BSA galavanted through the streets last year and here we re-paste our recent newsletter to BSA readers. Sign up for it if you like. Here’s the original.
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What are you celebrating this season? We’re celebrating BSA readers and fans with a holiday assorted chocolate box of 15 of the smartest and tastiest people we know. Each day until the new year we ask a guest to take a moment to reflect on 2015 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for him or her. It’s our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and saying ‘thank you’ for inspiring us throughout the year.
Butterfly is the editor and founder of the French Street Art site called ButterflyArtNews and she is also an occasional contributor of photographs and observations on BSA. A voracious documenter of the Street Art scene around the world whose work has been published in books, magazines, and blogs, this year Butterfly co-curated a London show with two French artists, 100Taur and Hisham Echafaki. A highlight for 2015 was her comprehensive and personal coverage of Banksy’s Dismaland on her site, on BSA, and in a 30 minute documentary with Lars Pederson for the French / German TV Channel ARTE
Dominican Monastery, district of Toulouse Rangueil, France.
July 2015
Artist: 100Taur
Photograph by Butterfly
I selected this picture because of the unlikely collaboration between the two worlds – religion and street art – and they share a message of open mindedness and peace and it also recognizes street art as being as sacred as other art movements throughout history.
~ Butterfly
This mural was previously featured on BSA. More on this Mural HERE
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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
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Every Friday you can stop by here to see a handful of videos that are directly/tangentially related to Street Art. The criterion for selection is admittedly loose so we’ll just say that BSA Film Friday is a platform for inspiration, expression, examination. Some people use video to write an exhaustive treatise, a thorough examination bolstering Street Arts’ rightful place in the canon of public arts. Others write a few verses of a poem with video. We give extra points for telling a story in a new way.
Here we collect 15 that resonated with BSA readers in 2015, along with some quotes from the original posting to show you what we were thinking. Our sincere thanks to the hundreds of videographers who work so hard and with so much passion to tell their story with this medium. We have such admiration for you and your talent.
“Narcelio Grud and “Chaupixo” brings us back into the inventive mind of this experimenter – now hand pumping a slurry of colored concrete over a stencil pattern. The results are solid!”
“By doing the ridiculous, something else might come of it,” says Dominic Wilcox, and we couldn’t agree more.
“Just off the wall. And that is what I’ve always encouraged in him.” says Dominic’s dad.
“I had this idea to come up with something creative every day for 30 days,” says the artist.
And this is how we all move forward.
“BSA readers will dig this animation of David Bowie’s “Life on Mars,” Gladys Hulot, also known as Hyrtis, brings Bowie to slink through the cracks and around the concrete underground, dripping with piercing drama, and plenty of distinctive style. The voice here is stunningly replaced with a musical saw, giving the chameleon just one more layer to his multiple identities. Not precisely street art, but Bowie’s ties to the street are undisputed.”
“This is almost a year old but it is also sort of timeless when you see how Shepard Fairey’s continous re-evolving of his philosophies about art and its place in our lives has come to such cogent arguments. It’s a short film, a genuine distillation of the larger themes that we have seen at work in the life and the career and public person.
Shot by a guy whose primary focus up until this point was nearly exclusively about skaters and skate culture, Brett Novak says he was pleasantly surprised to learn that Fairey was likeable and had a lot of good information to impart. “I was not aware at how incredibly inspiring Shepard would turn out to be.”
“Slab City is sometimes billed as an isolated desolated off-the-grid sort of place in California so it was an adventure for Christina Angelina and Ease One discovered the remains of this abandoned water tank and transformed it into a circular mural. They call it The Kinetoscope.”
“And you thought New York had potholes? Be careful in Paris!”
“It’s all about Joe! While you were looking for a brunch spot or a beard wax or simply at your navel, Joe took an opportunity to connect artists with walls and did more for the “scene” in Bushwick than an L Train full of pilgrims ever could. He cleared the way for a slew of local and international artists and writers looking for an opportunity to exercise their creative speech and courted the press with his local native personal story so often that you can imagine a Netflix series will be next.”
“Disorderly, discordant, and richly chaotic, these two videos are centered around the Italian street art paintings and artists whom you will recognize from our earlier postings on community/gallery organized urban art programming – but within the context of historical art publicly displayed, peoples movements, patronage, fascism, the classics.
