Reviews of Street Art shows and books from Street Art London
Christmas time is rapidly approaching so we, at Street Art London, thought it would be a good time to take a look at some street art books. We have already taken a look at Keith Baugh’s excellent book, Early New York Subway Graffiti 1972-1975 over here. Today we are having a look at The Art of Rebellion III: the book about street art
Although this site is about street art in London we couldn’t resist taking a look at Keith Baugh’s new book, ‘Early New York Subway Graffiti 1973-1975‘. In any event, there is a London connection because Keith himself hails from Notting Hill, although he now lives in Gloucestershire.
Early New York Subway Graffiti 1973-1975 captures the golden era of New York subway grafiti in the 1970s, a period in which graffiti was first emerging as an artform and exhisted then, perhaps, in it’s purest form. Through documenting this emerging scene, the book suceeds as an important historical chronical. The primary reason for this is because of the extreme rarity of the images contained in the book. In the 1970’s digital cameras and Flickr didn’t exist, street art and graffiti weren’t as mainstream as today and people simply weren’t documenting these artisitic mediums. As a result, there has always been scant historical documentation of the New York graffiti scene in the 1970s – until now.
We went down to have a look at the Never Judge show at Stolen Space gallery, a show in association with Penguin Books celebrating book cover art and featuring lots of street artists. Here’s a selection of our favorites, there is some seriously essential reading here:
Art Under Pressure, ‘20,000 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
We’ve been down to Soho and taken a look at the new Pictures on Walls show. It is really two shows, “Marks and Stencils”, a collection of originals and prints from a range of great street artists including Banksy and “My Everyday Life” which is French street artist Dran’s solo show. My Everyday Life by Dran takes up the entire bottom floor of the show with Marks and Stencils primarily occupying the top level. Some of the highlights from Marks and Stencils are below. We’ve dealt with Dran, My Everyday Life in a seperate post.
Marks & Stencils
My Everyday Life by Dran is really a seperate show from Marks and Stencils which is why it is getting our undivided attention here. Dran is a street artists who hails from Toulouse, South West France. His show “My Everyday Life” features sculptural installations, paintings and street art. The installation’s main character is Scribouille, a homeless puppet whose life is devoted to nothing but creating art. Moving from sketchbooks to cardboard boxes, to large scale canvas and installation work, Dran is one the most exciting street artists out there at the moment.
To accompany the main off-site installation, Pictures on Walls is also, as part of the My Every Day Life show presenting a range of limited edition prints, including one hundred silk-screened scenes, each individually customised by the artist to spectacular effect. The print show, entitled “I Have Chalks” takes place at the gallery in east London, from 2 December.
