Video: Banksy Does Gaza

Earlier today, Banksy shared some photos and a video of what he’s currently getting up to. Apparently the artist is in Gaza at the moment as seen in the aforementioned clip titled "Make this the year YOU discover a new destination." The video is a tongue and cheek nod to the tourism industry via travel commercial and sees Banksy entering an “illegal tunnel” and emerging in Gaza.  Several new pieces are put up among the urban decay including the one above which is a play on Niobe, the Greek goddess that was punished for pride in her children. The project seems to be a commentary on Israel’s Operation Protective Edge and the subsequent hardships suffered by Palestinians, check it out below…

New Hanksy Work - "Eazy-E Bola"

Posted with the caption "Straight Outta Congo,"(bad geography Hanksy)  a play on the NWA hit "Straight Outta Compton," Hanksy’s latest work is topical; in fact it’s THE topic of the moment as newspaper headlines throughout NY had one thing to say this morning, Ebola has hit NYC.  The artwork depicts the late rapper, in the form of a strain of the Ebola virus, holding two guns next to a bottle of prescription pills. Hanksy calls the piece "Eazy-E Bola."

The art was pasted on the corner of Division and Canal Streets in Chinatown.

"Don't get me wrong, Ebola is like hella serious omg," the artist told ANIMAL. "But American media just loves to sensationalize things." 

Banksy Takes On The Girl With The Pearl Earring

More Banksy work to share today, it would seem that the famous graffiti artist has been pretty active as of late with no less than four new pieces making their street debut in the last month. Perhaps it's in lieu of the upcoming documentary on HBO?

There was also a false arrest report floating around the web this morning with a mug shot of some cat who not only didn't look anything like Banksy but wasn’t even the right age, it would seem the public’s thirst to learn the true identity of the artist never wanes.

Moving on to the news at hand Banksy takes on Johannes Vermeer’s legendary "Girl with a Pearl Earring," The artist goes for what he does best and utilizes the existing environment, check out some before and after shots from the site.

On a side note if you haven't watched the documentary "Tim’s Vermeer" make sure you do so, it’s one of my top films from 2013 and anyone I have recommended it to thus far has been equally impressed.

New Banksy Work Goes Up Only To Be Promptly Removed

Authorities in southern England were embarrassed but defensive Thursday after telling workers to destroy a mural they later realized was created by Banksy.

The latest piece, which featured pigeons carrying anti-immigration banners, appeared at Clacton-on-Sea, the site of a special election next week featuring the anti-immigration U.K. Independence Party. Tendring Council spokesman Nigel Brown said that the mural was chemically removed from the wall after complaints that it was racist.

Banksy Hits Up Folkestone

Banksy hit the streets of Folkestone, a town in southeast England that is currently hosting the Folkestone Triennial. The new stencil depicts an old woman with a museum audio guide device, looking down at a plinth with nothing on it but the remnants of a buffed wall. Banksy introduced the idea of museum audio guides during his New York City "Better Out Than In" residency, including phone numbers and humorous audio recordings to go along with many of the installations and street art, it would seem he is sticking to the idea.

Video: Swoon - "From Street Art to High Art"

Caledonia Curry, aka Swoon, started her career as a street artist, but leapfrogged to museums and galleries. Now she has expanded her work to include installation and performance art, often with an activist bent.  In the short video below Caledonia shares some thoughts on her most recent work and gets personal discussing life and death and how it has affected her recent pieces. There is also a charming story about the MOMA reaching out to her that keeps things equally lite and fun this morning.

New Banksy Work

Banksy has shared some new work; the first piece REALLY speaks to me as I absolutely detest everyone’s current love affair with their mobile device.  Try living in the moment and enjoying the company of those that you are actually surrounded by. I know we are all very busy in 2014 and need to be on call just like a doctor, you know because if someone can't reach you to ask where to file that report they might actually have to figure it out for themselves; and of course there is the constant checking of stock reports, fantasy league teams, Candy Crush and Instagram accounts that need your undivided attention but YEAH, NO, FUCK OFF ALREADY! 

The second piece popped up in Gloucestershire, in close proximity to the U.K.'s equivalent of the NSA. and features three characters that look like old school spies listening in on a phone booth, not unlike big brother does in real life.

Banksy for Syria

Syria is the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century. Every day children, women and men in Syria are living through unspeakable horror. Nearly half the population has been forced to flee their homes in fear. Over 100,000 people have been killed.

15th March 2014 marks the third anniversary of the Syria crisis, three years of failure by the world to end the appalling suffering. In conjunction with the anniversary Banksy has remixed one of  his most well-known pieces to bring attention to the cause.

