A rather nice stream of art has cascaded on to the walls of Cargo’s yard of late. All sorts of art from all sorts of artists. 6 artists in a month, that has to be a Cargo record. First up was Hush and Asbestos painting at King Adz Urban Cook Book launch

Hush has been painting here frequently in 2008, the same year in which his technique of melding large eyed temptresses in various form of undress with furious backgrounds consisting off newspaper cuttings, 1950’s americana quotes has become much sort after. Click here for my interview with Hush, more work and a clever video from Romanywg.

It was only a matter of time until Hush painted ‘his’ women with their breateses out…

click on the picture for the full effect

Also painting that day was Asbestos. Mysterious, hand obsessed Irish artist who has been making his mark on the art scene through subtle ‘finger painting at the Cans Festival and the Take A Deep Breath Show at the Carmichael Gallery across the pond. One to watch out for.

Click here for Asbestos website and click on the picture right for a the bigger picture.

The following Saturday, Anthony for Opus sorted out for Part2ism (or part2 for the oldschool folk) to come and paint with Copyright down at the Yard. Everyone was pretty miffed that Part2 had painted over Hush’s piece, but he assured us he rang Hush to ask him personally. Here’s Copyright’s piece below, for more info on Part2 and Copyright check the Opus Underground website.

Gent of the scene Blam painted down on Cargo’s infamous ‘5th wall’.  The dude has his ‘painting open mouths’ down. Click here for Blam’s website.

A couple of weeks later the 5th wall was covered in twisted icons of capitalism, self imposed happy heroes of our generation, ugly spokespeople of the dumb founded kids from the 80’s. That’s right, Australia’s finest Ben Frost, at the tail end of his Craptalism show on Dray Walk, came down to throw up a black and white version of his take on the corporate world. We all think we should have a massive colouring in competition like Wimpy used to have. Don’t go outside the lines!!

If you want to paint or know someone who would like to ‘do their art’ down in Cargo’s yard, then drop an e-mail to art@cargo-london.com. Thanks to everyone who comes down and keeps the walls ticking over, and an extra special thanks to Anthony from Opus Underground. Big Up

Lots of love

WetPaint

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P.S. So such is the way with street artists that you wait ages for one to come along then 6 come along at once. Some are exactly the buses you want, others are ones so full that they don’t even stop at the bus stop, and others are buses that are no use to anyone. One such useless bus is a Bus called Pure Evil. I’ve never seen anyone aboard or about to board the bus Pure Evil, Yet he has been cruising round the Shoreditch route for about 10 years now, peddling his wears with no one showing one bit of interest in the tired old shitheap.  Fair play though, if I was as bad at art as he is (which I more or less am) I would have given up years back.

Wow, I need to lay off the old haterade…

Another installement in the series happening in Cargo restaurant features 8 graduating Photography students displaying their work in a exhibition entitled ‘Off The Map’. The students come form diverse cultural backgrounds and this is reflected in both the approach to their work and its content. Issues of identity, urban alienation and consumerism are addressed and personal and social narratives explored. In making the work various technical approaches have been employed, including moving image projections and a range of digital and analogue photography, mirroring the scope of subjects undertaken.



This exhibition is part of the Photomonth’s Exhibition. For More info click here



Off The Map runs from Monday 6th of October until the end of the month.

Next week, as part of the successful Polish Deconstruction series, acclaimed Polish director Rafael Kapelinski, will screen his new film ‘Emily Cries’ and gives a talk on its origins and meanings.

“I’ve made this film to have my say about Martial Law in Poland. My memories from those days are very vivid, and I will always associate that time with humiliation and suffering. Emily Cries is my personal statement over what happened then and an expression of  my grief that my generation had to grow up during such a difficult time. The film is also about first real love and the fact that it is always great to be in love regardless of politics.”

Don’t miss Polish Deconstruction and the screening here at Cargo on Tuesday the 23rd of September

this month on Cargo’s third wall, a complex, dark and eerie piece was put up with Oliver Winconek, a upcoming painter, who’s hand-crafted stencils and attention to detail has been garnering head turns from everyone who walks in the yard and from some rather big name artist agents as well…

Your new piece is very striking and detailed… What’s your method of painting?

How did you get into stenciling in particular

Stenciling and street art are things that have always fascinated, I love the idea of taking art away from designated spaces and stenciling is a great way to do this. It always fascinates me how many hours of painstaking stencil cutting translates into what might only be a couple of minutes of painting yet the results can be stunning. Stencil art is heavily in fashion at the moment and so many Artists are picking up a spray can for the first time, its an exciting time but it is getting harder and harder to be original, I rely heavily on colour to set myself apart from others.

Where’s your favourite place to be?

Nowhere in particular, I do love to be in a big city, I love the buzz that only a big city can exude. As nice as it is to get away to the country or the sea I just always find myself yearning to get back. You can almost feel a heightened tension as you get closer to somewhere like London or New York, it’s incredibly exciting as an artist to pick up on that.

Any upcoming exhibitions or other cool stuff that you want to bump?

