D*Face, Kai and Sunny and Shepard Fairey London art show "Unity"

StolenSpace Gallery
17 Osborn St, London E1 6TD
10 Sep - 3 October 2021


Unity


Massive queues, a packed opening night at a gallery – is this 2008 all over again? Actually no, it’s D*Face collaborating with two of StolenSpace’s long term friends Kai and Sunny, a double act counting as one friend, and Shepard Fairey.

Many may recall that D*Face’s gallery StolenSpace has hosted three major Shep Fairey solo shows in the past (Nineteeneightyfouria 2007; Sound and Vision 2012 and Facing The Giant, 2019). What may be less well known is that Kai and Sunny, described by the gallery as having a “shared college experience” with D*Face, have been exhibiting at StolenSpace since New Year 2009, pursuing a style which back then was way too “design” for my tastes, not “street” enough. See also 2011, 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2020!


NineteenEightyFouria by Shepard Fairey, London 2007


Kai and Sunny have also exhibited at Subliminal Projects in LA, founder….Shepard Fairey, so connections are tight.

Now that the free beer and artist in-person appearances of the opening night have passed there is time to peruse the art at leisure. To appreciate who contributes what where, who combines with whom, it may be handy to really overgeneralise three massive careers in just three pairs of images. D*Face does D*Dog characters with wings and corrupted pop art; Shepard Fairey does Andre The Giant and striking political illustrations, Kai and Sunny come from a gorgeous geometric op art and flower painting direction.


D*Face's D*Dog love lock



D*Face mural from 2020 with Obey Giant and D*Dog stickers in foreground



Obey Giant Shepard Fairey



Shepard Fairey, Brick Lane 2007



Kai and Sunny "Shifting Times", StolenSpace 2018


With artistic collaborations there is usually one artist whose contribution dominates, who drives the idea and the collaborators “fill in”. Great collaborators appreciate that sometimes they are the chief, other times they are the Indian. I am indebted to City Kitty, or possibly Lunge Box (can’t tell them apart on their podcast) for this stolen and bastardised insight. The online catalogue ducks the whole who collaborated on what intrigue by simply attributing one “lead artist” to each image. Often what makes the art interesting, the “arty” or clever part of the art, is actually what’s added by the others. With Unity Star No 3 below, the foreground is occupied by a D*Face winged Obey Giant but the piece is electrified by Kai and Sunny in the background


Unity Star No 3



Unity Star No 3


A stand out feature is how Kai and Sunny absolutely illuminate a piece when their contribution appears to perhaps be the less significant. I confessed earlier that a decade ago I really didn’t get their work, I am so pleased that recent shows and most notably this current one have opened my eyes to the flow in their art.


Ghost D*Moon Flower



Obey Rise Up (above), Ghost D*Moon Wave (below)



Unity Obey Flower



Unity Obey Flower (detail)


The whole notion of the catalogue of a show of collaborations, as in “not a group show”, attributing artworks on the basis of lead artist only does rather confound the concept of collaboration. The collaborator redux appears to have challenged the compiler of the online catalogue as “Apply Unity” appears in both the D*Face section and the Shepard Fairey section.

More show images:


Sure Shot Spray Can



D*Dog Icon



Unity



Hope On The Tide



Riot Everywhere



The D*Face Treatment



Burning Brighter



Burning Brighter Detail


The catalogue compiler has a curious concept of “lead artist", “Magnified Unity” attributed to Shephard Fairey features his Andre The Giant image but the main artistic device is the Lichtensein-esque benday dots and magnifying glass and which is a D*Faceification previously seen in his “Magnified Dog” painting in 2013.


Magnified Unity


To summarize, dudes all get on, artistic friendships have been put to the creative test and the artworks are genuinely harmonious interactions between the styles of the collaborators regardless of the lead artist nonsense. Back to the City Kitty/Lunge Box aphorism, justifiably large egos have been set aside to produce coherent beautiful art which is certainly worth popping in to enjoy.


Unity



D*Faced OG Sticker



Unity


Links:

StolenSpace Gallery website

D*Face website

Shepard Fairey website

Kai and Sunny website

All photos: Dave Stuart

Some People Are On The Pitch...

