and Shepard Fairey alongside works by Swoon. This diverse group of artists are eponymous with the current Street Art movement in their retrospective cities.  While these three artists work in very different styles addressing a range of different themes and concerns, what unites them is their creation of Invisible Cities; laid out over the pre-existing landscape in unexpected places – in these we find moments of unrestricted creativity and human connection. We will be holding a preview evening for Invisible Cities on Thursday 23rd February from 6.30pm – 9pm.

the black rat projects
through cargo garden
arch 461, 83 rivington street
London EC2A 3AY

tel: +44 (0)207 613 7200
fax: +44 (0)207 739 6304

info@blackrat.com

Opening Hours – Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri 10-6 Sat 10-4

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ROA and Phlegm Hiding in a Dark London Alley

February 13, 2012 , , ,

BSA contributor and urban explorer Garry Hunter just stumbled willingly into an alley in London where Street Artists ROA and Phlegm had transformed the walls and he shares his experience here with us, along with some images of the work.

By New York standards, London snowstorms are occasional and fleeting, with this winter’s first carpet of white disappearing within 48 hours. This window of opportunity on a rare warm day prompted a trip to South East London, ancient habitat of second hand car dealers and purveyors of stolen goods. Peckham is off the Tube line, but an over ground artery to Kent allows quick access from Central London. It is very close to this Rye station where there lies an unassuming dark alley that opens out into a plethora of monochrome masterworks.

Modern Flemish master ROA has decorated four walls of an industrial yard with Gothic bird skulls, while the remaining doorways, loading bays and other brick surfaces show an entangled narrative of dark materials by Sheffield-based Phlegm. These hidden gems were only made fully accessible by the serendipitous arrival of a resident in the adjoining apartment, who had keys to the barred gate of the yard.

As I leave back through the tunnel to the High Street, my head spinning with intense imagery, the waft of goat curry mingles with odors from an Arabic tea-stall, the hawker’s call and the loud strains of passing London buses. Back to reality, cheap shops selling tat and the predictable chain stores of an English high street; an identity being crushed by corporate greed.

ROA (photo © Garry Hunter)

ROA (photo © Garry Hunter)

ROA (photo © Garry Hunter)

Phlegm (photo © Garry Hunter)

Phlegm (photo © Garry Hunter)

Phlegm (photo © Garry Hunter)

Phlegm (photo © Garry Hunter)

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Stolen Space Gallery Presents: “Love & Hate” A Group Show (London, UK)

February 2, 2012 , , , , ,

Love and Hate


Featuring:

Arth daniels
Chloe early
D*Face
Dan Witz
David Bray
Kai & Sunny
Miss Van
Ronzo
Sylvia Ji
Toshi
Will Barras
Word To Mother
Von
Jeff Soto
Pete Fowler
EINE
Josie Morway
Kelly Allen
Charles Krafft
Ramon Maiden
Ryan Callanan
Curtis Kulig
William Stevenson

STOLENSPACE GALLERY
Dray Walk, The Old Truman Brewery
91 Brick Lane
London E1 6QL
United Kingdom

P: +44 (0) 207 247 2684
info@stolenspace.com

OPENING TIMES
Tuesday – Sunday
11:00am – 7:00pm

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Rook & Raven Gallery Presents: “Nostalgia” A Group Show (London, UK)

January 25, 2012 , , , , ,

Nostalgia

Various & Gould “Serendipity 2” Detail (Image courtesy of the gallery)

NostalgiaRook & Raven Gallery is proud to present ‘Nostalgia’, their first show of 2012, featuring an eclectic mix of artwork, games and ephemerae from a diverse collection of artists.

Artists exhibiting include:

Terry O’Neill
Dave White
DAIN
Rosie Emerson
David Shillinglaw
Various and Gould
Alex Daw
James Mylne
Stinkfish
Charlie Masson

Private view Thursday 26th January

Runs until 23rd February

For guest list please email RSVP@rookandraven.co.uk

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Evol and his Miniature Housing Project in London

January 23, 2012 , , , , ,
Berlin based artist Evol took a trip outside his home town across the English Channel to London to create his most recent installation. Known for his ingenious and humorous re-imagining of existing street structures as architecture – sometimes with “giant” tags across them, Evols’ painstaking attention to detail puts you inside his miniature world instantly.
 
