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Tag Archives: UK

Showing: Banksy – ‘Gross Domestic Product’ (Greater London)

Unless required for work or family reasons, many Londoners balk at the prospect of journeying to the other side of their city. Localism or laziness are often at play. So if you ever wish to check the status of your relationship with a Londoner, there’s a simple test we believe is about 50% reliable: In case that person is based in West London, suggest meeting up for drinks in East London (or vice versa). And if they live north of the River Thames, invite them […]

Showing: Keith Haring Retrospective @ Tate (Liverpool)

Tate Liverpool is currently staging the first retrospective of Keith Haring’s work in the UK. The exhibition touches on Haring’s early investigations into semiotics, where he was deconstructing, deciphering and seeking the meaning attached to language. The show includes examples of him creating a vocabulary of geometric shapes but also, atypically for a young artist, how he consciously moved away from abstraction because he felt it “wasn’t really communicating to the outside world.” His work retained the foundational structure provided by William S. Burroughs’ and Brion Gysin‘s cut-up technique but Haring was […]

Previews: ‘Olafur Eliasson: In real life’ @ Tate Modern (London)

Olafur Eliasson returns to Tate Modern with Olafur Eliasson: In real life. This is the Danish-Icelandic artist’s first major UK exhibition and survey of his career to date. It comes 16 years after 2003’s The weather project, his world-renown piece which transformed the museum’s Turbine Hall “into a social space where sculpture was bound up with the experience of being together with other visitors.” The show consists of over 40 works including immersive installations, sculpture, photography and paintings — on Level 2 of the Blavatnik Building, but also at the Terrace […]

Streets – Upfest (2018) Bristol

Upfest returned to celebrate its 10th anniversary recently with approximately 350 artists from across the globe leaving their mark on the streets of Bristol. A central theme across the whole weekend was the 100 years which have passed since some women first got the right to vote in the UK. For example, Jody Thomas‘ gold-masked figure takes the meek and victimized Little Red Riding Hood from Victorian fairytales and recasts her as someone who is both eminently capable and confidently self-assured. The festival also saw The London Police bring their […]

Showing: Alex Chinneck – “Open To The Public” (England)

Over the weekend, another mind-boggling installation was completed by Alex Chinneck in England entitled Open To The Public. Building on the British artist’s series of impossible architectural creations, the abandoned 1960s office building (Brundett House, Tannery Lane, Ashford, Kent, TN23 1PN) was transformed with two enormous zippers “unzipping” the structure. Head over to see it soon if you are in the UK as it will be demolished shortly… Photo credit: Mark Wilmot & Charles Emerson (via Designboom). Discuss Alex Chinneck here.

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 […]

Streets: Banksy (UK)

Over the weekend, the ever elusive Banksy unveiled a new piece in East Yorkshire in the city of Hull. Stenciled on what looks to be a permanently raised abandoned drawbridge, the image of a boy with a colander helmet can be seen with a cape and sword with the words DRAW THE RAISED BRIDGE! Believed to be a piece with anti-Brexit leanings, the Bristol-based street artist is once again stirring up the pot with placement in a city that predominantly backed the UK leaving the […]

Streets: Upfest 2017 (Bristol)

Last weekend saw 250 artists and an estimated 40,000 members of the public descend on Bristol’s Southville and Bedminster neighborhoods for Upfest. The event has grown into the largest annual painting festival in Europe since its inception in 2008 and this year’s installment included large-scale murals by Kobra, Eelus and Jody Thomas. Will Barras and Xenz collaborated on a new wall which is teeming with detail that draws the eye in and holds the viewer’s attention; utopian landscapes and opalescent butterflies are intertwined with timeless cosmonauts and […]

Openings: David Shillinglaw – ‘Tales of Ordinary Madness’ @ That Gallery

David Shillinglaw (featured) opens his new exhibition entitled Tales of Ordinary Madness today at That Gallery in Bristol. The exhibition coincides with a time of change for the British artist as he moves out of the home and studio which has been his base for the last 12 years and on to new adventures. The works featured include a variety of medium such as paintings on found wood, appliqué, painted collage and a piece comprised of 400 individual sketches of people who he has sat […]

Streets: Phlegm / Empty Walls (South Wales)

A couple of weeks ago, Phlegm traveled down to South Wales for the Empty Walls Festival where he painted a large mural on Wood Road right next to the main bus station. Featuring his signature characters acting out the old Welsh tradition of Mari Lwyd, the exaggerated imagery filled with local flavor is a welcome addition to the area. The luck-bringing ritual sees participants accompany a person disguised as a horse from house to house (including pubs) where they sing at each door in the hope […]