Posts Tagged ArtPolitic
Brian Haw
Feb 8
New Website
Jan 5
I am happy to announce that my new website has finally gone live. You can find it at mikemarcus.co.uk
Elizabeth
Nov 20
An out-take from the shoot we did for the London Nude Tech Calendar. It is the first serious shoot we did together and Elizabeth was a wonderful, relaxed model.
All proceeds from the calendar go to the charity Take Heart India. You can see the image that was used in the Guardian.
Recent street interventions
Aug 19
Space
Aug 17
I am putting together an Arts Council funding application and exhibition proposal for a large relational art installation somewhere in London. Up until now I have mostly put my work on the street with the occasional gallery show. However I do not find either environment to be an ideal place to show my work.
Street installations are hard to control. I'm to getting sick of sneaking around trying to avoid police and (ironically) the issue of vandalism (people tagging over, destroying or removing my work) is discouraging me in the sense that I do not with to be part of any type of territorial battle.
Galleries tend to be dry and exclusive and I feel that they exclude and alienate as many potential viewers as they encourage. Rather than disseminating good art, commercial galleries are only interested in showing work, which will generate sales, to a public who are able to buy.
Because of this, I am looking for a space which is neither street nor private. An in-between space where a sense of public ownership can be fostered but I could still retain control over installation and preservation of my work.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
In the past I have used street art, and particularly the medium of the pasted poster to disseminate political ideas.
There is a jewish religious law which prevents the destruction of the 'written word of god'. This usually manifests in the practice of burying decommissioned holy texts such as bibles and prayer books on consecrated ground. The religious jewish population of Israel are extremely fanatical about keeping their laws in a very literal sense. Interestingly for this project the religious and zionist lobby overlap considerably and both have significant political clout - It occurred to me that it might be fun to give them a conflict of interests.
I propose that houses in danger of demolition are identified and their outsides papered with blown up copies of jewish texts. The religious right would protest violently to prevent their demolition despite the fact that they are the very group who pressure the israeli administration for increased settlement building activities in the occupied territories.
Apart from the obvious human rights benefits of such a project, for me as an artist I am attracted to the surreality of the mental image it invokes. I think that it could lead to some extremely visually arresting photography - Hasidim in full religious garb, preventing bulldozers from accessing rows of houses clad in black and white calligraphic forms.
Paint
Apr 3
Character study - watercolour on paper
Final painting - oil on canvas
February the 12th sees the first print release from the new Exogamy #2 series
The image features a triptych of intersexual hybrid figures, each a digital "genetic" synthesis of my own self portrait with that of a woman who I encountered in my daily life. In this case, I met each of the donor females via a different internet social network.
There will be an accompanying release of 33 unique large format public works, one placed in each of the London boroughs. This is indicative of a new direction for me, marrying my 'street art' and 'fine art photography' careers into one unified practice.
The edition consists of 85 20x16 inch silver gelatine photographs (plus 4 selenium toned Artist proofs) on 300gsm fibre based semigloss paper. Each piece is individually hand printed by myself in the darkroom from a digital internegative. The edition size is intentionally large in order to keep the price low and enable ordinary people to afford to purchase a print during the current economic climate.
Synthesis #1/1
Jan 11
A rough sketch for the forthcoming "Synthesis" series - A digital hybrid between a human and a mannequin.
Red Dots
Dec 4
In the past month I have had a solo exhibition (in collaboration with the wonderful Amie Slavin), marketed an edition of prints and have been involved to some extent or another in three group shows. All these are in some way linked to the "urban art" scene.
Urban art is what you have to call street art when it is put in a gallery in order to avoid hypocrisy. The scene's spiritual home is London and over the past four or five years, it has grown exponentially. There is an established and very conscientious fan base who travel the world attending exhibitions and que outside galleries overnight to have a chance of buying the latest canvas. These collectors have become so numerous and demand so great that Banksy's latest print release sold out within seconds leading to a catastrophic collapse of the publishers database.
Obviously this has had an impact on the street where there have been hundreds of new artists producing lookalike work in an attempt to cash in on the gold rush.
Like many fine artists eventually do, I have reached a point where I want to devote myself to my practice full time. In order to do this, I need to make enough money through public funding and print sales to cover my needs for rent, food, art materials and the occasional beer. Obviously the urban art scene is a good place to target because so much money is being spent. For this reason I devoted much of the past month to marketing myself in this sector.
As this period draws to a close, I have to say that I have been left a little disappointed. Of the long conversations I have had with collectors and dealers, I have come to the conclusion that the scene wants to consume (both commercially and intellectually) safe art. Because of the supreme lack of imagination shown by its aficionados, todays urban art seems to be a retrospective of yesterdays street art, a parody of itself.
