Thanks to all that came, Tiger for the beer and Oval for the Vodka and Mr jazz dance ... if there's a better reason for staying fully clothed in an art gallery I haven't seen one.
Biography
The thinking man of the British graffiti movement has recently returned from self-exile in Paris. Like seminal comic 2000AD if it had ever managed to get laid, Mode's work is immediately refreshing due to its lack of posturing and antagonism, concentrating instead on very different themes (friendship! Love! Dancing! The latter stages of pregnancy!) Mode was recently made artist-in-residence at Coco de Mer, the peerless erotic emporium masterminded by Sam Roddick, daughter of Body Shop founder Anita, where he has developed an offshoot style mixing his graffiti-based art with more traditional portraiture. He paints customers from his vantage point of a cubby-hole in the changing rooms (with their prior request, of course). He is available for private commission.
News
Thanks to all that came, Tiger for the beer and Oval for the Vodka and Mr jazz dance ... if there's a better reason for staying fully clothed in an art gallery I haven't seen one.
"Party & Bullshit" is a two-pronged expose on life as he sees it; stuck between his experiences out partying (and watching girls partying as too!), as well as the flip-side of it all, angst and pessimism about the realities of the future ...
Alongside the collection of twelve canvases is a limited edition of an old party sketch embroidered onto trademark Maharishi fabric, as well as a limited edition run of 200 signed and numbered prints.
The show runs for a month, so drop by and have a look, and maybe let yourself be tempted into acquiring a print or a painting, as he warms up for a show at our own Greek Street gallery next April. Judging by what was already on show this Thursday evening, it's worth making a note in your diaries for April as well ...
Go, have a look around, and enjoy :-)
Curated by our very own Mode 2 and Luminaries such as Annish Kapoor, the installation was built to explore the journey that thousands of Eastern European girls take; from the promise of a new life, across borders to the shattered reality that is their eventual destination in Britain as sex slaves.
Mode has treated the exterior of each container as each stage in the emotionally harrowing journey from native country to England, careful to bring you into the world of brutality and exploitation that is the sex trade. The whole piece looks like a train in compartments, with a giant flashing neon word ‘Journey’ echoing nearby Soho.
And as powerful as the outside is, it’s the inside of the containers though that really bring home the journey of the deceit, aggression and desperation that these women often away from home for the first time and many very young travel on .
So take time to travel on this Journey through sex trafficking in Trafalgar Square, not disturbing but essential.
Mode 2, King Britt and others have come together to curate a marriage of music and media in Berlin called Loud Graphix.
In an effort to re-focus their attention on the relationship between album cover art and music, this group of scribers and producers are staging a series of nights, shows and seminars.
These are to take place on the 12th, 13th and 16th of this month. Check out who, where and when the great and the good will be getting together, to bring you the best in new music and illuminating illustration.
I couldn't make it to the Swish opening, as I was in Cape Town then, having arrived there on Saturday 4th of March. It was super-busy from the word go, but was a real eye-opener for me, and I'm not just referring to the view of Table Mountain from my apartment window.
I had been invited by the British Council to take part in a festival called Lines Of Attitude, focusing on street art, and together bringing five artists to paint a mural, stage an art exhibition, and do workshops, enabling the public to get a different take on what they may have heard about graffiti or Hip Hop, and how it could have some use in social bridge-building for a country such as South Afica. The other artists were Dreph, who now lives in Manchester, Falko and Faith 47, both from Cape Town, and a Kenyan "matatu"-artist Phiks. They had all already worked together on the first leg of the festival in Nairobi, producing murals and doing workshops in various neighbourhoods.
After our Saturday evening ended quite late (even later for me, as I checked out a d'n'b night at the Mercury club until 4 or 5am), Sunday kicked off bright and early by the Dewaal Drive wall; a 3-storey high mural project on the slopes of what used to be the District 6 neighbourhood of Cape Town, bulldozed into rubble from the end of the sixties to 1982, with its people evicted and resettled in different segregated townships miles away from the city itself.
