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Category Archives: Showing

Showing: “Vanguard” @ M-Shed

Currently midway through a four month run at Bristol’s M-Shed Museum, Vanguard explores the development of the city’s graffiti and street art scene and its global impact from the early 1980s until today. The exhibition opens with the story of the birth of graffiti in the city and how the spark lit by Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja and the Z-Boys was kindled into a flame at the Dugout youth club in Barton Hill. That story has been told many times before, both in print and […]

Showing: Mr Jago – ‘Imbolc’ @ Unit London

Returning for his third exhibition with Unit London, Mr Jago is currently presenting a new body of work entitled Imbolc. The name is derived from the traditional Gaelic festival which marks the beginning of spring and the large-scale canvases, which strike a deliberately hopeful tone, are a celebration of renewal and new beginnings. Imbolc falls at the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox and there is a sense that the show’s optimism for brighter days to come is grounded in the realistic […]

Showing: Miss Van – ‘Pale Moonlight Muses’ @ Dorothy Circus (London)

Currently on view at Dorothy Circus’ recently opened London space, Pale Moonlight Muses presents a series of sensuous portraits by leading street artist Miss Van. The paintings are smaller and more intimate than those which we have become accustomed to seeing from the Toulouse-native. The seductive finish to the paintings and the blue velveteen walls on which they are hung have the effect of physically drawing the viewer in closer to the works which, in turn, triggers a heightened emotional response and connection. The canvases range […]

Showing: Ana Benaroya – ‘The Passenger’ @ Carl Kostyál

For her first show in the UK, Ana Benaroya has presented a new exhibition at Carl Kostyál Gallery in Mayfair called ‘The Passenger‘. While the body of work references Americana and a bygone era of Hollywood glamour, it does so while employing a distinctly contemporary depiction of women. The New Jersey-based artist’s work is strongly informed by a lifelong passion for the aesthetics of Spider-Man, X-Men and DC Comics. However, the gender representations contained in that source material has been subverted here so that women […]

Showing: Katrin Fridriks – ‘A Certain Blue Enters Your Soul’ @ JD Malat

Returning to London for her third show at JD Malat Gallery, Katrin Fridriks (featured) is currently presenting a new body of work entitled A Certain Blue Enters Your Soul. The title references a quote by Henri Matisse, whose own work extensively utilised the same intense indigo which prevails throughout this exhibition. Two paintings hang adjacent to the gallery entrance which chromatically reference her previous Grey Area exhibition (covered). That collection of paintings explored the outer limits of scientific understanding and both the demonstrable knowledge and […]

Showing: Mr Jago – ‘Rewild’ @ Unit London

Mr Jago’s third solo show at Unit London, entitled Rewild, draws to a close this weekend following a four week run at the Mayfair gallery. The exhibition’s title references the practice of reintroducing keystone species and replanting a landscape’s flora as a mechanism for restoring an ecosystem’s resilience and helping to address more globalized environmental problems. To be properly understood, the exhibition has to be read both as part of the lineal development of the Bristol-based artist’s practice and also within the much wider context of […]

Showing: Sickboy – ‘Dreamworlds’ @ That Art Gallery

Sickboy (interviewed) is currently presenting an exhibition of 16 new works at That Art Gallery in Bristol. Dreamworlds is the first solo show back in his adopted home-city since 2010 and represents a further progression in the development of the painter’s studio practice. Familiar motifs from the artist’s lexicon are still present, such as the fluttering birds which featured more heavily in his early work, depictions of the ephemera and curios which the artist collects and the walking heart that has more recently been made into an […]

Showing: Invader – “Into The White Cube” @ Over The Influence (LA)

Invader (featured) returned to Los Angeles recently to open his new exhibition entitled Into The White Cube (previewed) at Over The Influence. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus declared that “great works are often born on a street-corner.” In a literal sense, this is perhaps never more true than with the French artist, who has often favored these locations for the work he has created in nearly 80 cities around the world. The 10th wave of the Invasion of Los Angeles has just been […]

Showing: David Shillinglaw – “Human Soup” (London)

David Shillinglaw (featured) is currently showing Human Soup in London, a solo exhibition curated by Turner Barnes Gallery and That Art Gallery. The show features a selection of large and small works created over the past eight years. The British artist covers universal themes of what it means to be alive in the ‘human hive’ – a universal set of ingredients that people produce and consume. ‘Every day, we fill ourselves up and empty ourselves out, from royalty and heads of state to the lowest lives of […]

Showing: Cripta Djan – “In The Name Of Pixo” (Birmingham)

The Brazilian artist and pixação painter Cripta Djan is currently showing an exhibition entitled ‘In The Name Of Pixo’ at The Tramshed in Birmingham, UK. The history of graffiti is often told as a simple linear narrative with its singular root in the wall-writing of Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood and North Philadelphia in the late 1960s. However, this simplification ignores the multifaceted origins of the various strands of the global graffiti movement; these include the Old-English influenced Cholo graffiti from L.A.’s barrios, the Dishu ground calligraphy performed […]