Video: MOCA TV – Art in The Streets “Building Detroit Part’s 1 & 2”

The excellent Art in The Streets series from MOCAtv returned today with two new documentaries that were shot & directed by Colin M. Day on the current artistic scene taking place in Detroit. Many onomatopoeia favorites are featured in the two shorts, which you can read about in much more detail below…

Like New York City in the 1970s, modern day Detroit is a paradise for street art. The miles of unused facades and ample loads of refuse in this "bombed-out, dilapidated urban landscape" are grist for graffiti artists and writers from the United States and beyond. In this short film, Los Angeles artist REVOK discusses the creative community that has coalesced in Detroit, highlighting the fantastic assemblages he creates from abandoned houses and buildings, and collaborates with POSE to mount a tribute mural to local icon Sean Griffin, better known as NEKST, on the western facade and southern wall of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Without local authorities policing or buffing their work, the city itself becomes an enormous canvas. 

Featuring work by Nekst, Revok, Pose, Askew, Risk, Rime, Flying Fortress, Nychos, Decolonize.

In Detroit, Michigan, where economic demise has forced the city to shrink and turn its back on empty homes and properties, a community of artists thrives by continuing its rich tradition of building. Under the auspice of Power House Productions, a local nonprofit which supports neighborhood revitalization, Oakland artist Monica Canilao (you need to see her website) transforms a dilapidated Victorian into an aesthetic object straddling the worlds of street art and architecture. On the land surrounding his African Bead Museum, DABLS incorporates discarded construction material into his network of sculptures and installations. And in his backyard, a former General Motors employee named Dmytro Szylak continues to build and tinker with a massive visionary environment which evokes both the auto plant and his own Ukrainian heritage. The factories are closed, but the desire to work remains.

 

Artists:

Powerhouse Project: Monica Canilao, Richard Coleman, Swoon, Saelee Oh, Retna,

Ben Wolf.

African Bead Museum: DABLS

Hamtramck Disneyland: Dmytro Szylak

N'Kisi Concorde Filmmakers: Nikki Sass & Brittin Richter

Nitchow's Real Life Instagram

While I don't really have a problem with Instagram, it’s a useful tool after all, it does upset me to see so many images on the web receiving accolades after they essentialy have been hammered to death by filters. Brazillian street artist Bruno Riberio, aka Nitchows, might be feeling the same way, or perhaps it’s a comment on  how we have all started to concern ourselves with capturing moments through the lens instead of experiencing them. Whatever the case the artist has been cleverly interacting with the urban environment, not unlike the FTW crew, to make these killer works...

Banksy Hits NYC Part 31

Well today is the final day of Banksy’s month long street art show taking place in New York and with it the final piece of Better Out Than In popped up in Queens. The balloon lettered throw up appeared around 6:30 a.m. and of course is already drawing massive crowds. The famed Bristol artist also gifted a design that’s intended to be printed on a shirt to commemorate the show, as is always the case with the provided graphic it’s free and up to you to do the printing. Funnily enough it resembles my own graphic I threw up for an earlier story on the exhibition.

For my money I’ve most certainly enjoyed the circus, some of the pieces are up there with the artists best works to date, rumor has it the LA is is up next for the month of December but only time will tell for sure.

Banksy had this to say about his experience of the thirty plus days spent in the Big Apple…

"Well, this is the last day of the show, and I'd like to say we're going out on a high note. And, I guess in a way, we are. [Cue "New York, New York"] This is a sideways take on the ubiquitous spray-painted bubble lettering that actually floats. It's an homage of sorts to the most prevalent form of graffiti in the city that invented it for the modern era. Or, it's another Banksy piece that's full of hot air.

So, what does the artist hope to have achieved with this so-called residency? "If just one child has been inspired to pick up a can of paint and make some art--well that would be statistically disappointing considering how much work I put in."

Banksy asserts that outside is where art should live, amongst us. And rather than street art being a "fad," maybe it's the last thousand years of art history that are the blip. When art came inside in service of the church and institutions. But art's rightful place is on the cave walls of our communities. Where it can act as a public service, provoke debate, voice concerns, forge identities.

The world we live in today is run, visually at least, by traffic signs, billboards, and planning committees. Is that it? Don't we want to live in a world made of art, not just decorated by it?

Thanks for coming.

[Fireworks]"

KAWS Ups And Downs Portfolio

KAWS is set to drop his latest product in the very near future, I was lucky enough to get on the pre-sale list for the ten piece portfolio but had to pass as it was too rich for my blood. Still the pieces should please the die hards out there and if you got the cash and are a fan you can try your luck when a very limited amount of them are publicly made available through kawsone.com in the very near future (although if you have the cash for these you probably have already made arrangments.)

Details below…

The portfolio commemorates the opening of KAWS's exhibition UPS AND DOWNS, on view at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas, through February 9, 2014. 