Dioniso Punk allows everyone to talk – neighbors, artists, organizers, curators, public philosophers, elected officials, psychologists, sociologists, entrepreneurs, posers, professors, historians, students, an opera singer, the petite bourgeoisie, international visitors and hapless puzzled opinionated locals.”
Part I
Part II
“The ship Mara Hope, stranded for 30 years on Iracema Beach alongside the Brazilian city of Fortaleza, received a benediction of more color in July thanks to Street Art interventionist and experimenter Narcelio Grud. A mistake in 1985, the ship has become a monument over time, a symbol of the history of the fishing industry, and after so many years a symbol of personal history for people who have grown up with it.”
“At the Pine Island Audubon Sanctuary in Corolla, NC, The Image Hunter discovers the importance of duck decoys in Currituck County.”
“A nice homemade video this week by New Zealand painter Owen Dippie’s talented wife Erin, who documented his trip to New York and LA. Without the hype this gives you an idea what it is like to be a tourist here, and it is good to see the experience through the eyes of a loving partner.”
“We debuted this video by Priest Fontaine live for the Brooklyn Museum audience with Faile and actual chills went up people’s spines. No lie. Now you can see it too here online Capturing the current Times Square as county fair with mountains of screens flashing images around the Selfie Stick Forest, all corporate creepy and still sleezey – Fontaine evokes the magic that Faile is, as well as the pure industry that it takes to make their art work. Also good to remember that it was a hot and humid overnight installation that started at 8pm and ended around 10 the following morning.”
What Happened with BSA + FAILE at the Brooklyn Museum?
“The views are sadly hilarious, pure sarcasm and commentary on issues and behaviors. If Street Art is meant sometimes to hold a mirror to us as we pass by, this is a genuine funhouse of mirrors at every turn. Of course, this isn’t Street Art – its site-specific contemporary art – and many of the artists are street artists, but not all. Butterfly and Pederson discuss the installations as they encounter them and the viewer feels at though they have gotten a true sense of the wonderful world of Dismal.”
“UGANG2015 in Drammen, Norway had two weeks of murals from Street Artists and graffiti writers in late August. A relatively new event curated by local graffiti artist Eric Ness Christiansen (Eazy), the program is already slamming. A small town of 70,000 about 40 minutes from Oslo, they know how to take care of details, including inviting the inimitable Selina Miles to come and shoot it. Any questions?”
“Here is a brief intro video about Brandalism’s answer to UN COP21 – and the first of what will surely be more videos about this massive effort by 82 Artists from 19 different countries to take back public space and the public dialogue about climate change from those who are skillfully employing misinformation and bending laws to enable them to continue making money at all costs.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Your Tour Through Dismaland with Butterfly and Lars Pederson
2. “The Wave”, Shepard Fairey in Jersey City
3. DIAN and his Bullshit Elephant in Brooklyn
It’s 30 minutes of sheer edutainment as the blogger/writer/documentarian named Butterfly gives a tour to the urban art curator Lars Pederson through Banksy’s Dismaland in cooperation with ARTE Creative TV.
The views are sadly hilarious, pure sarcasm and commentary on issues and behaviors. If Street Art is meant sometimes to hold a mirror to us as we pass by, this is a genuine funhouse of mirrors at every turn. Of course, this isn’t Street Art – its site-specific contemporary art – and many of the artists are street artists, but not all. Butterfly and Pederson discuss the installations as they encounter them and the viewer feels at though they have gotten a true sense of the wonderful world of Dismal.
We asked Butterfly about the video and her impressions with it and she tells us that the whole Dismaland has been overwhelming for her on many levels. “From the excitement of seeing new artworks by Banksy, to discovering new artists, to confronting depressing moral issues, to having fun – for me it’s his most ambitious project to date in scale and objectives and he nailed it like no other artist.”
“Banksy’s curating role is fantastic as everything fits together as a whole, and it also highlights that consciousness on consumerism, the environment, politics is happening internationally and that everybody needs to take action,” she says.
You’ll recall that Butterfly shared her images with BSA readers in August when the show opened and gave us her review at that time, but now in retrospect, does the show hold up? “Yes,” she says, “We’ve seen previously some politically engaged artists focusing on the environment, politics etcetera, but when it is all gathered together in Dismaland the impact is “Boom!”. The messages sadly need to be reiterated because we are inundated by information / disinformation and we tend to become oblivious.
