Banksy’s buffer will be working overtime tonite… 

Walking through the abandoned Eurostar terminal-turned impromptu stencil art museum that is BANKSY’s infamous “Cans Festival,” it seems that the Bristol bad boy has his share of detractors after all. Just two months after the show’s debut (it’s scheduled to remain on public display until Fall) it seems the local graffiti droogs have made their feelings regarding England’s prince of street art known in the form of ubiquitous tagging throughout the tunnel. Do we smell an old school graffiti war brewing? No chance, that would be way too “street.” The Queen will probably have her royal art conservators on the job restoring the place by week’s end. HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »

London’s Street Art scene exploded in May with BANKSY’s official “Cans Festival,” a sort of global gathering of stencil art heads unprecedented in scale. Now the organization has released an official time-lapse recap of the event from bare beginning to the inevitable endless queue…

Mr Brainwash’s personal SWAT team keep an eye on the goods…

To call last nite’s opening of newly minted and ridiculously named “artist” MR BRAINWASH an “art show” would be a disservice to artists everywhere and even Mr Brainwash himself. Instead, let’s call it what it really is: a grand art prank of epic proportions. A heist. A spoof. A joke. Or maybe just the biggest, funnest, sloppiest high school art fair of all time. But let’s not call it an “art show.” Unfortunately, the majority of the Hollywood zombies lined up around the block for the better part of four hours awaiting entrance didn’t quite get the joke. Neither did the faceless minions who quietly bought into the affair during the preceding weeks for a reported—but completely unverified—total of $500K as of opening nite after reading the recent LA Weekly cover story hyping the event. And, apparently, neither did Mr Brainwash who is taking this all very, very seriously. And who is this alleged artist we’ve never heard of till now? If you had asked Frenchman THEIRRY GUETTA eight years ago about his chosen profession, the answer would have surely been “cameraman.” After following pioneering street art legends like Banksy and Shepard Fairey around, camera in hand, shooting hundreds of hours of footage, however, the lure of cheap & easy fame began to eat away at him. The desire to mint an original style proved more elusive. It all began several years ago with a series of uninspiring wheatpaste posters in the style of nearly every stencil artist that came before him depicting Guetta, with trademark facial hair and fedora, holding a camera, fused to the walls of Hollywood’s most heavily trafficked corridors. Further inspired by the success of Banksy’s self-produced “Barely Legal” solo show in 2006 (and with the encouragement of Sir Banks himself—possibly his biggest art prank on us all to date?), and having established sufficient “street cred,” Guetta began to plot his own ascent. The result is the exhibition in question, titled “Life is Beautiful” that currently occupies the formerly vacant CBS Studios on Sunset Blvd. Unfortunately for us all, instead of using Bansky’s example as an inspiration for an original show, Mr Brainwash has replicated the Bristol Bad Boy’s fete in relative scale and concept, but without a trace of originality. Which is not to say that Guetta lacks vision. The concept of renting out the staggeringly large and formerly vacant (it will be razed in coming months to make way for LA’s biggest skyscraper) building for a homegrown art show is a brilliant move. Handling it all himself sans gallery, even moreso. But what Guetta has chosen to fill the studio with amounts to the canon of Pop Art fed through the blender of street art and rendered verbatim in the style of the genre’s top earners in nearly every conceivable medium from sculpture to paintings. Which in theory, should make it an incredible work of parody, if not for Mr Brainwash’s steadfast assertion that what he has created is indeed art. “For ten years I’ve been creating real artwork and never with a show,” explains the artist. “I never did it to make money, and I’m still not. This is a gift to Los Angeles. I’m sharing this experience with everyone.” The result is indeed visually stunning with giant Claes Oldenburg style sculptures greeting his fans in the building’s courtyard who are in turn awed by the cavernous and sloppy wonderland of imagery that awaits them inside. In the words of one of LA’s most pioneering street art provocateurs, Skullphone, “if Disneyland wanted to open a street art ride, this is what they’d have done.” Warhol, Banksy, and nearly every other major Pop artist conceivable are ripped off wholesale in these works which incorporate the style of humor implicit in Banksy’s best designs but without the artist’s biting irony and dry English wit. Instead, what Mr Brainwash (or more accurately, his army of assistants) has created is a vast array of straightforward sight gags that never fail to amuse, but never quite hit the satirical homeruns of his mentor. The sloppiness of the entire affair and DIY spirit are its most redeeming qualities, and it will surely be the biggest show LA will see all year. It’s just too bad it wasn’t intentionally the most astutely satirical one too, aimed at taking the inflated, overpaid, and hyper-serious world of street art down a notch. That would have made it truly brilliant. HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »

McSupersized and Banksy had a daughter and she’s quite lovely…

Supertouch’s own RON ENGLISH was out in London this past weekend in full force at BANKSY’s first public stencil art convention, THE CANS FESTIVAL, where his alter ego McSUPERSIZED tagged along to entertain the kids. While in town Ron managed to liberate a few billboards with his signature brand of “Popaganda,” and attend the opening of his joint art exhibition “The Adam & Ron Show” co-starring British painter ADAM NEATE at the venerable ELMS LESTERS PAINTING ROOMS where the queue of punters lined up to get a look at the art was nearly as long as the one to get into the Cans Fest. PEEP THE RECAP: Read the rest of this entry »

The event’s hostess will be happy to make you more comfortable…

Opening to the public today, London’s CANS FESTIVAL saw a massive queue of thousands of fans vying for a closer look at English Street Art mastermind BANKSY’s latest offerings. Of course, over 40 other artists from around the world participated in the stencil art-only jam inside an unused Eurostar terminal at Waterloo on the capital’s South Bank including Ron English, Blek Le Rat, Bsas Stencil, Run Don’t Walk, James Dodd (dlux), Tom Civil (civilian), Vexta, Prism, Daniel Melim, Altocontraste, Bandit, Roadsworth, 3D Del Naja, Artiste-Ouvrier, Sten, Sadhu, C215, Lucamaleonte, Lex, Orticancvoodles, Kaagman, Dolk, Pobel, M-City, Vhils, Btoy, Coolture, Schhh, Borbo, Sam3, Faile, Eine, John Grider, Logan Hicks, Pure Evil, and Dot Masters. The general public is invited to participate as well, and any punter showing up with a stencil and some paint will be allowed to leave their mark within the festival’s legal boundaries. HAVE A LOOK (OVER 150 PHOTOS!): Read the rest of this entry »

Banksy’s very legal contribution to the Cans Festival…

In case you’ve been living under a rock, London is playing host to the CANS FESTIVAL this weekend, a huge show of stencil art with over 40 international street & graffiti artists participating, including movement figurehead and onetime rebel BANKSY, who masterminded the entire affair. These photos represent the first look at his work in the show. Located in an unused Eurostar terminal at Waterloo on the capital’s South Bank, the very legal festival intends to showcase one of London’s most popular tourist attractions in a safe, controlled setting. We’re not exactly sure why it’s called the “Cans Festival” instead of the more obvious “Stencil Festival,” but we are surprised Sir Banksy himself is taking center stage in the show. The gangster move would have certainly been for Banksy to shun participation in the festival while dropping an illegal bomb of massive proportions elsewhere in the city as a movement-leading show of force. Who knows, it’s a long holiday weekend in Fogtown, perhaps our man’s got something up his sleeve yet. Meantime, here’s what Banksy had to say about organizing the show: “Graffiti doesn’t always spoil buildings, in fact it’s the only way to improve a lot of them. In a few hours with a couple of hundred cans of paint, I’m hoping we can transform a dark, dirty, neglected hellhole into an oasis of beautiful art. I’ve always felt anyone with a paint can should have as much say in how our cities look as architects and ad men, so getting to cover an entire street with graffiti is a dream come true, or as some people might call it, a complete and utter nightmare.” The show is being sponsored & organized by PICTURES ON WALLS, an East End printmaker that produces limited-edition screenprints by Banksy and Faile, among others. Tonite marks the VIP first-look debut of the show with A-listers like Kevin Spacey strolling through the tunnel, cocktails in hand, admiring the Street Art in spacious privacy before the sweaty masses are admitted on Saturday with an expected 75,000+ fans expected to descend on the show. Stay tuned for more updates throughout the weekend…

Tagline: “What a lot of rubbish”