A well as being represented by Castle Arts in Canterbury I have just been taken on by OPUS Underground in Newcastle, I am involved in a group show alongside C215, Hush, Jef Aerosol, Pure Evil and the London Police. I will be doing some live painting on the night of the private view alongside some of the other guys. I have created some brand new work for the show so it will be great to show it off and see what people think

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To get in touch with Oliver hit: mail@oliver-winconek.co.uk

and check out: www.oliver-winconek.co.uk

Roughe came down last month to Cargo and created two pieces which are completely unlike anything that I’ve seen in the yard, not your normal street art from not your normal street artist. In his words ‘in no way part of the street art movement’ which is a refreshing change from all the scuffed shoed people hanging running along behind the bandwagon.

I chatted to him while he painted and asked him a few questions and told him that ‘he’d missed a bit’…

Your art on our walls is pretty much unlike anything we’ve had up there before, can you tell us a bit about you, a bit of background?

Firstly I should say that I am by both trade and history; a graffiti artist. I am in no way part of the “street art movement”. What I do is pretty much a natural progression from where I came from, letter shapes have reformed into abstract shapes, architecture also plays a big part in what I paint, as a Londoner, I find it hard to ignore the concrete that surrounds me. I love the aesthetics of graffiti… Tags, throw-ups, handstyles, wildstyles… It’s everything that’s shaped me as an artist, although it’s nonetheless a far cry from what I produce now.

The key most important factor in my wall paintings, which so few artists seem to either understand or care about, is composition… form and function is fine, but if you don’t have a grasp of negative and positive space, then you’re wasting the space you have in my humble opinion. Being a designer also aids you’re understanding of colour work, line, typography and application. I constantly look through mags and books and get ideas simply from reading paragraphs that are nicely laid out. Again it all harks back to architecture.

What’s your favourite city in the world?

The best thing is seeing someone else take pleasure in what you do. The worst thing is having to let go.

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Roughe and System’s exhibition in Strasbourg in ongoing. More info here

Look out for Roughe’s book and exhibition in 2009.

Check out more of his stuff:

Hackney Council get a lot of things right. Fair play, they do a pretty good job and you have to applaud their ‘different’ approach to tackling fly posters, whether you agree with it or not. Hell they know the difference between pissed up tagging and quality street art too.

I’ve personally witnessed one Hackney Graffiti Removal Van pull up outside Cargo’s front door and the driver get out and approach Nick Walker’s Moona Lisa. I jumped in and said, ‘you’re not going to remove that are you?’ Only for the driver to get out his mobile phone and take a picture of it, get back in his wagon and drive away. (Now Nick’s piece has been ruined by dickhead taggers writing ‘I Love You Dave’ all over it and other 2am pen drivel, oh the irony). I’m still dining out on the story.

So it was strange to walk up to Cargo on Tuesday morning and see Myne’s new poster piece covered with Hackney’s patented anti-fly poster techinque. ‘CANCELLED - NOT THE EVENT ADVERTISED BUT THIS POSTER’.

Which is all well and good but what about when the poster isn’t advertising anything? What’s happens when the poster is a piece of art? Surely Hackney have been handed too much power when they have the ability to cancel art? What’s next, Hackney Council cancel dreams…

Whether Myne’s poster is advertising anything is a can of worms that Shepard Fairey would love to open up, and it’s clear that Myne’s work is influenced by Mr. Obey, but surely the Hackney Council can tell the difference between a poster advertising a night and a piece of poster art, can’t they. Can’t they?

Street Art is famous. Not ‘did you see me jumping around in the background of that live news piece’ famous either, Street Art is proper. Street Art IS the news piece. As I took my 6pm power-nap on Friday night, the Radio 4 news announced that Banksy has unveiled some new art in a disused railway next to Waterloo. Damn, street art on Radio 4? Charlotte Green saying ‘guerrilla street artist’ gives me the ‘orn (actually anything that Charlotte Green says give me the ‘orn)

So my friend and I shouldn’t have been surprised to turn the corner of Leake Street on Bank Holiday Sunday to see the hour and half long queue that sprawled infront of us.

Hell, it should have been obvious that when upon googling the ‘Cans Festival’ name and a sponsored link for the stencil based art exhibition sprung up as a highlighted box, that this Banksy-powered 3 day long street art event was going to be rammed for the duration, having has it’s very public arse, PR’d the hell off.

All the better for it though, the Cans Fesitval was a really special event, nicely hosted, well run, suitable grungey and run down with walls, cars, hoardings, and boards full of the best stencil art in the world. Everyone who cuts outs and sprays for a living was there, there was a blackboard with the newly arrived artists’ names scrawled on it. Hush and Eelus was on there when I walked past.

One complaint my friend had was that the £3 programme being sold in the queue had nothing about the artists who were painting that weekend. Only some cobbled together texts from some old anarchists and the same old pseudo-intelligent, apocalyptic one liners about freedom found in any Socialists fanzine. Aimed at

the normal street art exhibition goers, the programme should have been more informative to the crowd that turned up, which was a refreshingly broad spectrum:

Students filling their art foundation portfolio, Londonites filling their bank holiday weekend, parents dragged along by their kids, kids dragged along by their parents, not the typical ubertrendy free booze snagging laggers who normally frequent these street art shindigs. Another top notch achievement by the organisers of this event, properly bringing the attention of the masses to the glut of quality stencil art that is walked by each day on the streets of the UK, via the power of google sponsored links and Radio 4.