The most impactful of the installations for her was the one depicting immigrants attempting to escape to a better part of the world and the tragedies of families broken apart, some killed in the process. “It was very moving and disturbing to see the “Mediterranean Ride’ installation,” she says, “the migrant boats with floating corpses in the sea where the public could navigate the boats, but the boats never reached the shore.”
Butterfly summarizes the event like this, “Being able to make contemporary art accessible to everyone in a family-friendly setting, with an interactive element where the audience is an integrated part into the show, where guests are entertained and at the same time everybody’s conscience is awakened on our society issues – it’s unprecedented.”
An unusual mural just completed by Shepard Fairey and team at the request of the mayor of Jersey City, this single image is intended to reflect the way of cultural change taking place in this city across the bay from Gotham. Can’t help but think of natural disasters though. Of course Japanese art history is referenced here, as well as surfing culture, so we shouldn’t interpret it as a harbinger of negative things automatically. Regardless, it is very effective and the placement is primo, no?
“Dian is a street artist from European art label Life is Porno. In 2015, he decided to do a series of stop-frame stop frame animations around Europe and the world. This time he turned a building in Brooklyn, NYC into his animated reality. And grew an elephant from his mushrooms…
Whole animation was spray-painted, without any computer animation. The Bullshit sign was installed by a legendary fusion artist Shalom Neuman. “
Banksy has ventured into the entertaining resort business. One that would possibly be your last resort.
A scathing social and political critique of any number of targets that routinely come under the purview of this artist/curator/commentator/showman, this big tent brings everyone inside for a beating. Rampant capitalism, civic hypocrisy, the war industry, advertising deceit, an encroaching police state, environmental destruction, the widening gap in social equality, xenophobia with its inherent racism, and our insatiable penchant for sunny denial are a partial list of woes addressed. If you don’t feel sickened or guilty after visiting Dismaland perhaps you could affect a certain smugness that says, “Finally, someone is talking about all of these important issues that I’ve been going on about.”
Cheerfully cynical and sarcastic, this magic kingdom is most successful when you are challenged to reconsider a behavior or position – and with 50 or so invited co-exhibitionists, some whose bodies of work are substantial on their own, Banksy clearly intends to challenge you and indict you with a relentless barrage of over-the-top funhouse symbolism and metaphor. If, for example, you are enthralled by those American right-wing Christian Halloween “Hell House” installations that feature pregnant teen girls in stirrups and sallow-faced gay HIV-positive patients in hospital beds you’ll cherish the harrowing Banksy path to salvation. Alas, there may be no salvation, sorry.
Here you can see bright yellow bathtub ducks swimming in an oil spill, there you can play paparazzi with the other flashing bulbs recording Cinderalla’s overturned carriage crash. Next, get a load of the toy boats dangerously overloaded with refugees and the knife-wielding butcher eye-balling the horses he’s riding with on the merry-go-round. If Disneyland clobbers you with candy-covered bromides and implausibly rosy fantasy, Dismaland brings you to the edge of the abyss of man’s folly and gently nudges you to fall into it. Or jump.
Particularly effective to the experience are the grim and listless personnel who mind the grounds and offer no clear or meaningful help. Not quite menacing, they could just be impersonating sullen teens. Perhaps they are buckling under the weight of low wages and dim opportunities on the horizon or are simply humiliated by the balloons some are made to carry that say, “I’m an Imbecil”.
On a particularly gray and dreary day periodically warmed with the sun, the photographer named Butterfly made her pilgrimage to this nightmare fairy tale by the seaside for the big opening and below she shares with BSA readers her images and observations on the pop-up exhibition to help us all feel a bit of the dreadful experience first-hand.
~ By Butterfly
Weston-Super-Mare is a British seaside town, 30 minutes from Bristol, where families spend the day out donkey riding, visiting the Seaquarium or trying arcades at the Pier while kids build sandcastles on a muddy beach in miserable weather.
Rumors had been circulating for weeks about big installations being built in the former Tropicana, a derelict lido closed since 2000 which once hosted the biggest outdoor swimming pool in Europe. The rumblings and the build up to the announcement to the show was phenomenal, along with the conjecture: Is it a film set? Is it a show? Is it a fair? Is it art?
Finally we know: This is Banksy’s biggest show to date: Dismaland. It is, according to promotional materials “is a festival of art, amusements and entry-level anarchism.”
