Sunday, February 05, 2006

Art Review: Whats The Difference Between Blek, Bansky and Will St. Leger?

The art world is definitely a funny one. Just three or four years ago the subversive mashing of pop-cultural images with political sloganeering that flowed from a certain Banksy's can gave a graphical edge to the simmering anti-war movement. For once proving that political posters/propaganda does not have to resort to certain tired themes, as boring and as staid as a tabloid front cover or as hackneyed as a '82 style punk album cover. Movement material could instead flit around at the edges of pop-culture, taking what was needed to wholly redefine the aesthetics of our politics. It was a nice idea, not that much of this was done. The wall stencils of Banksy, mainly ended up inspiring advertisement agencies and interior designers laying out shops like Motion Picture. Leftist graphic designers would grab one or two of his images to repeat untill vomiting, or exploit the brightness and contrast filter in Photoshop to produce obnoxious photocopied travesties that strove for the aesthetic but dropped the effort to remix pop cultural commodities to sell a point.

On display in the Front Lounge this month is the work of Will St. Leger, a sometime activist with Greenpeace he runs under the guise of an artivist and is one of a generation of us influenced by the work of Banksy. Leger engages in stencilling on canvas, basically rendering his playings in photoshop on to a permanent surface. From a graphic design background he has designed various subvertisements for Greenpeace, picking up on the general vogue for aping the undermining of the diminant values of advertisement culture. Some of these are on display in the Front Lounge, his peace on nuclear power shows Sellafield with a car freshener clipped to the smoke stacks. One of his more impressive pieces has several US transport helicopters plonk an IKEA into Iraq. There's a friendly play on the Robocop franchise when a pair of the emblematic Mickey Mouse ears are daubed onto a three tone stencil of the droid that was to replace the original Robocop in the sequel. There's a crude but effective meshing together of traditional Irish nationalism and celtic tiger consumer when Michael Collins gets a pair of shopping bags placed in his hands.

None of this is amazing though. Look at the price list and it quickly becomes enraging. Down the back of the bar there are maybe three single tone pieces, down using card baord probably, free hand cut outs, no evidence of preparation in photoshop and botched with the spray paint having leaked over the stencil borders. Still they carry a hefty €50 tag. Most of the other work comes in and around €300 for what is generally second generation Banksy cloning. But then Banksy did rip off Blek Le Rat ( 1 ) himself. Blek was one of the first stencil artists, who left Paris covered with potted images of Northern Irish riot cops and old catholic men and women looking out from their door steps onto the streets of the left bank as one of his many stencils. The difference between Will St. Leger, Blek Le Rat and Banksy is that two of these have plastered their streets and one hasn't. The guilty one here is Leger, who is really engaged in the lazy reproduction of an art style that at one stage may have had an original, subversive character but now is quickly becoming tired.

Good discussion on "ICN..art or just visual piss?" over on Thumped.

Labels: , ,


Comments:
100 Landmines in Dublin

http://www.woostercollective.com/2007/04/100_landmines_in_dublin_ireland.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4ZLdj4Sf8Q
 
Post a Comment

About
Soundtracksforthem specialises in iconoclastic takes on culture, politics, and more shite from the underbelly of your keyboard. A still-born group blog with a recent surge of different contributers but mainly maintained by James R. Big up all the contributers and posse regardless of churn out rate: Kyle Browne, Reeuq, Cogsy, Chief, X-ie phader/Krossie, Howard Devoto, Dara, Ronan and Mark Furlong. Send your wishes and aspirations to antropheatgmail.com

Label Cluster
In no certain order... Politics, Guest Bloggers Interviews, Music, Internet, Guest Bloggers, Travel, Blogging, TV, Society, Film, Gig Reviews, Art, Media.

The Neverending Blogroll
A Womb Of Her Own
Arse End Of Ireland
BlissBlog
BBC One Music Blog
Blackdown Sound Boy
Buckfast For Breakfast
Customer Servitude
Counago & Spaves
C8
Candy PDF Mag
Guttabreakz
House is a Feeling
Homoludo
Infactah
Indymedia
Indie Hour Blog
Jim Carroll
kABooGIE MusIC
Kid Kameleon
Kick Magazine Toronto
Libcom
Matt Vinyl
Modern Cadence
Mongrel
Nialler9
One For The Road
Old Rotten Hat
Pitchfork
Salvo
Spannered
Sigla
Test
Thumped
Newish Journalism
TV Is Crying
Uncarved
Una Rocks
Urban75
Weareie
WSM
Wooster
Village Magazine
Radical Urban Theory

Archives
February 2002 October 2002 April 2003 September 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 June 2004 September 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008

Postings
Mind Numbing Muppets: Grainne Kenny
60 Seconds On Film: Feb'06
Des Bishop: Give Him More TV Minutes.
IPods, downloading and the idea of the malfunction...
A Carthograhpy of a Cahnts.
Super News: Have the Gods Gone Bowling?
No Way? Thats Not Yer Man From Bros?
An Interview With A Vampire: IRMA and Pimping The...
Special Dispositions for Chomsky - What Would Emma...
That Bad Bastard Morris Is Back...

www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from antrophe. Make your own badge here.

Irish Blogs

Irish Bloggers

| Soundtracks |