 

Why does a street art tour guide snap adverts? The answer is simply for love of the graphic response adverts provoke. The way people subvert, augment and modify adverts is pretty much an artform in itself. The printed advert becomes a host for forced artistic collaboration and capturing the “before and after” timeline yields fascinating mini histories of public intervention.

don't buy it, don't buy it....


A week ago I photographed an illegal flyposter advertising a new album release, in itself it was a quite compelling photograph. When I returned from a week in Wales the advert was still there, to my surprise, though now it hosted several graffiti enhancements. The black tag with the jagged arrow underlining reads ARTIK LTB who is an hugely impressive creator of large scale rollerbrush graffiti all over London. There is also a vertical tag which could be “Sey”; the large “throw” over the three characters in the advert appears to read PY and there is an arcing “Shmokey” tag in a white marker with quote marks and triple dotted underlining.

Artik, Shmokey and others vs Migos


The next morning the Shoreditch Street Art Tour strolled through the tunnel and that advert had been replaced with a fresh crop of flyposters which I dutifully snapped at high speed as we passed by. Although I am I swear completely and utterly immune to adverts, there is an advert for Ed Sheeran in that collection which is a curious coincidence as last Summer on a Shoreditch Street Art Tour we spotted Ed Sheeran serving burgers out of a silver airstream style street food truck just yards from that very spot.

June 2021 Flyposters



Ed Sheeran padding his CV, 2020


To my delight, just 24 hours later on Sunday that collection of adverts had augmented with a gorgeous fat chrome and black dub by Noyse.

Noyze 1 Flyposters 0


So, why do people make marks on adverts? In the case of street artists, being anti advertising has been a core sentiment since the movement’s origins, for many artists it justified illegal street art created in response to desecration of the visual public landscape by overwhelming advertising.

Decapacitator vs Uniqlo, 2008


Graffiti writers will point to the fact that the adverts are in locations designed to attract eyeballs, they also provide a nice clean surface for easy marking. In the case of the locations photographed here they also happen to be right next to key graffiti spots and many graffiti writers just happen to be in the area with the right equipment.

spraypainted watch advert subverted by Sony (ironic? lol)


Just a brief note on the title of this essay which may seem a little obscure particularly if you are not British or a football fan. There is an iconic fragment of BBC commentary from 1966 seared into the nation’s most patriotic memory – just watch the short clip below; an advert is a “pitch”; people intervening on an advert are “on the pitch” and the football theme is relevant as the Euros are currently underway 1 year late.


Here is a small selection of some favourite earlier examples of advert subversion:


Anna Laurini “Let’s Advertise”, 2016



Very arty advert


 Bowenised 2020



D*Face vs Lady Gaga


Does the advertising work? There is still no way I would buy an Ed Sheeran album :-)

LINKS:
Artik instagram
Sony instagram
Nathan Bowen instagram
Anna Laurini instagram
D*Face instagram

all photos: Dave Stuart

Diggin In The Archives Part 6

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? By the time you read this Boris should have made his “statement” to the nation and one suspects the tunnel will seem to be stretching much much further into the distance. Activities continue to expand to fit the time available and blowing the dust off the photo archive is a good a rabbit hole as any to fall into, so here is this week’s selection of gems from the past.


You wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a snorkeler (snorkelist?) walking down the road with a lion on their shoulders in 2013, it was Shoreditch after all. Twisted surrealism from Dal East.


Dal East, 2013


ACE is full OG London, his comic and pop art influenced collage screen prints were pasted up all over Shoreditch from the beginning. They still appear although nothing close to the quantity he used to put out. One of my all time favourite paste up artists. And there's Skewville , yet again, he keeps popping up in the archive photos. 2011.


ACE, 2011


In 2009 Graffoto founder HowAboutNo and I wandered Shoreditch and beyond on our lunchbreaks, chatting shit and shooting crap. Daytime street art creation was quite rare in those days and one lunch time we spied an artist in act of pasting up some big faces. He scarpered. Brummie Tempo33 told me a while later they had thought we were cops! Not many people wandered round in office garms photographing street art those days.


Tempo33, 2012


As I started to develop a little bit of an interest in street art I had a conceptual difficulty with stickers;,that fact that anyone could have put them up challenged their authenticity. Then I started to get my head around “Representation”. It would be very easy to upload a photo of a stunning mural by D*face, rightly they are appreciated worldwide but his stickers are in my humble opinion are way more significant to his street presence.