What happened to the radical movement where we could say what we wanted without being moderated by galleries? Weren't we meant to be subversive? These days it seems that we are more conservative than the art establishment which we reacted against. Somewhere during the change from "street" to "urban", the movement lost its passion and subsequently its message.
I wanted to comment on this so rather than bring the street to the gallery, I brought the gallery to the street. I went outside and sprayed little red dots on all the art I could find. The kind that galleries use to show when a piece has been sold.
new print release
Nov 22
55.5 x 75 cm 6 colour screen print on 280gsm velvet black Somerset paper.
Edition of 35, signed and numbered.
For more information or to order, contact Jealous Gallery.
cs #7
Nov 20
CS is the most common form of tear gas. Its use by military forces is forbidden under the Geneva Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997. However during the first year of the Al-Aqsa intifada alone the Israeli Defense Forces used 120,000 tear gas grenades against Palestinians as a form of racially motivated collective punishment.
Although the Jews own encounter with the gas chambers makes the use of chemical warfare notable for its irony, it is only one example of many human rights abuses exercised by Israel during its 41 years of military occupation.
To encourage awareness of the continuing violations enacted by my people against a weak and vulnerable minority and to register my protest, as an ethnic Jew against the injustices carried out in my name, I exposed myself to CS gas and photographed the results.
I had no other way to cry.
סי . אס . הוא סוג גז מדמיע הכי נפוץ . השימוש בו על ידי כוחות צבאיים אסור לפי אמנת ג'נבה ולפי וועדת נשקים כימיים משנת 1997 . למרות זאת בזמן שנה ראשונה של אינתיפאדת אל עקצה בלבד כוחות צבא הגנה לישראל השתמשו ב120000 רימוני גז מדמיע כנגד פלסטינאים כסוג של עונש קבוצתי על רקע גזעי
למרות שליהודים הסטוריה עם תאי הגזים השימוש בגז המדמיע הוא אירוני וזוהי רק דוגמה אחת לשיבושי זכויות בני האדם הרבים שנעשים על ידי ישראל במשך 41 שנות כיבוש
על מנת לעודד מודעות להפרות המתמשכות על ידי האנשים שלי כנגד מיעוט חלש ופגיע ולציין את המחאה שלי כיהודי כנגד האי צדק המתנהל בשמי , אני חשפתי את עצמי לגז סי.אס. וצילמתי את התוצאות
לא הייתה לי דרך אחרת לבכות
The Buff
Oct 25
One evening whilst walking through Blackall Street in Shoreditch, London, I came across a graffiti removal crew.
Mike - Hi, what are you doing?
Graffiti removal man - We have been instructed to clean all these walls.
M - Why?
GRM - They have decided to clean up london for the 2012 olympics
M - So you are removing all the art and graffiti throughout the city?
GRM - Everything except Banksy.
M- Why except Banksy?
GRM - It brings in tourist money.
M - Oh. How do you know what is Banksy and what isn't?
GRM - Thats the difficult part.
On the way home I decided to make the task a little more difficult for them.
Violence
Aug 12
I have seen too much violence. It has left hurt inside me. I can feel it in my chest. I trust people less and I'm more angry. Since that first day on the beach, an innocence has been lost and a weight gained.
Someone once said to me "I spray stencils because I cant afford therapy". You know what? She had a point.
I have put this scene on the streets before before. Laser prints with the words "milk and honey" in the lower right. Pasted on walls in Tel Aviv. It was designed then to offer a counter commentary to the perceived social brotherhood that the Jewish state prides itself in.
This time I painted the scene with a brush. The image might be similar but for me the work serves a very different purpose. Each stroke of paint let out some trauma. Each work that I finished left me feeling purged, more pure, gentle and delicate.
I have seen too much violence and I need to release it. Stroke by stroke, scribble, flick and dab. Pasted to a wall and shared with you.
Watchers
Jun 27
She is all of us:
Dirty and fatigued by a world which expects too much and doesn't give enough in return. Guilty because in a dark place she keeps the knowledge that society is no more than a collection of of her. There is nobody else to blame so in silence she stands and watches.
Hiding behind a mask of her own making she protects herself from what?
As a child she remembers bright sun and crisp cold mornings. The smell of grass, wet leaves, crumbling wood and moss on brick. The gas has always drifted across someone else's fields.
Has the air become so hard to breathe or is it the social oxygen which she scrubs before daring to touch?
Her body sculpted from from bits of magazine and television, barely able to hold its manufactured pose. A reflection of the vulnerable soul within.
She fears this weeks new collective anxiety. Islam? Terror? Dark skin? She can't remember the difference anymore.
Her bag is packed, back is covered but in the end she stands nude and accountable in a crumbling city.