The taste tide might be turning on Banksy (on the bus down to Waterloo, there was new stencil on the side of a disused pub in Dalston that has a Rat painting a sold sign with the tag ‘Wanksy’ underneath it). but all kudos must be given for the ‘look at me / don’t look at me / why aren’t you looking at me?’ street artist for putting his full weight behind this event and giving some overdue exposure to some brilliant artists. Banksy pieces were pretty special too, even with his trademark ‘twat-you-over-the-head’ subtly of sentiment, his pieces’ stood out.

But the best thing about this show was coming across brilliant pieces from Artists who’s work is normally only seen on the streets of Argentina, Spain, Italy and from all over the world. And putting to use this old train tunnel to showcase such top talent.

In the final week of April, the art collective Le Gun descended upon the inside of Cargo to paint a specially commissioned mural on the outside of the lounge area and on the DJ booth

Spending three days working all the hours that God gave them, the Le Gun collective set to work creating a black and white wonderworld, Within that world stood a bar and within that bar, lurked a decidedly odd clientèle being served unholy concoctions of inebriating substances with a side orders of the most bizarre sustenance

On closer inspection, the details reveal themselves to you, it’s like indulging in some people watching with no fear of being caught. I collared one of the troop and made him answer some inane questions. You know, for shits and giggles.

Wow, there’s a lot of you in Le Gun! What’s the story, how did you guys all end up painting together?

We all met up at the Royal College of art, a few years ago, at the base of it LE GUN is made up of 4 illustrators and 2 designers but when we have a job similar to the one at Cargo we call in the troops ( mainly contributors to the magazine). The magazine was started while we were at the college. We had big parties to raise the money to print it, and decorated the parties with big wall drawings we all did together. The murals we do now evolved from that.

What are the advantages and disadvantages to working in a big team like this?

We have all worked together quite alot now so we all know how it works and what each one of us is good at, there are some disagreements some times. We all have quite different personalities but generally we are all wanting to head in the same direction, none of us are that interested in being commercial we just want to do our own thing and have a good time doing it.

What’s the story behind this mural?

The general idea was that it would be a continuation of the bar or some sort of feast, alot of it was made up on the spot. There is a bit of a psychedelic influence and also the occult. We have been inspired a lot by the band Hawkwind lately

What’s up with the dude with a big afro on a leather skateboard? Are there regular characters you guys paint?

The afro man was created by Bill Bragg , there some characters we regularly but most of the time we try and make characters up to suit the mood of the place, some characters can be found in the pages of LE GUN, this is what makes it fun for us and finally the people looking at it.

What’s next for Le Gun?

We are planning an exhibition called The Family at Cordy House on Curtain Road in Shorditch in June so look out for it, we will also be working on a set design for Madness at the Hackney Empire, and we are decorating the Royal Festival Hall for the D&AD awards.

The new issue of LE GUN will be out in June/July at all good bookshops. Go to www.legun.co.uk for more info

Hush’s art work is influenced by the pop art sensibilities of the far East. Having grown up in Newcastle and spent alot of his ‘formative years’ working as a illustrator / graphic designer in Asia, Hush has recently been hitting the street art ‘hard’ and his wide eyed girls and tongue in cheek sense of humour (’His latest wall piece entitled ‘Tits Of Terror’) have been making waves in the choppy waters of ‘the scene’.

Hey Hush, quick few questions if you don’t mind. Firstly, what mediums do you use and why?

I use the spray can as a reference to street art/graf, acrylic paint for its flat qualities also it dries very fast which makes you more spontaneous and screenprint for its commercial and graphic references.

How do you work? what’s your normal routine?

I always work on numerous pieces for weeks, months, distressing and aging the ground of the piece to echo the streets then the idea usually forms around the look of the canvas. The works always inspired by the media, cross culture values and politics. I always try to leave the image open to various interpretations though, I like to here peoples interpretations of the work.

Do you have a favourite piece?

My favourite piece is always my next, but I do like the latest pieces I’ve finished, Tits & Terror (right) and Dis-grace-d (further below)

What do you reckon to the state of the “street” / “urban” (uh..) scene at the moment?

I think the passion is growing more and more. The artists are there, the collectors are there the music has always been there. I think the next stage is probably getting the writers, poets, academics on side to really engage the scene into a full blow movement.

what are your favourite websites?

www.feedmecoolshit.com
www.woostercollective.com
www.flickr.com

When was the last time you made a big mistake?

I saw one of my partners friends lately and asked her when the baby was due – she wasn’t pregnant

What’s your biggest weakness?

Saying no

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See Hush at the following exhibitions…

London Show with Opus-Art
Brick Lane
Hush / Copyright – May 29th

Hush - Calma - Ken Garduno (Aug 16 - Sept 2008)

Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art
1257 N. La Brea Avenue, West Hollywood, CA 90038

MORE INFO: http://www.studio-hush.com/