Liskbot’s hand finished stickers and paste ups go back a decade, still prolific!

The unknown sticker looks and feels like a corporate logo.


D*Face, Liskbot 2011


East London in 2011 was full of Malarky cartoons. Superficially they had the characteristics of children’s illustrations but close inspection revealed a real darkness. Often painted with compadres #Billy, Mr Penfold and Sweet Toof. These old Hanbury Street gates used to host art by great artists such as Donk , Stik, a Saki and Bitches and Macay collab, a Mau Mau and Alex Face collab and an Otto Schade "Creation Of Adam” masterpiece. And Curly ;-)


Malarky, 2011


In the next pair, the elevated elevation behind the grey gantry is the old Shoreditch Tube Station, closed in 2006. The first picture is from October 2011 and features a Rowdy creature and a piece by fellow Burning Candy crewmate Horror. The second picture dates from July 2012. The difference is the Olympics buff. One of these pics cost me a gorgeous Colnago Road bike, stolen by some Tower Hamlets low life cunt as I climbed up on the wall to get the pic

I am sure you don't need reminding, #fuckthebuff


Rowdy, Horror 2011



The Olympics Buff, 2012


When its good, Street Art can be very “of the moment”. The flip side is that years later the context or relevance of a piece of art may be forgotten. This Teddy Baden multi layered stencil features Mandeville, one of two mascots for London’s 2012 Olympics. Mandeville was named after Stoke Mandeville Hospital, the world famous spinal injuries hospital that organised the first games festival for injured people, seen as a precursor to the Paralympics. The orange flash represented a London taxi hire light. Mandeville was much maligned in the press, there will always be some mirthless killjoy. He didn’t have a good feeling about Teddy’s feline either.

I enjoyed the privilege for many years of submitting a selection of street art photos to the VNA guys for their quarterly zine. The vast majority of them went unpublished, there were far better photos from far better photographers to chose from. This is one of the unchosen. . . .


Teddy Baden, 2012


I took the liberty of visit to Shoreditch on my bike this morning, first time in over 2 months. Very little had changed, street artists have been socially distancing from the walls.  Notwithstanding whatever guff we get from Boris this evening I suspect there may well be more sucking from cess pit of my street art photos this week, catch them daily on my Instagram or facebook

Check out the previous weekly compendiums: DITA 1, DITA 2, DITA 3, DITA 4 and DITA 5

Art credits and links are by each photo. All photos: Dave Stuart

Shepard Fairey Facing The Giant

StolenSpace, Osborn St, London
The Residency, Whitby St, London

October 5th – October 31st

Update: The Residency portion of the show has closed but a section of the art has been consolidated at StolenSpace and remains on show until the end of November.

Shepard Fairey has visited London and a confetti of stickers, some major murals and a two site exhibition all testify to the presence once again of the World’s second best known street artist. In the exhibition Shephard Fairey treats us to a monumental “Greatest Hits” show, a reworking of classic Shepard Fairey images, like a retrospective revisiting. It is fascinating to scrutinise the show as a reminiscence of the barrage of street art we have witnessed from Shepard Fairey in London over the years.


Facing The Giant 2019 – Whitby St Residency



Facing The Giant 2019 – StolenSpace



Facing The Giant 2019 – StolenSpace


The Shepard Fairey story began with stickers, specifically his 1989 Andre The Giant Has A Posse sticker.


Andre The Giant Has A Posse and it loves Shoreditch 2019


His stickers tend to shortlived, not through any defect in the materials but simply that people do seem to like peeling them off as souvenirs.


OBEY, Shoreditch, 2019



Print & Destroy (or, Think & Create)



War & Peace sticker


Until the done-to-death “stay calm and...” meme, Shepard Fairey’s HOPE poster for the Obama campaign had been perhaps one of the most reworked images ever. It has been amusing to find examples of opportunist spoof Andre The Giant stickers, though as FOSH’s 3 month campaign to batter London ended a few months ago the FOSH sticker may well predate Team Fairey’s visit.


