Some new pieces up in Shoreditch area

On our way to Brick Lane last night I noticed a few works-in-progress that I felt were worthy of a bit of publicity. These pieces are all from the area near Dray Walk. Unsure of the artists at this stage, so will have to come back to that when I know, but at this stage I'll name them alphanumerically. Will be back over Hackney & Shoreditch way on Saturday, so will try to see how they've progressed then.

A. Scratched out of pinboard (click to enlarge)
Detail showing the scratching & digging (L), Thr whole 10ft image (C),
The position - bottom left on the building gives you an idea of scale (R)

This piece was about 10ft square, and was a portrait that was scratched or scraped out of a piece of plasterboard or pinboard type material. A unique medium if you ask me - I've not seen such a large piece done in this technique before.

27/08/09: Have been online since, and pretty sure it's a piece by Vhils (Alexandre Farto) from Portugal. More here: http://alexandrefarto.com/

B. Sculptural piece made of painted plaster? (click to enlarge)

Piece B is sculptural, and I'm guessing it's made of plaster and then painted in hi-gloss enamel paint. The piece is about 12ft up the wall and is about a foot tall. Really nice cultural piece, and kind of reminds me of what some Aussie artists are doing at the moment with street sculpture, as opposed to painting (see previous article on Mal Function, although I featured his more monotone range, but his latest work is dynamically coloured like this piece).

C. Scraped billboard (click to enlarge)

This piece was created by scraping away the layers of posters to create a multi level project. Kind of Farley like, and only just hanging in there, but a lovely aesthetic none the less. Shame we were loosing the light and I didn't have the chance to get up colser for some detail shots. Oh well, next time...
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Mark Jenkins, Washington based street sculptor

Washington, 2008

Washington, 2008

Washington, 2005

London, 2008

Washington, 2006

Philadephia, 2005

Assateague Island, MD, 2005

Mark Jenkins (b. 1970 in Fairfax, Virginia ) is an American artist most widely known for the street installations he creates using packing tape. His work has been featured in various newspapers and magazines including Time Out: New York, The Washington Post, The Independent, the book Hidden Track: How Visual Culture is Going Places, and on the street art blog Wooster Collective. He has shown indoors in galleries in the U.S., Europe and Brazil and is represented by Lazarides Gallery in London.

He maintains the Website http://www.tapesculpture.org and teaches his tape casting process in workshops in the cities he visits. It is well worth checking out this site if you wanna see how he's done it, and give it a crack yourself.

Mark Jenkins said the following about the illegal aspects of street art during an interview with art critic Brian Sherwin:

"There is opposition, and risk, but I think that just shows that street art is the sort of frontier where the leading edge really does have to chew through the ice. And it's good for people to remember public space is a battleground, with the government, advertisers and artists all mixing and mashing, and even now the strange cross-pollination taking place as street artists sometimes become brands, and brands camouflaging as street art creating complex hybrids or impersonators. I think it's understanding the strangeness of the playing field where you'll realize that painting street artists, writers, as the bad guys is a shallow view. As for the old bronzes, I really don't see them as part of what's going on in the dialogue unless addressed by a new intervention. "

See more of Marks work here:

http://www.xmarkjenkinsx.com
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Larger than life resin sculptures from Will Coles

Untitled fiberglass toy soldier sculpture & artist (Will Coles)

Blacklodge!! put me on to Will Coles, a Sydney artist, a while back, and it's taken me a while to feature him here, but thought I'd start with this piece from last year. He works in resin and concrete, and is currently working on a range of crushed cans, tv remotes, mobile phones and other inanimate objects cast in resin/ a range of suitcases, tvs and crushed juice containers cast in concrete, and bearing single word messages like 'H8', 'Obsolesence', 'Lies', 'Evolve' etc - relative in some obscure way to the subject. These sculptural pieces are then placed around the city. I'm not sure whether they're stuck down or available for the perceptive viewer to take.

This piece is a larger than life version of an existing toy soldier. Enlarged from an already poor copy of a copy of the original, losing shape as well as relevance with time. People stopped playing with toy soldiers years ago in the West, he's now a monument for all those un-played with toy soldiers. Lest we forget.

