Not to be filed under history, photography, design or non-fiction, as it contains outright lies and outrageous subjective opinion, this book is definitely about street art. It is also about now. Fungus grows on your collected wild-style pioneers. Vile passions rage between old schools and new. Shit flies out from under the hammer at auction houses and property developers fund street art shows to liberal press fanfare. Oh, and Banksy hits the West Bank. Is anyone taking this stuff seriously? Should it be taken seriously? Is it all just an immense daisy chain of poker faces, irony and mind games?
Untitled: Street Art in the Counter Culture is the definitive book covering street art today. Containing work attributed to: Banksy, Faile, DFace, Swoon, Bast, Blu, Blek Le Rat, Nick Walker, Obey, Dolk, Judith Supine, Eine, Gaia, Elbowtoe, Hush, Copyright, Mir, Dan Witz, Space Invader, Armsrock, Doze Green, Know Hope, Logan Hicks, Skullphone, WKInteract, Skewville, Borf, Ame72, Sam3, Eelus, Miss Bugs, Rene Gagnon, The London Police, Michael De Feo and many many more.
From Brooklyn to Bethlehem, Brick Lane to Barcelona.
Untitled: Street Art in the Counter Culture includes features covering:
Santas Ghetto: Banksy's and friends' 2007 trip to Bethlehem raised a much needed $1m for community, family and arts provision on the West Bank.
Spring Street: A New York property developer gives over a commercial building to showcase the best in street art. Swoon, Faile, Obey, DFace and Judith Supine do the decorating.
Cans Festival: The Banksy curated show held at Waterloo saw tens of thousands check out this stencil event over the May 2008 Bank Holiday.
NuArt: Norway's annual arts street art festival with DFace and Eine in attendance.
One Nation Under A Groove
October 30th, 2008
With word on the street that people in high places want to buff Banksy’s One Nation Under CCTV, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to feature it again. So we have.
Pet Sounds
October 22nd, 2008
Banksy’s Pet shop & Charcoal Grill - 08/10/08 - NYC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LByq0zMuojM&feature=related
Free the dolphin!
Watch this clip and you might get something that a lot of people seem to miss when it comes to Banksy. For all his political agit-prop there is more than a healthy dose of the typical British piss-taker. He is having a laugh.
(We’re not suggesting that is Banksy himself actually having a laugh on the video, but it is funny.)
Banksy’s observation: “New Yorkers don’t care about art, they care about pets. So I’m exhibiting them instead” formed part of the catalyst for him to question our weird relationships with animals.
So began a mind game of reasonably epic proportions. Managing to establish a fake petshop on a busy New York street almost completely in secret, Banksy tricked residents to the extent that some complained of the poor conditions in which the animals were being kept. Of course, none of the animals were real.
More a piece of street theatre than an art gallery, the shop features fornicating hot-dogs and Marty, the fantastic shop keeper who stayed in ‘whacked out’ character the whole time in spite of reporters attempts to elicit straight answers from him.
After witnessing the scene, one feels the urge to say something like…The ‘kinetic sculptures’ within the cages starkly illustrated our desolate alientaion from the natural world and our psychoticly erratic relationships with our fellow animals. Or not.
Perhaps it all went to show us up for our blown up sense of GRAVITAS when it comes to ‘ISSUES’. The ISSUE of animal cruelty is actually being lampooned because, why are we worried about battery chickens if we can’t even feed each other?