Fosh has a Posse



Santa, Darren John and Andre The Giant: all proud posse possessors


The classic Andre The Giant image appears in two forms in the Facing The Giant Exhibition. At StolenSpace a series of crosswalk signs are the mount for distressed Andre The Giant stickers, an edition of 75. Close inspection suggests that apparent rust may be a painted effect.  The code OG74520 at the bottom of the sign mimics something like a “NATO part number” or a catalog reference from a large government authority, it breaks down as Obey Giant, 7’4”, 520lbs.



OG Crosswalk Sign, mixed media on metal plate, Ed 74, 2019


The Andre The Giant image also appears in some very psychedelic looking prints based on early 90s images when Shepard Fairey was exploring other schemes for presenting his original Giant image.


Psychedelic Andre (1993, 2019) screenprint and mixed media collage on paper


The first new sticker Graffoto spotted this time round was the classic Obey Giant motif stuck on the ground, rather novel placement for a sticker. Stickers on a pavement with anything like a decent footfall are doomed, this one was still going strong on Commercial Street over 2 weeks later. No surprise maybe that a sticker first conceived 30 years ago should prove so durable.


Obey the pavement, Spitalfields, 2019


Several stickers were placed right below metal bands securing signs to lampposts, giving Obey Giant a possibly misleading saintly appearance.


Obey Giant 2019, Shoreditch


One of the first images to draw the eye in the Residency space was the Obey Star, the Obey command coupled with the strident logo highlights the unquestioning obedience required by politicians and brand marketers alike. It had its origins in an evolution of the Andre The Giant image after the estate of Andre The Giant sued Shepard Fairey to block the unlicensed use of the Andre The Giant image.


Obey Star (1996 & 2019) screenprint and mixed media collage on paper



Obey Star sticker, Shoreditch, 2016


Shepard Fairey’s early and mid 2000s street art in London was either stickers or paste ups.


Obey Giant, Islington 2006


It was a pleasure to track down a couple of new Shepard Fairy paste ups, there may be more out there. This first one actually saw Shepard hitting a location he first hit in 2007 when he was over for his Nighteeneightyfouria show, when this spot was much more likely to attract serious heat.


Obey Stay Up, Bethnal Green Road, 2019



Peace, Bethnal Green Road, 2007


Many of the classic Obey screenprints are presented in this exhibition as screenprints over collages of torn paper and newspaper adverts, simulating that patina of layers, rips and tears that accumulate on the streets. Unfortunately this Shepard Fairey – D*Face collaboration had suffered a little by the time we tracked it down.


D*Face Ruined My Life vs Obey Giant, Whitechapel, 2019


In his epic book “The Art Of One Man And His Dog” D*Face recalls reading in Thrasher magazine in the late 90s about “a strange ominous-looking sticker featuring a wrestler’s face and the words “Andre The Giant Has A Posse.” He was amazed to find that the artist had a website at a time when many corporations did not so emailing him a fanboy message complete with bait rider at the end “Hi Shepard, I am a London based skater and graphic artist and I really like your work. If you send me some stickers and posters I will put them up on my travels. P.S Is Shepard Fairey your real name?” D*Face was surprised to receive stickers, screen prints and a teeshirt. They met at a Shephard Fairey show at the Horse Hospital (yet another venue we are in danger of losing) and have been friends and collaborators ever since.


Andre The Giant vs “Peeling” D*Dog, also StreetArt Against Hate. 2019


Shepard Fairey and D*Face have one collaborative piece in this exhibition that you could easily miss as it is so small, on one of the metal crosswalk signs D*Face has added a signature wings and tongue motif.


Shepard Fairey and D*Face OG Crosswalk Sign, mixed media on metal plate, 2019


Shepard has painted three epic new murals on this visit, two in Shoreditch and one in Hackney. On what used to be known as The Dirty House, the award winning former home and studio of contemporary artists Sue Webster and Tim Noble, Shepard Fairey and team painted “Raise The Level”. The subject on the main façade is Shepard Fairey’s wife Amanda in what Shepard Fairey describes as a model of an environmental activist, both sides contain references to music, harking back to Shepard Fairey’s passion for music and his 2012 Sound and Vision show and both sides have random wandering fractures which scream "Torn and ripped".


"Raise The Level", 2019



This second Shoreditch mural is Shepard Fairey’s first experimentation with half tone shading, hence its title “Shadowplay”, itself a nod to Joy Division.  The top part of the face is unmistakably Obey Giant, not sure who the bottom half is nor if the combined image actually looks right.


