‘LONDON PICTURES’ will also be exhibited in London as part of a global tour of the pictures. For the first time, White Cube will utilise all three London galleries for a single presentation by an artist. Michael Bracewell describes the works which have been created from nearly 4000 newspaper headline posters as “Dickensian in scope and ultra-modern in sensibility”.

Our review coming soon

White Cube Gallery

144-152 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3TQ, London

The whole exhibition represents a wide range of recent design projects emerging from or via the UK and aims to investigate the trends running between the design disciplines. This year’s installment includes architecture, furniture design, product design, urban design, graphic design, typography and design interactions.

We are meeting here at 6PM so we can get to White Cube Bermondsey by 8PM for the Gilbert & George opening event – you are more than welcome to join us for the whole evening and enjoy some top class artistic diversity. Tune into contemporary art thinking with IKWIL. Sabina

Chris Garlick and Dale Grimshaw know how to make their guests feel extra special. They deserve tremendous accolades and I am so proud to call them friends.

Besides their refreshingly very knowledgeable low-key urbane personalities and styles, with Signal Gallery they developed a truly personal and inviting art experience:  I have two significant pieces, which the story of each is as special as the work itself.

Chris and Dale are gracious hosts who will really take the time to help you find that perfect piece of art; their passion for their collections and the stories behind them is addictive.

May you be a first time buyer or a seasoned collector, Signal will make it a unique experience for you, here are a few reasons why:

1. They have great eyes for what is distinctive while keeping the price ranges very reasonable.
2. They are passionate about the art the gallery and their customers. The space feels special and comfortable, cutting edge but not pretentious.
3. They know their customers – they remember what you’ve bought, and if you haven’t yet, what you like, who you are, what your name is…and they’re honest.
Signal gallery represents all that urban and street art should be about – it’s a personal, intimate atmosphere hosted by people with the highest ethos who do not compromise on what the creative process standards of the artists they are showcasing should be.

Last Thursday, the opening of the superb TRXTR show, “Pretty Lethal”, displayed the culmination of a period of experimentation and creative self-discovery. The works showed a disturbing and alluring eclectic mix of atmospheres encapsulating exploitation, globalization and corruption with a very ambivalent tone emerging from scanned images at high resolution, reapplied to canvas and then further enhanced with “ the use of traditional materials and controlled accidents ( see the artist’s statement  on TRXTR STATEMENT)

Kaleidoscopic, Poignant and unsettling.

The exciting new band “ Deadcuts” performed live at the end of the evening. The lead singer, Mark Hammerton, from the successful 80/90s band “Senseless Things”, formed Deadcuts.

If you haven’t yet pop by Signal Gallery that is here !

Here a great article By Mark Renton , friend and founder of Rentons Room , further to his interview with TRXTR (RENTONS ROOM DELICIOUS BLURBS)

Photos by the amazing Reme Campos Reme’s dream image world

Anna Dilphy

Anna@artinthestreets.co.uk

She rekindled her childhood crocheting skills and her friends started asking her to crochet things for them to make a little money. Technically talented and with an extreme work ethic, hats and scarves quickly became objects and then whole rooms. Museums are now offering to buy her installations whole.

I should say that I didn’t plan to interview Olek at all. I walked past her latest show at Tony’s Gallery on my way home and wandered in off the street.  I saw the stunning view of Olek’s crocheted boudoir from the wide window at Tony’s Gallery. Aesthetically, the show is completely engrossing. A small gallery and its garden utterly covered in yarn: mannequins, telephones, a shopping trolley and even a man being casually ….read more 

Signal Gallery, 32 Paul Street, London EC2A 4LB
Opening Times: Tues-Sat 12-6 pm, and by appointment.

The Private View is between 6 -9pm on the 1st March. We will be giving away some prints and the exciting new band‘Deadcuts’ will be performing live at the end of the evening. The band was formed by the lead singer, Mark Hammerton, from the success 80s/90s band “Senseless Things’.

The artist known as Trxtr has been building himself a very strong reputation on the Urban Art scene over the past five years, the evidence for this success being some recent notable auction results. He has shown his work in around the Bristol area and also in group shows in London and Los Angeles. This will be his first solo show in London

Trxtr believes that in using a wide variety of techniques, he can create the effect of spontaneity and freedom that he is aiming for. His own (incomplete) list of techniques used‘Chemical, digital and Polaroid photography, high resolution scans, large format archival printing, collage, painting, drawing’ says a lot about where he is coming from. This is not an artist who is wedded to any particular medium, but for him a rather more Machiavellian ‘ends justifies the means’ approach is favoured. He sees purist attitudes to techniques and mediums as ‘Ludditism’.

The work Trxtr has produced for the ‘Pretty Lethal’ show at Signal is the culmination of this period of experimentation and creative self-discovery. The works will show us as an eclectic mix of atmospheres and emotions, as the techniques he uses to produce them. Their overall effect is disturbing and alluring in equal measure. Concerns about exploitation, globalization and corruption appear over and over again, but the tone is ambivalent. He is not preaching to us, but reproducing some of the sickly sweet images of commercialism in a way that it is genuinely hard to tell if he is celebrating them or railing against them. This interesting and unsettling approach has something of effect of Jeff Koons work.

The works Trxtr has produced for the ‘Pretty Lethal’ will make a very strong introduction to his work for London audiences. Like Koons, we may find that audiences are split, between those who can and those who can’t see beyond the surface seductiveness of the work.

