onionbagblog
Can of Worms
Calm down! Calm down! It's only the Cans Festival. I waited a couple of weeks for the semi-corporate graffiti fest to calm down, avoiding the queues during the opening weekend that stretched all the way along York Road.
The Cans Festival (see what they've done there?) is stencil art going overground. Graffiti is starting to become big money in the art world and The Man wants in on a bit of mainstream action to, you know, keep cool with da kids.
A South London piss alley at the back of the old Waterloo International was put aside for the stencilers to spray their stuff. The opening weekend also saw some of the dreaded 'art installations.' I'd call it a couple of burnt out bangers, and you can see these without the queues most days on m'estate.
And so two weeks after all the mainstream knobber media whore hype, I returned to Leake Street, with camera, and with an open mind. But can street art still remain so if it is deemed 'street' by the authorities?
The 'exhibition' was much like any other exhibition that you may see across the road at the South Bank Centre. A bit hit, a bit miss. Walking around with wall-to-wall stencilling was slightly overwhelming. You can't take in the entire Tate Modern on one visit; likewise for Leake Street.
What you're presented with is stencil art overload. Part of the appeal of walking around town and stumbling across some stencil art is the unexpected positioning of it. It's all about the context and the uncertainty. Cans Festival makes it all seem so clinical, so conservative, so endorsed.
It's the difference between shopping at HMV and walking into a collector’s record fare. An elitist attitude? Possibly, but I like my stencil art to actually shock and stop and make you think. All I could think about at the Cans Festival is how espeically smug Lambeth Council must be feeling in having been able to contain the graffiti.
Stencil art is all about the juxtaposition. The ideas don't work as part of an exhibition; they need context, they need shock value. They don't need queues of tourists lining up to capture the moment on their camera, and then leave London thinking that even the underground is now sanitised.
*and I didn’t even mention the B word*
You can see more of my Can Festival photographs in my flickr stream over HERE.
technorati: cans festival
| Tuesday 13 May, 2008 |
Calm down! Calm down! It's only the Cans Festival. I waited a couple of weeks for the semi-corporate graffiti fest to calm down, avoiding the queues during the opening weekend that stretched all the way along York Road.
The Cans Festival (see what they've done there?) is stencil art going overground. Graffiti is starting to become big money in the art world and The Man wants in on a bit of mainstream action to, you know, keep cool with da kids.
A South London piss alley at the back of the old Waterloo International was put aside for the stencilers to spray their stuff. The opening weekend also saw some of the dreaded 'art installations.' I'd call it a couple of burnt out bangers, and you can see these without the queues most days on m'estate.
And so two weeks after all the mainstream knobber media whore hype, I returned to Leake Street, with camera, and with an open mind. But can street art still remain so if it is deemed 'street' by the authorities?
The 'exhibition' was much like any other exhibition that you may see across the road at the South Bank Centre. A bit hit, a bit miss. Walking around with wall-to-wall stencilling was slightly overwhelming. You can't take in the entire Tate Modern on one visit; likewise for Leake Street.
What you're presented with is stencil art overload. Part of the appeal of walking around town and stumbling across some stencil art is the unexpected positioning of it. It's all about the context and the uncertainty. Cans Festival makes it all seem so clinical, so conservative, so endorsed.
It's the difference between shopping at HMV and walking into a collector’s record fare. An elitist attitude? Possibly, but I like my stencil art to actually shock and stop and make you think. All I could think about at the Cans Festival is how espeically smug Lambeth Council must be feeling in having been able to contain the graffiti.
Stencil art is all about the juxtaposition. The ideas don't work as part of an exhibition; they need context, they need shock value. They don't need queues of tourists lining up to capture the moment on their camera, and then leave London thinking that even the underground is now sanitised.
*and I didn’t even mention the B word*
You can see more of my Can Festival photographs in my flickr stream over HERE.
technorati: cans festival
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