Shadowplay, 2019


The third mural is a stunning Rose Shackle out on Mare St captioned “We Shape The Future”. It is Shepard Fairey’s contribution to a multi artist international PAINT (RED) SAVE LIVES campaign  to raise funds for Aids awareness . The image was first developed in 2006 and is a metaphor for strength in the face of adversity, it also appears in the concurrent indoor exhibition.


“We Shape The Future”, Mare St, 2019



Rose Shackle, screenprint and mixed media collage on paper (2006, 2019)


One of London’s longest lived Shepard Fairey illegal rooftop paste ups was this Chairman Mao at Kings Cross. Shepard Fairey has always made a point of mimicking, subverting or undermining the activity of advertisers, revealing their practices as sinister manipulation and exploitation, whilst simultaneously producing excellent exposure for Shepard Fairey Inc. This particular particular spot gave high visibility to traffic coming down the hill at Pentonville Road and also into town along Caledonia Road but the real genius of its placement was Chairman Mao was looking directly at a massive billboard on the diagonally opposite corner on this flat roof location.


Chairman Mao, Kings Cross, photo 2007


That Kings Cross Chairman Mao was up until the development of that building commenced in 2012, long outlasting the billboard which fell into disuse. In the exhibition Fairey has three “Money” prints depicting leaders who can be regarded as untrustworthy or totalitarian, perhaps even operating a brutally enforced cult of personality. “In Lesser Gods We Trust” pops up frequently in Shepard Fairey imagery, the text on the US dollar bill subverted to highlight the apparent deification of the leaders printing their faces onto currency.


Lesser Gods Mao,(2019); Lesser Gods Nixon (2019), Silkscreen and mixed media collage on paper


Another early paste up was the girl with grenade rose image, seen here over fragments of an older D*Face paste-up on a wall which is now home to Conor Harrington’s soldier, one of Shoreditch’s most iconic spraypainted murals. This looked like a metaphor for the apparatus of war pervading society and corrupting innocents but the updated version in the exhibition doesn’t have the hatching in the shade details, which lends itself better to Shephard Fairey’s concern that war has now become so commonplace and banal we no longer pay attention, which Fairey describes as “fitting in a painting-by-numbers style image.” Hence the title of the 2019 version, “War By Numbers”


Hanbury St, 2007



War By Numbers (2007, 2019) Screenprint and mixed media collage on paper


War is a theme Shephard Fairy’s political art often returns to. Flowers as a device to disarm weaponry is a powerful and frequent anti war protest metaphor, one we have seen from Shepard Fairey in London a few times including now in Facing The Giant.


Cordy House 2010



Cordy House 2007



Guns and Roses, (2006, 2019) Screenprint and mixed media collage on paper


In 2012, when Shepard Fairey was in London for his Sound and Vision show he pasted this art on a rooftop at The Birdcage Pub, I was fortunate to get up there to photograph it, one of my personal favourite street art photos. The image is the same as was seen on Bethnal Green Road in 2007 shown above.


Mujer Fatale, Columbia Road, 2012


That image was a famous Shepard Fairey image celebrating spirited, independent and powerful women who are confident in their femininity. The image rejoices in the name Mujer Fatale, appearing on the right below. The other portrait in the show photo below originated in 2007 and is Shepard Fairey’s wife Amanda with spraycan, ready to go out and get up.


Mujer Fatale, Commanda, (2007, 2019), Screenprint and mixed media collage on paper


Cargo Nightclub was the beneficiary of Shepard Fairey art on a couple of occasions.




This first photo of the collage of images outside Cargo nightclub is cripplingly embarrassing to the photographer but hey, you get the idea.


US Treasury NoCents, Rivington St, 2007



Proud Parents (2006, 2019) screenprint and mixed media collage on paper



Proud Parents (2006, 2019) Material stencil and mixed media collage on paper


Both show versions of the Proud Parents image are in the Wilkes St part of the exhibition (different rooms), the version screened onto a stencil has a much more layered and textured appearance, not really apparent in the comparison of those 2 photos.