Check his latest here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26827541@N06
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Tribus: An ambitious European public art project

Sweden (click image to enlarge)

Mass produced in Sweden (click image to enlarge)

Amsterdam (click image to enlarge)

Oslo (click image to enlarge)

Application at City Hall (click image to enlarge)

On location City Hall (click image to enlarge)

Mass production of Tribus (click image to enlarge)

Came across this over the weekend. Very interesting project. Not sure where the finance for an ambitious project like this comes from, but I think it's great. It's based in Norway, but now spreading through Oslo and Amsterdam.

Tribus is a sculptural tag, a mass-produced object for the street. It is a work with such a strong and direct shape and color language that a signature is unnecessary. The expression is the signature and the link between the art pieces. The ambition is to get a direct contact with the viewer. Tribus wants the viewer to experience its intervention in the public space as something positive.

Using sculpture in this context overcomes some of the obstacles that Graffiti/Street art meets where the viewer classifies the artworks as sabotage even before the visual contact. Getting people sympathetic to this project teases them to like something illegal, Something they normally would condemn. Tribus take its right without having the power. This project strives not to answer any questions, but want people to ask them.

Who owns the city?
Who owns art?

http://www.tribus.se/

Old Person's Home by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu at Saatchi Gallery, London

Marwan Rechmaoui - Beirut Caoutchouc 2004-08 (click to enlarge)

Ghost - Kader Attia 2007 (click to enlarge)

On Friday, after going down to see a very disappointing exhibition near Sloane Square featuring photographs of Russian Prison Tattoos, I decided to check out the always reliable Saatchi Gallery. The exhibition featuring there at the mo is called Unveiled: New art from the Middle East. Some really nice pieces running through their 12 gallery spaces. However, when I got to the 13th room (located in the basement) I had my mind blown by possibly one of the weirdest installations I've ever experienced.

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu - Old Persons Home (click to enlarge)

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu are two of China's most controversial artists, renown for working with extreme materials such as human fat tissue, live animals, and baby cadavers to deal with issues of perception, death, and the human condition.

In Old Person's Home, Sun & Peng present a shocking scene of an even more grotesque kind. Hilariously wicked, their satirical models of decrepit OAPS look suspiciously familiar as world leaders, long crippled and impotent, left to battle it out in true geriatric style. Placed in electric wheelchairs, the withered, toothless, senile, and drooling, are set on a collision course for harmless ‘skirmish' as they roll about the gallery at snail's pace, crashing into each other at random in a grizzly parody of the U.N.dead.

This sculpture was produced in 2007, and features 13 x life size sculptures and 13 x dynamoelectric wheel chairs. You can observe the installation from a mezzanine floor, or venture down onto the gallery floor and stand amongst the action, but beware - these guys aren't looking where they're going - they don't even know where they are!

There is a very trippy video of the installation on the Saatchi site:
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/yu_yuan.htm

Life in Lego - Wieden+Kennedy blog

(click to enlarge)

Came across a nice little bit of inspiration on the Wieden+Kennedy blog this morning. The story is about a father from NY who spent the winter months in Berlin with his 2 young sons, playing games with them in their room. Scanning the clatter of toys on the floor, he came across Lego and, in a moment of homesickness for NY, created some nice little pieces of Lego imitating life...

The revolution continues: New art from China at Saatchi Gallery

(click to enlarge image)

Ok, so not street art this time, but got a bit of kulcha in on Sunday. Visited the Saatchi Gallery with the lovely Fiona, and checked out the new art from China exhibition. Some fantastic and creative work from across the ocean, and well worth checking out if you're down Chelsea way.

Cang Xin's 'Communication' at Saatchi Gallery, London

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Cang Xin is a bona fide shaman; he holds the profound belief that all things have spirit – both animate and inanimate objects – and is a member of an order of enlightened holy men who have the ability to enter various forms at will. As one of China’s most celebrated performance artists, Cang approaches his work as a means to promote harmonious communication with nature. His works have included bathing with lizards, adorning the clothing of strangers, and prostrating himself on icy glaciers: each act representing a ritual of becoming the other.

Cang’s Communication is an ongoing piece, begun in 1996. Engaging with the world at large with his tongue – one of the most intimate and sensitive parts of the body – Cang’s performance represents an internalising of knowledge and a religious communion with place/person/thing. Sites for this performance have included Tiananmen Square and The Coliseum. In the work presented here, Cang recreates this performance in the gallery with a realer-than-real sculpture of himself. Cang minimises the concept of representation, creating an engaging ‘environment’ in life scale. The realer-than-realism freaked a few of the people at the exhibition out tho!