ArrestedMotion logo
Tag Archives: Street & Urban Art

Streets: Banksy (North London)

Banksy is back, with a new, large-scale street piece appearing overnight on a residential building on Hornsey Road, midway between the Archway and Finsbury Park areas of North London. AM was prompted out of hermit mode, jumped on a bus, and went to have look, before the artwork could be dogged by the petty-minded/envious, sidebusted by coattail-riders, or covered in perspex.  The whimsical mural interacts with a tree in the foreground — a rather sad-looking, currently leafless specimen that was aggressively lopped and topped by local authorities. Having taken matters […]

Opening: Sickboy – ‘Optical Delusions’ @ Harvey Nichols (Bristol)

Mixing art and fine dining, Sickboy (interviewed) is kicking off his latest show at the high-end department store Harvey Nichols tonight with a launch dinner and artist’s talk. Optical Delusions is presented by Fluorescent Smogg and builds upon his ever-expanding use of semiotics to create a dream-like world that glows and radiates light. The Bristol-based artist has long experimented with an array of unorthodox mediums: from painting on bell-jars in the early 2000s, to creating tapestries a decade later and onwards to the lightboxes which […]

Showing: José Parlá – ‘Phosphene’ @ Ben Brown (London)

Closing today after a four week run, Phosphene is José Parlá’s second show at Ben Brown Fine Art’s London location. The title references the phenomenon of seeing light without any external stimulus and the exhibition features 11 large scale canvases infused with kinetic and sensory energy. For many, graffiti is a means to exist beyond the corporeal and social confinement of our current circumstances and the now Brooklyn-based artist’s Ease tag was like a visual mantra repeated across south Miami in search of personal perfection. […]

Preview/Art Focus: Futura – ‘Breaking Out’ @ University of Buffalo

Retrospectives are rarely as overdue as the one opening on Saturday at the University of Buffalo Art Galleries. Breaking Out spans both of the university’s locations – UB Center for the Arts and the UB Anderson Gallery – and provides a comprehensive survey of the five decade-long career of Futura. So, it seems like a timely opportunity for us to take a look back at the life and works of one of the most innovative and influential artists of our time.  Leonard Hilton McGurr was […]

Showing: Banksy – ‘Cut and Run’ @ GOMA

After a sold-out 10 week run at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, Banksy’s first solo show in almost 14 years comes to a close next week. The exhibition, entitled Cut and Run, gives the public the opportunity to rediscover paintings which have appeared around the world over the last 25 years; many of these can no longer be found on the street and, in some cases, the streets themselves no longer even exist. The exhibition displays the original stencils used to create many of his […]

Showing: Beyond The Streets (London)

The art establishment has a less than distinguished history when it comes to embracing artists who fall outside of its comfortably familiar linear narrative of western art. Impressionism was a derogatory name bestowed by the art critic Louis Leroy and the fabled Salon des Refusés exhibition of work by the movement’s most prominent figures was comprised of pieces rejected by the the Académie des Beaux-Arts’s annual exhibition in Paris. With stylewriting – or graffiti, as its early detractors called it – history has repeated itself […]

Releases: Top 10 Books of 2022

Despite the indisputable importance of digital media in the art world, the appetite for physical books remains undimmed and this year has seen the release of some beautifully crafted works. So, in no particular order, here are our favorite books published in 2022. ‘4000’ by INVADER The Parisian-artist’s global invasion is undoubtedly one of the largest and most ambitious art projects that has ever been undertaken. In addition to photos of all the 4000 pieces which he has created in 80 cities worldwide over the […]

Release/Benefit: Banksy – ‘Fragile/Agile’

Continuing his support for humanitarian causes around the globe, Banksy is releasing a new screen print in partnership with Giles Duley’s Legacy of War Foundation. The proceeds will help those directly impacted by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine by allowing the Foundation to purchase ambulances and generators as the country heads into the harsh winter months. The image features a white mouse whose claw marks, individually made by Banksy with a sharpened pizza cutter, have obscured the first two letters of the work ‘fragile’. The […]

Recap: Maya Hayuk – ‘Spin Cycle’ @ Alice Gallery

Last weekend saw the conclusion of Maya Hayuk‘s Spin Cycle exhibition at Alice Gallery in Brussels. The influence of Hayuk’s history, identify and personal narrative stand visually proud in her abstract compositions: the X’s are evocative of the cross-stitching her grandmother taught her as a child, the kaleidoscopic rainbow of colors underscores her sense of queer kinship and the visual engagement of her work reflects her long history of social activism. But, her use of multiple transparent and opaque layers take individual paintings far beyond […]

Opening: Invader ‘Rubikcubist’ @ MIMA

Invader (featured) has described his tiled global invasion as spreading like a benevolent virus, continually mutating and changing. If that’s true then the virus undoubtedly jumped the species barrier in 2004 when he created the first Rubikcubist piece from nine Rubik’s Cubes, each manipulated into his desired configuration to create an image from the just six colors available on the iconic logic puzzle. The technique is a natural development of his aesthetic which replicates the humble pixel and a major new exhibition of over 100 […]