MELBOURNE --- We've been fans of Australian street artist Mik Shida for years now. This MASSIVE mural in Hong Kong may take the top prize, but we also are enjoying this recent work done in Melbourne on the corner of Johnston and Wellington Streets.
SYDNEY PEOPLES --- This year's design and creative conference, which I was honored to speak at in 2010, Semi-Permanent, May 22-24, features a wide arrange of talented folks like Jeremy Fish (solo show at FFDG opening August '14), Tony Hawk, Tara McPherson, Mr. Brainwash, and many others.
If you live in Australia, you already know all about this great event. If you live here in the USA, get ready because there are plans for a Semi-Permanent happening here in SF in the near(ish) future.
Know how they tell you that there's no ozone over Australia, and you think to yourself, "damn, that sucks. Humans are a horrible plague on the Earth" and what a bummer that our children are going to inherit the Earth with all our problems and blah blah blah???
Well, we went to Australia once some years back, and WOWZAS, the sun is super intense. You can feel it burning into your flesh while sitting for just a couple minutes. It's not the "wow, it's hot" kind of burning. No, it's like a magnifying glass burning ants kind of intensity. It's as though the Sun's rays are being focused onto your flesh and your being burned from the inside out kind of intense... It's on the verge of terrifying actually... But it is cute how the little school children wear these hats to not be burned to death.
NYC based (via Australia) spraypaint whiz kid Ian Strange (Kid Zoom) (interview) held his solo show SUBURBAN last July at the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (video). The wonderful show's setup and opening was photographed by Lloyd Stubber for this exclusive photo essay for Fecal Face
Lloyd Stubber is a Melbourne based photographer who launched his latest zine 'ZEAL' last month and just won Monster Children Magazine's black and white photograph of the year 2013.
A little taste of Strange's spraypaint skills above.
Ian Strange (Kid Zoom): SUBURBAN premiered in a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia in late July 2013
Ian Strange: Suburban is a multifaceted photography, film and installation exhibition created by New York-based Australian artist Ian Strange. Since 2011 Strange has worked with a film crew and volunteers in Ohio, Detroit, Alabama, New Jersey, New York and New Hampshire to create, photograph and film seven site specific interventions incorporating suburban homes. The recording of these interventions through film and photographic documentation forms the basis of this new and groundbreaking exhibition. - David Hurlston - Curator, Australian Art and coordinator NGV studio, National Gallery of Victoria.
Above emailed some pics from his recent show Jet Set which ran during the first couple weeks of July at Melbourne's Metro gallery featuring Above's internationally themed show... Street artist Above travels the world adjourning walls like this and also tosses high his arrowed wood works... The stewardesses handed out "Above Airlines" boarding passes to arriving guests. Check out Above's recent book featuring work from his travels.
Last week hundreds of people came down to Backwoods Gallery to see off one of Melbourne's most prolific street artists, James Reka. Before moving to Europe next month, he put on a pop up show that tied together all of the loose ends of his decade long career. Featuring a final fresh body of exhibited work alongside selected works from 2004 to 2006, fans came down in hordes to pay their final respects to one of Melbourne's finest.
In addition to this new body of work, Reka pulled a large collection of old works out of the vault from some of his original shows in the early to mid 2000s. Many of these canvases haven't been seen for six or seven years and produced a huge, esteeming response from the crowd. Displaying works that have been painted over a decade apart, the audience could see Reka's transformation from being known as having the strongest graffiti inspired line-work in Australia to his now renowned free-form canvases. Whether it is one of his iconic characters from the early 2000s or an incredibly intricate new work, Reka's style is revered within the community and has continues to influence younger artists. There is no doubt it is commendable to already have such a strong retrospective of work and such a huge turn out of admirers in what is guaranteed to be a long and illustrious career.
Australia is losing one of their best to the bright lights and bigger walls of Europe, but there is no doubt that Reka's legacy will continue both on the laneway and gallery walls for years to come. Gone, but not forgotten.
Sydney based Scott Marr emailed over some recent works which he creates through pyrography, the process of burning wood or other materials with a heated poker. All the colors in the works below have been collected in nature and processed by Marr... Very natural style.
"Short Yarn",
Pyrography and natural pigments on ply.,
29.5 by 30.5 cm
"Humpy",
Pyrography and natural pigments on ply.,
29.5 by 30.5 cm
"Bull Ship",
Pyrography and natural pigments on ply.,
29.5 by 30.5 cm
Pyrography is the practice of burning an image onto a surface, using specially designed tools. I work mostly on paper but I also enjoy working with wood.
The pigments I use are all handmade from natural materials, most of which I collect from the bush near my home, the roadside, the garden and sometimes even the kitchen. Some of my favourite raw materials include ochres, sap, flowers, bark, leaves, coffee beans and berries. Part of my processing technique is to add natural mordants (fixatives), preservatives and binding substances.
Kid Zoom: HOME Tuesday, 08 November 2011 /// Written by Trippe
Australian born, New York based artist KID ZOOM (Ian Strange). Returned home to Australia to build a massive full-scale replica of his childhood home from memory at Cockatoo Island's prestigious Turbine Hall in Sydney.
KID ZOOM : HOME is Strange's first exhibition in his homeland of Australia in 3 years and represents a multi-layered home-coming for the artist. Coming home to reflect on his origins as an isolated teen in the Australian suburbs the installation also involves a film work of Strange blowing up and then smashing 3 iconic Australian cars.
As you enter the house it becomes a gallery inside which is showing the film of the cars being destroyed.