Portfolio specifics:

KAWS

UPS AND DOWNS

2013

Silk screen print on Saunders Waterford 410gm High White paper

Dimensions: Each image/sheet: 35 x 23 inches/88.9 x 58.4 cm.

A total of 10 prints, plus a cover sheet, in a lipped clamshell portfolio box, measuring 25.5 x 36.75 x 1.6875 inches, hinged on the 36.75" side, covered with Cialux 1581 (unframed)

Edition of 100 + 20APs

Signed and numbered "KAWS.. 13" on each of the ten prints

Retail price: $24,000, plus all applicable taxes and crating and shipping costs, to be estimated separately.

The portfolios are scheduled to ship in November. 

Banksy Hits NYC Part 30

Tomorrow should be the final day of Banksy’s month long Better Out than In street art exhibition in New York but we still have today’s to share, it came late in the evening and is a high profile Yankee’s stadium stencil piece.

In other news yesterday "re-appropriated" canvas has reached a current bid of $310,200.00 which when all said and done will go to the Housing Works organization.

Banksy Hits NYC Part 29

Only a couple days left of Banksy’s month long Better Out than In street art exhibition in New York. Today’s piece is called “The Banality of the Banality of Evil“ and is a high jacked/repurposed oil on canvas that’s located at the Housing Works thrift store on 157 East 23^rd street. The painting will eventually go on auction with the money raised going back into the organization who's mission is "to end the dual crises of homelessness and AIDS through relentless advocacy, the provision of lifesaving services, and entrepreneurial businesses that sustain our efforts."

Banksy Hits NYC Part 28

It’s Monday and with it Banksy is running the final lap of his Better Out than In street art exhibition in New York. The latest piece popped up in Coney Island and features a robot character we haven’t seen before, what’s in store for tomorrow?

Banksy Hits NYC Part's 25, 26, 27

Weekend fun and more from Banksy who on Friday launched his latest animatronic creation as his month long street art residency here in New York rapidly approaches the finish line. Check the video below to see the grim reaper enjoying himself in a bumper car, the piece was set up for public display behind a cage in the Bowery where is lived for two days. A suitable soundtrack was provided on site by both an accordion player and a recording of Blue Oyster Cult’s classic “Don't Fear the Reaper” which traded on and off throughout the day. Those who made it over to see the piece in person might have noticed the man hiding inside the door structure controlling the bumper car via remote control.

Saturday saw a simple tagged message on the back of a truck in Sunset Park that Banksy cheekily proclaimed to be an alternative New York bumper slogan, many would agree.

Sunday ended up being an impromptu piece in Greenpoint Brooklyn after the planned op-ed column in the New York Times was declined for publishing by the institution. Of course Banksy provided the unpublished article to the public regardless which was a comment on ground zero’s everlasting eyesore of a construction site that you can read below.

On a side note the free morning commute newspaper here in NY, AM NY, had an extremely poorly and under researched opinion piece today that is worth the read if you don't want to learn anything new or perhaps care for an opinion that might possibly be akin to someone as well versed in the subject matter as let’s say your local bodega owner.

Banksy Hits NYC Part 24

Banksy returned on Thursday after skipping his one and only day thus far in the month long street art show on the streets of New York. Apparently Wednesday was canceled after too much police presence, the NYPD still seems to be trying to put a stop to the exhibition but that didn’t stop the world’s most famous man with a can from gracing the Hells Kitchen Hustler club with “Waiting In Vain.”

Banksy Hits NYC Part 22

Day 22 of Banksy’s “Better Out than In” a month long street art residency taking place in New York and Tuesday brought us a bit of an odd re-working/homage of the great Sphinx pyramid that rests in Gaza Egypt.   It was only a matter of hours before the owner of the Queens auto-glass shop had the piece removed from his property and sold to a gallery who made an offer he clearly could not refuse. 

 “No Turn Unstoned” and is roughly a 1/36 scale replica of the Sphinx and is made from smashed cinderblocks.

UPDATE: 10/23/2013 Banksy just released a statement saying that today's piece is canceled due to police activity. A joke, for real or perhaps The B-man just needed a days rest?

Banksy Hits NYC Part 21

It’s a brand new week as we head towards the last quarter of Banksy’s “Better Out than In” street art residency here in the Big Apple. Monday brings us a new piece located in the South Bronx and keeps things pretty lite and fun for a Monday. 

Banksy Hits NYC Part’s 19 & 20

Weekend fun from Banksy’s “Better Out than In.” Saturday was another video, this time Staten Island was the location and a simple juvenile concept executed cleverly was the result. Some might recall this humorous piece from last year when watching the video.

Sunday’s piece was some straight up stencil fun on the Upper West Side titled “Day At The Fair.” Once again showing he has an eye for using the existing environment to create something new and fun.