Moving towards Contemporary Art, the show is billed as a ‘Bemusement Park’. The global scale, diversity of installations, artworks and participating artists is unprecedented with 50 contemporary artists from 17 countries aiming to exhibit contemporary art and raise discussion about consumerism, political and environmental issues and to spur people to take action.
1000 lucky local people were invited to experience Dismaland before its’ opening to the general public. Concurrently the online ticket sales failed miserably, with the website crashing all day and earning it the award of ‘the most disappointing new website’.
We first enter the premises through a cardboard security control room built by Bill Barminksi where the security staff asks the most random questions. After the clearing security, doors open to a sinister derelict place with trash, paper on the floor and mud. It almost looks like a dump. The surrounding staff members are dressed in pink hi-vis (vests) and are looking bored, miserable and haggard. Some are holding David Shrigley’s ‘I’m an Imbecile’ balloons. When asking questions, they respond by whispering messages that are beyond understanding. Customer service is below standard and not responsive at best.
Surrounded by murky water with a dumped riot van that has been transformed into an impromptu water fountain, a decrepit fairy-tale castle ‘shows how it feels to be a real princess’. A sinister scene of a Cinderella pumpkin crash sculpture is lit up by the swarm of paparazzi, with flashing cameras taking photo after photo of the tragic crash scene, echoing Princess Diana’s death. You may also pose with it and have your souvenir photo of the experience.
The amusements are purposely confusing – as they don’t let you win. An ESPO sign reads
‘WINNING IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED’. Arcade fans attempt miserably to score some of the bling necklaces by shooting spray cans, only to realize that they are screwed to the wall.
Some local families were confused with Banksy’s Mediterranean Boat Ride, where the public can drive robotic boats of migrants amongst floating bodies. Kids tried to play on Paul Insect‘s overcrowded sandpit while others were desperately looking for disappearing golf balls on the impossible Mini Gulf course. Families enjoyed rides on the merry-go-round without noticing a butcher sitting next to a hanging horse draining blood with cardboard boxes marked Lasagnes (a nod to a horse food scandal in 2013).
Alongside the rides, contemporary artworks are displayed throughout the site. There is also a large indoor space hosting 3 galleries with a selection of some of the best contemporary art. A circus tent features a freak show of strange animals from Polly Morgan and Dorcas Casey to a unicorn by Damien Hirst and a Banksy animatronic rabbit that makes the magician disappear.
The seaside and funfair themes have been given a certain twist as well: A statue of a woman being attacked by seagulls (Banksy), a giant ice cream cone (Ben Long), a wooden carved horse sculpture (Maskull Lasserre), a beach ball floating above razor sharp knives (Damien Hirst), a seaside painting showing a mother and child playing on the sand unaware of the tsunami of detritus coming toward them (Banksy).
Environmental issues and relationships between human and nature are also highlighted with artworks from Paco Pomet and Josh Keyes. A Banksy killer whale sculpture is jumping out of a toilet peace. Other topics addressed are on war, geopolitics, and the Arab Spring. Artists from Palestine and Israel are displayed side by side. Within the Guerilla Island, the dome presents of series of activist banners from all over the world, including drawings from Iranian cartoonist Mana Neyestani.
A bus turned into a touring Museum of Cruel Objects curated by Dr. Gavin Grindon educates the public on surveying the role of design for social control, including CCTV. And you can sign up to one of the union stalls for action. Finally there is the mind-blowing model village installation by James Cauty called The Aftermath Dislocation Principle.
The evening turned into a big party with live music while a massive show of fireworks sealed the official opening. I found the experience to be overwhelming with so much artwork to discover and actions to be taken.
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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
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Street Artist 100Taur (pronounced centaur) is following in the steps of many artists historically who have used their talent in service of religion – with this new image of Saint Dominic on the entrance of a monastery in France.
A Spanish priest and the founder of the Dominican order, Saint Dominic is the patron saint of astronomers as well as those falsely accused, goes back in Toulouse history to the year 1215 where he first established his order with 6 followers.
Says photographer and Street Art observer Butterfly, “The artist studied the iconography of St. Dominic and incorporated many symbols including a lily flower for purity, the Toulouse cross, as well as his signature ‘Slug ‘character, symbol of resilience.”
She tells us that the new mural was officially blessed during a ceremony in the district of Toulouse Rangueil before an audience of church folk and graffiti and Street Art fans.
“It was a quite surreal experience and a lesson in open mindedness,” says Butterfly.