Richard Hambleton – an active figure in the early 80s New York art scene, who formed an independent front together with figures like Jean Michel Basquiat or Keith Haring. Separating his public art practice from graffiti, he created enigmatic black figures on alleyways in NY, challenging us to understand them and providing inspiration for many contemporary work that we tend to think of as innovative.

Jenny Holzer – an American neo-conceptualist artist who based all her work on language and text, pasting and projecting fragments of thoughts on different surfaces in public space. We looked at her work as an influence for street art practices such as anonymous letters and invitations to dialogue, while exploring the potential plain text has of making an impact in both galleries and the built environment.

Sabina Andron 

Anna

We have realised that there was an era before metrosexual was the norm for men, even finding sexy their ultra masculinity, military hair cuts, oyster eating at 9 am and heavy alcohol and cigarette impregnated breath …the fabulous power of retro fads during Eisenhower’s era.

We have reluctantly accepted that there had ever been women under eighty named Betty and that pencil skirts were not the invention of Carine Roitfeld. We even managed not to choke at the thought that breasts of a certain “dimension” didn’t need 3D glasses to make us admit that the combined starched elegance, architecturally-complex underwear and suits were sharp enough to cut through any boardroom tension.

Nor even that they could only be the forbidden fruits resulting from an exuberant joint venture between Harley Street and Essex.

Mad Men’s aesthetics are an intoxicating dip into a decade still considered alluring, romantic and stylish (at least if you can overlook sexism and anti-Semitism).

But in the end it all comes down to what the Master Don Draper would do : I can see a board game named after that interrogation :

It would start by a problem that could be solved with a drink, then a second, then a cigarette, various dice rolling options would be given to the players giving them game progress options ranging from “ Call Peggy to your office and crush her self worth after saying something encouraging to build her up a bit “ , “ Pour yourself another drink “ ( recurring spaces all along ) “ Make sure Peggy is weeping “ “ Call Pete into your office and belittle him in front of other employees “ ( recurring space with drinks and a side serving of Roger Sterling if lucky card ) , to “ go bang a hot girl “ or “ Kick everyone out of your office and take a 3 hours power nap “ ….In this ever continuing maze of a game, there is no finish line, where the problem is solved , it just calls for another drink…the only winner is the one who has the biggest bulging vein in the middle of his forehead while concentrating on the game : Don Draper wins again.

And now… street art?  The ubiquitous posters promoting long awaited Mad Men’s March 25 return splashed across the New York subway system have launched a swath of guerrilla remixes and a new street art meme:

Have a look, it seems like the master is falling….

Flowers Gallery introduces a new series of work based around the infamous Aylesbury estate in Walworth, South East London. These large format paintings depict the immense scale of the tower blocks and include a panoramic piece made up of five large canvases which amount to ten meters in length.

Construction of this estate commenced in 1963 and the area now spans over 285,000 square meters. Designed to house approximately 10,000 individuals, it is one of the largest housing estates in Europe. In a dramatic move, the London Borough of Southwark ordered the demolition of the estate with a plan to replace the current tower blocks with ‘modern housing’ in 2005.

His paintings remind me hugely of the sense of urgency and the feeling of walls closing on the inhabitants souls and lives that I had tried to capture on film during the Real Market Estate Project : On Caledonian Road , next to the flower market, dozens of artists had given back life to a deserted estate for a few weeks before it was taken down…..I shall certainly publish the photos and an article soon as it falls more into the domain of street art that I imagined at the time …..

The literalism of David Hepher’s work conveys the very substance of this estate, blending building sand with oil paint to create a medium comparative to concrete and/or enlarged photographic images, allowing him to confront his subject directly. By incorporating the fabric of architecture into his paintings, he seeks not merely to represent the tower blocks, but to take over their very substance.

To see David Hepner’s check in at the Flowers Gallery  until the 25th of February 2012 

The exhibition Mesolithic Pop brings together three UK based artists who all share an interest in the primal act of art making and the basic nature of creativity. The idea of “pre language” and man’s desire to communicate with whatever material is at hand is paramount to these artists’ practice. Physical contact with the environment and a quest for understanding through making objects is what drives the works in this exhibition to be made. These artists revel in traditional production methods, shunning the digital world. Joel Gray’s work concentrates on stone carving with all its historic implications. He carves everyday consumerist products such as iPhones and luxury sun glasses into stone forms of varying scale. The materials used are a reaction to the mass produced, disposable nature of so many of the objects that surround us. Francis Thorburn’s practice similarly investigates D.I.Y production. Under the title of Minister of Alternative Transport has been developing a series of processional performances, which use large scale sculptural devices (vehicles) to head the procession. For Mesolithic Pop he will show for the first time a new series of photographs and films that document his recent performances. Cedar Lewisohn’s work transforms drawings into woodcarvings and large scale hand pressed prints. Many of his images have tribal and primitive associations. The images he depicts range from Zulu’s and aliens to fetish clubs and pure abstraction. Mesolithic Pop is the first in a series of exhibitions that the artists will stage in 2012 under title The New Primitives. The exhibition will feature a newly commissioned text by author and psychoanalyst Anouchka Grose on the subject of masculinity. The project is kindly supported by The Workspace Group.

This is a special occasion of getting to know the artists and challenge their concepts and creative processes at first hand. Please be there on time and only RSVP if you are sure you can make it – places are limited!

Register on  http://www.meetup.com/ContemporaryArt/