Category Archives: London

London: Banksy at the British Museum

September 4, 2018 butterfly 1 Comment

Back in 2005, Banksy installed this ‘cave painting’ titled ‘Peckham Rock’ in one of the galleries of the British Museum without permission, and without anyone noticing.
He gave it a fake identification number and label, and it remained on the wall for three days before the Museum was alerted to the prank via Banksy’s website.

This time the British Museum has invited Banksy back to the Museum to ‘officially’ exhibit the hoax piece in the upcoming ‘I Object‘ exhibition opening on 6 September 2018, highlighting the history of dissent and protest around the world.

More info on the British Museum website
http://britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/i_object.aspx

I Object
6 September – 20 January 2019
British Museum
London

London, Shows

London: Hope to Nope – Graphics and Politics 2008-2018

July 8, 2018 butterfly

We are pleased to be part of the latest exhibition at the London Design Museum ‘Hope to Nope – Graphics and Politics 2008-18′.

Design can influence public perception, but great design can change it. From campaign designs to protest symbols, ‘Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-2018’ explores the impact of graphic design in political and social movements over the last ten years.

Alongside traditional posters and banners, the exhibition charts the rise of digital media and social networking, which have given graphic iconography an extraordinary new reach. The political events featured include: the 2008 financial crash; the Barack Obama presidency; the Arab Spring; the Occupy movement; the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; the Charlie Hebdo attacks; Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidency.

The exhibition is structured in three distinct sections: power, protest and personality – which explore how design is used in politics to change public perceptions.

‘Power‘ starts off with the Obama campaign’s unofficial, but hugely popular, ‘Hope’ poster by Shepard Fairey, which is later compared to the failings in the design of the Remain campaign’s materials. It also features examples of Brandalism subverts advertising posters from 2015 Brandalism ad takeover in Paris (covered) with VW spoof ad by Barnbrook and Curfew Zone by Dr.D.

Regarding UK politics, the Power section highlights the Union Jack flag made with fragile tape by Sarah Boris, which was featured during several marches against Brexit in 2016 as well as designs from the RemaIN campaign.

Examples show how graphic design is used by the establishment to assert national and political authority like the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, or used by its opponents like Soviet posters which were turned into a gay rights campaign and Dread Scott’s flag in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

A large graphic timeline dissects the gallery, charting the role of new communication technologies such as Facebook and Twitter in global events of the last decade.

Protest displays graphic design by activists and demonstrators. The largest section in the exhibition, it includes newspapers from the 2011-12 Occupy London camp, an umbrella used during the 2014 Hong Kong ‘Umbrella Revolution’ and a 2m-high replica of the inflatable duck from the 2016 protests against Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff. This section also looks at the 2015 Je Suis Charlie and Peace for Paris marches, as well as responses to the 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster with the 24 hearts initiative by Sophie Lodge, demonstrating the important role played by graphic design in channelling anger and creating solidarity.

An installation film by Paul Plowman evokes the experience of public protest, combining hastags, forage and images from five protests : #womensmarch, #grenfell, #turkey, #catalonia, and #southafrica. These demonstrations cover diverse political viewpoints, from fighting for democracy to calling for justice, and emotions ranging from solidarity to fierce anger.

The final section, Personality, examines the graphic representation of leading political figures. Donald Trump’s trademark features are caricatured across the covers of more than 50 international magazines, including The Economist, TIME and Der Spiegel.

As we approach the ‘Nope’ of the exhibition we are faced with a scary and entertaining animation: an animatronic (mis)fortune telling machine tells and distributes messages by the new US President. This is the work by Nathaniel Lawlor, Andy Dao, Jon Barco and Bryan Denman.
‘With the over-saturation and bombardment of Trump in the news cycle, we saw how easy it was becoming for people to tune out the banter of these soundbites and Facebook headlines, so we thought—what better way to remind people of their gravitas than by showing them this could be their actual future?”

View the full set of pics here

Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008–18
Until 12 August 2018
Design Museum London

London

London: Banksy Vote Love

June 26, 2018 butterfly 2 Comments

For the 250th Anniversary of the Summer Exhibiton at the Royal Academy in London, Banksy submitted an artwork under the pseudonym Bryan S Gaakman, anagram of ‘banksy anagram’ and it was refused. However when curator Grayson Perry contacted him to submit something, Banksy did it again and it is now displayed in the gallery 3.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Banksy (@banksy)

The artwork features a heart shaped balloon with plaster over a political board that was used for the Brexit referendum vote. The initial board favoured the ‘Leave’ campaign.
With his humorous style, the ‘Leave’ campaign has been replaced by a ‘Love’ statement. To add further irony, the price tag on the artwork is £350 millions, a nod to the infamous ‘Leave bus’ claiming that Britain would save £350m a week after Brexit.