Either it will have proved to be a master class or an exhibition in hubris, says Pictures on Walls in their framing of the empty-framed show in progress by Dran in London’s Soho. Public Execution is on display and in development before you as the artist continues to work on new illustrations directly on the walls, a gradual culmination of a show that began on February 5 as a reception with cheese and wine and a primarily empty white box gallery, save the hand-painted frames on walls and ceiling serving as place-holders. Even so, the frames are only suggested locations for his cartooning, as he proceeds to paint inside and outside their confines, eventually covering every surface.
While the concept is new to the gallery setting, it is analogous to the work of street artists creating outside the gallery doors, where any passerby can observe and frequently offer an opinion or pose a question. Here the artist has helpfully painted a suitably sour gallery assistant to stare you down if her eyes happen to divert from her Macbook for a second.
“Ideally located in Soho between a sex shop, a pub and a primary school, the show is evolving on a daily basis,” says photographer and street art culture observer Sandra AKA Butterfly, who brings these exclusive images of the humorous scenes that continue to spout from Dran’s imagination. By the time the show closes today, Public Execution will be complete and the gallery will be filled with new art works. “It’s actually a ‘reversed’ show,” says Butterfly. Along with her images today, we have great shots of the developing show by photographer Julie A.
We wish to thank Julie A and Butterfly for sharing their exclusive images and observations with BSA readers.
Read more about this show at Butterfly’s site HERE.
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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
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This article was also published on The Huffington Post
Now back in Nueva York but what a blast! Nuart 2014 and Nuart Plus and Numusic wound down to a screeching halt on Sunday as revelers from the opening at the scene the night before held their heads and spoke in gentle quiet tones while squinting through the misty grey day.
Actually Krystel Talv and her husband seemed surprisingly fresh under orange umbrellas as they led a small army of 200+ people on a tour through the streets to see the new walls, so apparently some people know the meaning of moderation. Also photographers Henrik Haven and Butterfly were pleasingly perched high in the bucket atop an extended cherry picker snapping the new Tilt grenade wall while academic/author Peter Bengtsen was crouched in his rain slicker, camera in hand, before the 3-D Icy & Sot wall.
As punctuation to a full week of murals, Street Art, lectures, movies, panels, pub debates, pizza, art and aerosol fumes, Dotmasters spontaneously brought a fresh stencil out to spray outside the Nuart temporary HQ (see below) bringing a stunning week to a perfect ending. Stay tuned for a Nuart roundup!
<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks! <<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA
“The way this mural came about is that I met C215 and he asked me if I would be coming to Paris and if so would I like to do a big wall,” says Shepard Fairey as he stands on a ledge overlooking Paris in this new video interview with Butterfly. As the Street Art world continues to evolve and transform into a number of directions, it’s good to check in with one of the first major names to rise from the modern movement.
Here in Paris he is more concentrated on the grand scale mural that garners thousands of eyes rather than the hand slapped sticker or quickly wheat-pasted poster. But as ever, he is enthusiastic about the basic tenets of Street art that first led him to get outside. “What I think is exciting is that there is a new wave of art affecting people. It’s not just the traditional (art) in the galleries.”
Shepard Fairey Obey – Rise Above Rebel – Paris, juin 2012 – 93 av Jeanne d’Arc 13e
Réal : Mahmoud Belakhel
Image : Mahmoud Belakhel – Matthieu Soudet – Romain Paget – Julien Hogert – Jonathan Ricquebourg – Rebecca Topakian
Photographie : Matthieu Soudet – Romain Paget
Son : Pierre Bézard
Montage – Etalonnage : Ingrid Zeller
Interview : Butterfly
Traduction : Laura Fernandes – Butterfly
Musique : Moby : “Aerial”, “All is perfect”, “Gimme some”, “Flying foxes”
Remerciement : Maïa et Marouène – Valentine Poutignat – Julien Soudet – Felipe Quintelas – Fabio Caldironi
Galerie Itinérrance
Mairie du 13eme arrondissement
Butterfly
Mausolee
On August 12, 2010, Lek and Sowat found an abandoned supermarket in the north of Paris. For a year, in the greatest of secrets, both artists continuously wandered in this 430,000 sq ft monument to paint murals and organize an illegal artistic residency, inviting forty French graffiti artists to collaborate, from the first to the last generation of the graffiti movement. Together they built a Mausoleum, a temple dedicated to their disappearing underground culture, slowly being replaced by street art and its global pop aesthetics.
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