Coming from Berlin, where snow lay on the ground, to temperatures soaring to 40*c on Monday, I got a couple of bouts of heatstroke, as we rushed up and down scaffolding in order to finish the wall by the following Thursday. Then there was this wind that would come down the mountains, almost knocking you off your feet, which made working up there a bit hairy at times. There was a lot of improvisation, though we started with Dreph's main image for the whole festival with a girl carrying a TV on her head; but we got it done on time; good teamwork with people I'd never painted with before.
We then moved on to preparing the gallery space, situated on the top floor of the District Six Homecoming Centre, in what's known as the East City area, an old building shared with a huge old-school textile shop.The following Saturday morning we were out in Mitchells Plain, a coloured township 45 minutes out of town, where we painted on two different walls, since we were far too many for the wall originally planned. Got stuck in front of the wall I was painting with Wayne and Faith 47, until the sun came down, then the rain too...
From the following Monday on I started sketching out a composition of characters in the corridor leading up to the exhibition space, as this was on the top floor of the building, and we were thinking of how to animate the walls along the way to it. The others busied themselves on the gallery floor to get the whole thing to come together, a real mix of different styles and approaches to work, as we all struggled to meet the deadline on Thursday 16th at 6:30pm.
Opening day was hectic, as we finished tying up all the loose ends. Ty and DJ Bizznizzcame in from London, to play on another floor at the opening, before two other gigs they had lined up as part of the festival. Being a creature of habit, I was still painting in the crowd scene right up until doors finally opened. It was a reall ygood turnout, very mixed for Cape Town, with Shoba Ponnappa, head of the British Council in South Africa opening the ceremony for us. After some chatting and looking around in disbelief that it all actually worked out ok, I was totally shattered and retired early after Ty and Bizznizz finished their set, where we had to throw a couple of moves after the week's stress. The spicy food provided on the opening was top quality! Took some samosas back and stored them in the fridge!
From the next morning on, I was focused on a new mission, something I had set my mind on from when I first talked to Mandy from the Homecoming Centre. I had originally wanted to do just silhouettes for the opening, strting on the ground floor and going right up to the stairs leading to the gallery itself. When I started sketching though, I realized that silhouettes would have to be detached one from the other with very "posey" stances; unrealistic. So I started to actually draw people interacting, which made the whole process much longer, and so the ground floor was still bare-walled.
I wanted to leave the District Six Homecoming Centre something inspiring, uplifting, and why not empowering, and set about sketching out a procession of characters of all ages, of different backgrounds, representing a pan-historical reflection of the old District 6 population as they struggle to get over the past and through the present land-reclaim programme that has been set up for the ex-residents.
That said, it was as tough as it was ambitious, needing the approval from those at the centre on making the mural not exclude anybody or issue to do with District 6. On my side I wanted something that other people who have suffered similar hardship could also relate to.
I missed out Saturday's trip to Robben Island, and Sunday found us out in the isolated community of Hout's Bay for a park jam, loads of children running about, paint disappearing and so on, but hey, it was still great fun, even when the rain came down for a momentary dampening of more than just spirits. Bizznizz and Ty were there again, as we painted a huge mural, with Billy (Bizznizz) taking shots of a rare progression of a piece. I had'nt seen him properly in years, the both of us hailing back to that unforgettable Covent Garden summer of '84. It was nice to catch up again elsewhere than some hectic London Hip Hop gig!
Catching a beautiful sunset on the way back to Cape Town, at the end of my last full day there, I realized I hadnÕt seen a beach or been on safari, or do any of those tourist things, as there was so much more to do, though I was sad to miss out on Robben Island. Monday morning I packed my bags before going back to the venue for the final stretch, and close it was. I had a plane at 8:45pm but was finally finishing at 6:30pm, rushing to the hotel with Brett, the photographer, then quick shower before speeding off to the airport.
It was, like I said, touch and go from the start, but Cape Town was something I sha'nt ever forget. Many thanks to Jean September at British Council Cape Town for believing in the project and backing it fully, for Lisa Stephenson, our tireless Canadian contact there, who handled all the communication with the artists, as well as fixing our itinerary for and coordinating our stay. Another shout to the photographer Brett Rubin, exhibition coordinator Paul Grendon, and Mandy from District Six.
Mode 2