We’re very pleased that writer Garry Hunter joins us today to give BSA readers a better understanding of the work of Evol;

Evol has a fascination for sites that focus on meat production, having previously chosen a former Dresden slaughterhouse for his installation Caspar-David-Friedrich-Stadt. Perhaps influenced by Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse 5, a fantasy novel set during the firebombing of the city in World War Two, the title references the most important German artist of the early 19th Century. While Freidrich is best known for his allegorical landscape paintings, Evol creates pieces that comment on the very opposite of the Romantic school – urban decay.

Evol (photo © Garry Hunter)

A housing block with a graffiti tag is nothing new, but upon closer inspection these images reveal how cleverly Berlin based Evol plays with scale and social comment. Taking stencilling to new levels of detail, including St. Georges Cross English flags beloved by soccer fans and the satellite dishes, he recently completed this major piece in London’s Smithfield meat market.

Evol (photo © Garry Hunter)

By transforming a dozen concrete blocks into miniature apartment blocks Evol reproduces the monstrosity of the estate that included his former Berlin home into a miniature modernist housing estate. The installation has become a tea break destination for contractors working on the nearby Cross-rail high speed transport link.

~ Garry Hunter

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Swoon’s “Murmuration” Opens Tonight. A Look Inside.

Swoon’s “Murmuration” Opens Tonight. A Look Inside.

December 1, 2011 , , ,

The scale! The hand coloring! The reclaimed cabinetry! Brooklyn Native Swoon has been, for weeks, laboring in London in preparation for her solo show “Murmuration”, which opens today at Black Rat Projects Gallery. Telling the stories of people and characters she has often introduced to the streets of New York, Swoon has brought Thalassa  (“sea”), a primordial Greek sea goddess to command the tunnel, and to adorn a small passage in London as a wheatpaste.

Check out the video of Swoon on the street with Time Out London at the end of this post. (video stills copyright Time Out London)

Thanks to Mike Snelle for sending to us a handful of process shots of the installation. He promises to clean up some of this walking area before the doors open tonight!

“I’m not crazy ’bout the art, Clarence, but I could really use this chest of drawers in the pantry. Ask the chap how much he’s getting for it”. Swoon “Murmuration” (photo © Mike Snelle)

Swoon “Murmuration” (photo © Mike Snelle)

Swoon “Murmuration” (photo © Mike Snelle)

Swoon, Thalassa reigns in “Murmuration” (photo © Mike Snelle)

Swoon’s tubes of paint lined up across a drop cloth in preparation for “Murmuration” (photo © Mike Snelle)

Thalassa inspects the ceiling fixture while Swoon runs to the store to get extra light bulbs to complete the illumination of “Murmuration”. (photo © Mike Snelle)

For further information about this show click here

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Stolen Space Gallery Presents: “Wild Life” A Group Show (London, UK)

November 28, 2011 , , , , ,

Wild Life

 

‘Wild Life’ A Group Show
02.12.11 – 18.12.11
Artists interpretation of the living world in Sculpture, Painting & Installation.The wild life of wildlife.
A flower growing through the crack in the pavement, the ivy scaling the fascia of a building, camouflaging, cloaking, pulling it to the ground, the tree growing around a concrete pillar, engulfing it slowly, morphing year on year. The birds nest in the rafters of a roof, made up of twigs and plastic ties, the nested young being fed the preservative pumped, calorie powered garbage bin rewards. These are glimpses of wildlife interacting, adjusting, adapting to the environment  that we’ve created, over, around, on top of it, the once green meadow now a sea of steel work, glass and poured concrete, trees confined to their architect planned and perfectly aligned boxes.
But our wild life, this wildlife is playing a slow game, a slow deathly dance between the static, lifeless concrete structures we’ve built and the unstoppable force of nature. Adapt or be adapted, adjust or be adjusted, remember me? I was here before you, I’ve always been here, you need me, I am life.
Is mother nature reclaiming our temporary oasis or is it adapting to the obstacles that we’ve put in its way or are we now having to listen to the reminder that this place is not ours, we are simply borrowing it?