The heart shaped balloon is an image close to Banksy, starting with his iconic Girl with Balloon (2002) who was also used worldwide for the #withSyria campaign in 2014

The first Love Heart Balloon with plaster appeared at the MOCA exhibition ‘Arts in the Streets’ in Los Angeles in 2011.

Pic by BirdMan

A Heart Balloon mural was painted in the streets of New York in 2013 during his artistic residency Better Out than In.

And a painted canvas with the Heart Balloon was then sold in 2014 to support the Haitian Charity Auction for $650K.

Pic by Banksy

Throughout the years, Banksy expressed his views on political issues, and specially the Brexit. We recall the mural in Dover in May 2017 featuring a worker chiselling away a star from the European Flag (see our previous coverage here).

This was followed by the release of a revisited version of the Girl With Balloon featuring a heart with the Union Jack flag for the UK Elections in June 2017, which was later recalled due to criminal offence (covered)

Pic by Banksy

The 250th Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy features 1300 artworks from internationally renowned artists and exciting new talents.

Come back again soon for our full coverage on the exhibition.

250th Summer Exhibition
Royal Academy
Until 19 August 2018
Burlington House, Piccadilly,
London, W1J 0BD

London, Shows

London: Sandra Chevrier – Les Cages: We Can’t Be Tamed

June 22, 2018 butterfly

StolenSpace Gallery is currently showcasing the latest body of work by Canadian born artist, Sandra Chevrier, as she makes her long awaited return to the UK. Evocatively titled ‘Les Cages; We Can’t Be Tamed’, the exhibition features a fresh series of Chevrier’s iconic ‘Cage Paintings’ – juxtaposing feminine subjects with comic book iconography in order to explore concepts of social expectation via the female gaze.

”A man can believe until his last breath that he is different from a Caged animal in a Zoo. But through all his life until his death; he will be living in a prison without walls and will still believe he is free when in fact, everyday he will be shackled, whipped, and exist in captivity. We are all slaves of something, of someone, of an idea.”

“The Cages series as been revolving around submission, oppression, unfreedom, confinement and imprisonment. Cages are Cages, whether they were build with steel or from the fabric of the mind. We cannot be free outside the Cage unless we are able to experience the freedom within it. The freedom is inside us. Freedom within a Cage. I have a dream. A dream that freedom is not just an idea or a word. Only; I am not sure what it is… Not yet.”

By applying the comic book trope of the masked figure, Sandra Chevrier conceals the identity of her subjects, rendering them as simultaneously heroic, yet restricted.
Obscured by scenes of hostility and struggle, they peer from the canvas, challenging the viewer to look beyond their own preconceived notions of femininity. Often the artist applies scenes of heroic downfall to her collages – images that display the vulnerability of their super-powered subjects and remind us of their limitations. Sandra Chevrier’s intention is to make clear the often impossibly high standards that society holds women to.

Sandra Chevrier
Les Cages: We can’t be tamed
Until 1 July 2018

StolenSpace Gallery
London

London, Shows

London: Mark Jenkins – BRD SHT

June 11, 2018 butterfly

American artist Mark Jenkins returns to London for his third solo exhibition with Lazinc Gallery.
The show follows Jenkins’ success of his recent art installation, Project84, atop of London’s ITV building, raising awareness of male suicide.

Together with his collaborator, Sandra Fernandez, Mark Jenkins creates sculptural street installations that take the form of life-sized bodies, often interacting with the surrounding environment.
The physical casting process ordinarily uses either Mark or Sandra’s own bodies, essentially cloning themselves out of many layers of sellotape to create dark humoured and often sinister sculptures and place them within the public space. The work is intended to explore the conventional process in which we experience and view artwork and the pedestrian boundaries between art and life.

“BRD SHT, the show’s title, nods to a license plate in the film Brewster McCloud. In the film, it was a murderous substance and while I understand here in the UK it’s good luck, for me I’ve always thought about the frequency birds do it as a condition for reducing weight to allow flight. It’s a useful metaphor to understand that our own ability to sustain flight mentally is a matter of reducing our own emotional baggage, or shit if you will.” – Mark Jenkins

The exhibition features nine sculptures, three canvases and works on paper, as well as an installation on the gallery front of a fisherman figure hanging from the balcony.