I would drive around with friends in similar model cars with friends when I was younger, painting, getting in trouble and occasionally crashing them. The Holden Commodore is also a staple of the Australian suburbs, you'll see one parked in the driveway of nearly every outer suburbs home in Australia. For me it is a symbol of suburban culture and under-ambition. The rejection of the suburbs and the desire to simultaneously destroy and create your own environment at the same time as enjoying its safety is the contradiction I'm reacting to. I think suburban angst led me to being an angry graffiti writer when i was 16, but with this installation I've been able to return home to create a more refined work using that same emotional catalyst and perspective from having somewhat escaped. -Kid Zoom
The Aussies really do have it. Maybe it’s all of that isolation all the way over in Australia, but the opening of Young & Free: Contemporary Australian Street Artists on September 10th at 941 Geary (SF) proved that the deserve a place on the international stage. It was the largest collection of new Australian street work that has ever been exhibited in the United States, featuring the likes of Anthony Lister, Kid Zoom, Dabs Myla, Ben Frost, Everefresh founding members Meggs, Reka and Rone, and many many more.
Nearly 1,000 people floated through from the two entrances in the first hours. Entering from Geary Street was like walking through one of Melbourne’s bombed out alleyways as the artists had taken the liberty to ‘decorate’ the walls beyond recognition.
The artists were working up until the last minute to prepare the final details for the show. Below are some of the images of the final day leading into the exhibition’s opening night. Young & Free: Contemporary Australian Street Artists is showing at 941 Geary in San Francisco until October 22nd.
Stencil artist Ha-Ha with the final layer of one of his iconic face stencils, used a little more literally in this sense.
Two thirds of Ha-Ha’s main exhibited work was actually of fellow artist Ben Frost, who is shown here against his homage pinning one of his prints to the wall.
Dabs Myla spent the day finishing a mural collaboration with members of Seventh Letter, the infamous crew that they were recently asked into.
Reka, a founding member of Everfresh known for his perfect lines and vivacious characters, mapping out the beginning of carcass character.
A gallery crew member placing ‘sold’ pins on Ben Frost’s work before opening.
I'm Ryan Malley owner of 827INK.com.
On June 24th, 2011 I flew to Melbourne, Australia with artist Sylvia Ji for her first Australian exhibit.
For the past few years I've been working with a really amazing guy named Martin McIntosh, owner of Outre Galleries in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. Sylvia and I, along with Martin, thought it would be cool to have a Pop-up Ji show at his gallery in Melbourne.
This is kind of a crazy post because after Sylvia's show I did an art/drinking tour of Australia.
Australian Scott Marr creates works through pyrography which is the process of burning wood or other materials with a heated poker.
Where you see Scott Marr painting, he's applying natural pigments that he's made himself. The raw materials for these are mostly collected from the bush near Scott's home - ochres, bark, flowers, sap, berries and other natural products.
A small taste of a great show featuring some of Australia's best street artists creating works from stencil to spray paint on all mediums filling 941 Geary's large walls. Should be a great show that you should get to when SF's art season gets kicked off in a couple weeks. Now go back to sitting on the beach or by the pool while your vacation lasts.
Our friends in Australia at Empty Magazine (Fecal Face was featured in the first issue years back) and Semi Permanent, where we spoke last year, are releasing the 20th issue of Empty, and to celebrate will be putting on two great group shows in Waterloo April 14th and in Brookvale on the 29th. If you're over in that part of the country, be sure to get there... Wish we could be there for it. Miss Australia!
I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...
I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.
It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.
Hit me up if you have any ECommerce related questions. - trippe.io
I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.
SF skateboarding icons Jake Phelps, Mickey Reyes, and Tommy Guerrero with the 3 SF Giants World Series Trophies
When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.
Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading
"Six Degrees" opens tonight, Friday Jan 16th (7-10pm) at FFDG in San Francisco. ~Group show featuring: Brett Amory, John Felix Arnold III, Mario Ayala, Mariel Bayona, Ryan Beavers, Jud Bergeron, Chris Burch, Ryan De La Hoz, Martin Machado, Jess Mudgett, Meryl Pataky, Lucien Shapiro, Mike Shine, Minka Sicklinger, Nicomi Nix Turner, and Alex Ziv.
"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on
As we work on our changes, we're leaving Squarespace and coming back to the old server. Updates are en route.
The content that was on the site between May '14 and today is history... Whatever, wasn't interesting anyway. All the good stuff from the last 10 years is here anyway.
Opening tonight, Friday May 23rd (7-10pm) at Park Life in the Inner Richmond (220 Clement St) is Again Home Again featuring works from the duo Jacob Mcgraw-Mikelson & Rachell Sumpter who split time living in Sacramento and a tiny island at the top of Pudget Sound with their children.
Jacob Magraw will be showing embroidery pieces on cloth along with painted, gouache works on paper --- Rachell Sumpter paints scenes of colored splendor dropped into scenes of desolate wilderness. ~show details
NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?
The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.
Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON
Los Angeles based Alison Blickle who showed here in San Francisco at Eleanor Harwood last year (PHOTOS) recently showed new paintings in New York at Kravets Wehby Gallery. Lovely works.
We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...
If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.
Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.
Nate Milton emailed over this great short Gator Skater which is a follow-up to his Dog Skateboard he emailed to us back in 2011... Any relation to this Gator Skater?
Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.
In a filmmaker's thinking, we wish more videos were done in this style. Too much editing and music with a lacking in actual content. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.
FFDG is pleased to announce an exclusive online show with San Francisco based Ferris Plock opening on Friday, April 25th (12pm Pacific Time) featuring 5 new medium sized acrylic paintings on wood.
Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.
San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.
Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.
Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.
The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.
With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding
I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle
While walking our way across San Francisco on Saturday we swung through the opening receptions for Kirk Maxson and Alexis Mackenzie at Eleanor Harwood Gallery in the Mission.
Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.
Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.
For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.
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