Confirmed Artists:

Josie Morway (Painter)
Rose Sanderson (Collage)

Jennifer Murphy (Painter)
Kelly Allen – (Painter)
D*Face (Mixed media)
Dan Witz (Mixed media)
Jake Wood Evans (Painter)
Roxanne Jackson (Sculptor)
Kelly McCallum (Sculptor)
Jessica Joslin (Sculptor)
Kai & Sunny (Mixed media)
Katja Holtz (Painter)
Renhui Zhao (Mixed Media)In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.

How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life.

If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.

– Charles Lindbergh

StolenSpace Gallery | Stolenspace Gallery, The Old Truman Brewery, 91 Brick Lane | London, UK E1 6QL, United Kingdom

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Xenz Presents: “Cloud Cuckoo Land” @ Blackall Studios (London,UK)

November 28, 2011 , , , , ,

Xenz

Xenz presents: Cloud Cuckoo Land @ Blackall Studios, December 1-4, 2011

PRIVATE VIEW: Thursday December 1, 18:00-22:00
PUBLIC VIEW: Friday, December 2 to Sunday, December 4, 12:00-18:00
British artist, Xenz presents a new major solo show, Cloud Cuckoo Land in London this December.
Famed for his graffiti murals, the artist exhibits a beautiful collection of new landscape paintings which immerse the viewer in an undiscovered world filled with exotic species drawn from the vivid depths of his imagination.
Xenz offers a panoramic view of his fantasy world, presenting a strange utopia where peculiar plants, insects and birds are sighted among the tropical lagoons of moonlit forests. But with the satirical slant of an artist who paints from a dark, gritty warehouse in Hackney Wick, viewers can expect interesting twists such as a bird of paradise sporting Burberry feathers.
Cloud Cuckoo Land shows a body of work created over the last two years. In addition to a new collection of paintings and prints, Xenz’s newest work has seen him experiment with scale by painting on large-scale murals that divide into smaller, compact and highly-desirable pieces.
Xenz successfully marries fine art with urban art forms, using the spray can to capture fragments of memory and subject matter often drawn from the natural world. A love of ornithology and a search for ever-exotic wildlife has led to this greater evolution of the artist’s work.
Xenz explains: “Cloud Cuckoo Land is a kind of childhood fantasy of setting sail to discover a lost world, but ending up in an opium den in Singapore. It’s a celebration of creativity; something happy and joyful, but with a slight twist. I suppose living as an artist is seen as living in cloud cuckoo land by many people and I want to celebrate this by showing people what my dreams look like. Scientists estimate that there are more than 7 million undiscovered species on the planet — that’s inspiration right there!”
An extraordinary cohesion between mind, memory and spray can, allows this influential artist to walk up to a wall or canvas and paint epic landscapes and fantasy dreamscapes from his imagination. Offering a sense of escapism, a Xenz painting has universal appeal, and in the last two years alone, his work has been commissioned for a show by the British Council in India, exhibited globally from Australia to Ibiza, and his work hangs in mud huts in Gambia to celebrity homes in Chelsea.
Xenz paints landscapes imbued with escapism and symbolism and his background in graffiti is still evident. Look closely at a Xenz composition and you might find the letters of his tag worked into the twisted vines or the rocks in a waterfall. “It’s like a game, trying to decipher the code,” he says. “All my work is about escapism: the exotic and that vein. It’s about freedom and I suppose I’m trying to preserve a sense of value in art. I like to create work that takes you somewhere; a picture that takes a few moments more to soak up than an instant slogan or striking image.”
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Swoon Prepping “Murmuration” for Black Rat

November 19, 2011 , , ,

Street Artist and fine artist Swoon has been laboring in London for the past weeks to prepare art for her upcoming show “Murmuration” at Black Rat Projects. The actual installation has just begun and Mike Snell says it’s “still early days” but they’ve sent us a few behind-the-scenes shots to give BSA readers a glimpse of the developing world of Swoon.

Swoon in action while rocking out to some jams. (photo © Mike Snelle)


Swoon. “Sambhavna” awaits installation at Black Rat  (photo © Mike Snelle)

Swoon. “Move it a bit more to the left…”  (photo © Mike Snelle)

Things are still a little unsettled in the orchestra pit, with violins and tubas and sheet music all akimbo. Swoon.  (photo © Mike Snelle)

Swoon soaring upward while an assistant helps with the installation  (photo © Mike Snelle)

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