It is a pleasure to see in the flesh for the first time a version of one of Shepard Fairey’s three “We The People” portraits. These were produced in response to the ban on political banners during Donald Trump’s inauguration, the strategy being to highlight how even minorities are still citizens under the constitution but were clear targets for Trump but even Trump couldn’t object to banners based on the first three words of the US Constitution. The images were distributed as posters given away on inauguration day and intended to be the subject of mass display in the International Women’s March, they succeeded in elevating the visibility of America’s “shared humanity”.


We The People …Defend Dignity


In 2015 the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21 was held in Paris. Shephard Fairey created the artwork for a huge sphere that hung pendulum like from the Eifel Tower. The resulting Paris Agreement set down policies that 196 Nations signed up to, aiming to limit rises in average temperatures to 1.5 degrees above pre industrial levels. One of earliest and highest profile actions of climate denier Donald Trump was to announce that USA would withdraw from the Paris Agreement. Shephard Fairey’s Eiffel Tower sphere featured in Al Gore’s second environmental opus An Inconvenient Sequel: Speak Truth To Power and a domestic home or garden size version was spotted at Moniker Art Fair in London in 2017.


Earth Crisis Sphere, Paris 2015 (photo courtesy TourEiffel.Paris)



Earth Crisis (2016), A Delicate Balance (2015) screenprint and mixed media collage on paper


London has seen spectacular Shepard Fairey exhibitions in the past and to be honest we were actually due another blockbuster. In addition to inspiring D*Face to start his own career as a sticker artist, their early connection led to D*Face’s StolenSpace gallery coordinating Shepard Fairey’s Nineteeneightyfouria exhibition in 2007, that remains the largest solo exhibition by an urban artist that I can recall.


Shepard Fairey NineteenEightyFouria 2007



Shepard Fairey NineteenEightyFouria 2007

In 2012 Shepard Fairey’s Sound and Vision exhibition was also split across two sites though they were barely 30 yards apart. The main picture display was in the old Truman Brewery basement whilst in StolenSpace Shep Fairey set up a record store showing his private collection of hand modified record sleeves, not for sale.


Sound and Vision, StolenSpace old premises, 2012


Sound and Vision, Old Truman Brewery split level basement, 2012


There are 5 distinct categories of artwork in 2019 “Facing The Giant” exhibition.

There are works on metal; in StolenSpace there are the metal crosswalk signs and a mixture of Shepard Fairey images engraved onto aluminum plate, some portraying abuse of power, some anti war, some pro women.


OG Crosswalk Sign, mixed media on metal plate, Ed 74, 2019



Stolenspace, figures on metal,



Freedom Of Choice, 2017,mono engraving on metal


There is a selection of images on wood, many of them portraits from the world of music. As Shepard Fairey became more politicised he realised that a lot of his musical heroes were actually people who used the power of music to communicate political messages.


Silkscreen on Wood Panel


Love the HPMs in the StolenSpace back room


Wrong Path, Hand Printed Multiple silkscreen on collaged paper


Works where stencils have been laid onto collaged paper merit a very close stare to take in the effect of the stencil and the layers


Herstory The Future Is Unwritten Mixed Media Stencil, Silkscreen and Collage on paper, 2019


For Tunnel Vision and Big Brother we are into Big Gasp price tag territory


Big Brother (Polychrome) Mixed Media Stencil, Silkscreen and Collage on Die Cut Panel, 2019


Big Brother (detail)



Tunnel Vision Mixed Media Stencil, Silkscreen and Collage on Die Cut Panel, 2019



Tunnel Vision (detail)


Shepard Fairey is the sentry calling out authoritarian oppression, abuse, manipulation and propaganda. He has developed into a committed supporter of human rights, equal rights, climate awareness causes, health issues. We have known since forever he has a particular gift for capturing these themes in dramatic imagery which turns the Wacom tablet of the powerful back on themselves. Sudden departures in new directions are not expected and it is actually a relief to find the Fairey staples re-presented, re-visited and re-worked in stunning style in this exhibition.


There is a reason why Shepard Fairey is one of the top contemporary design artists working today and its great to be reminded by such a powerful show what we have known this for a long time can easily forget to appreciate. Facing the Giant steps up to the formidable task of matching Shepard Fairey’s previous London exhibitions and proves itself a weighty successor.

All photos except where credited: Dave Stuart