There’s no Glastonbury this year so the Unfairground family are off on a rock and roll holiday to Fuji Rock Festival in Naeba Japan.
Each day at the festival see’s each one of our glastonbury venues, The Acid house, The bangin’ Salon Carousel and Jagz Kooner’s Acid lounge take control of the music with the scene set with sculptures from the Unfairgrounds own Ringmaster Sam Haggerty .
This years artists will be painting huge stand alone walls built against the backdrop of the Naeba mountains. Both Ben Eine and Inkie will be joining the Dotmasters and our fave local guy Masagon!
With The Pyratrix Circus bringing the performance side of crazy to the field, the whole unfairground Uncrew fam up sticks to a far flung field in the mountains of Japan.
Noticed the other day that there hasn’t been a post up here since new years! Well i’ve been busy painting around the place. Below are some high lights from the first 3 months of 2018, Liverpool, London and Laos…All the L’s
Portobello
Nice to be painting in Portobello again, on the left you can see graffik Gallery’s indigo get up.
Penge
It’s not often i get given a wall to trash. I love painting these groups of bags, but the content is often a hard sell. Very few wall owners want a permanent reminder of the weeks refuse painted on their wall, so a massive thank you to the Kacper Deli and the very patient Penge Barbers for letting me drop a special Penge pile Halfway up their High St. Walls and support as ever from @ldncallingblog
Kings cross
Asked to try the Market Road gallery bookable wall system out. Yep! It works.
Great portland street
When snow blasted London in early March, a group of about 160 homeless people moved into the disused 17.5 million pound ($24 million) eight-storey building in Great Portland Street, making it the biggest single shelter in the capital.
The occupation – due to end on Monday with a court ordering their eviction – has sparked a citywide debate involving London Mayor Sadiq Khan about the treatment of growing numbers of homeless people.
Sleeping on the streets – or rough sleeping – has risen in England for seven consecutive years, according to government figures, with more than 1,000 homeless in London and more than 4,100 nationally, a 134 percent jump since 2010..
The building developers started to board the windows on the bottom floor after complaints from tenants, effectively blacking out the communal kitchen, with evection looming i was asked to draw some attention to their plight.
Laos
Crazy weekend…yep i did say weekend to Laos! Birthday madness in Luang Prabang with Nam Khan Projects.
Liverpool
January visits up north with one man arts. Lots of fun dropping the kids around liverpool
Ahhh, Glastonbury, It’;s a double edged sword. An obstacle course through a chaotic fairground. Due to the Cannes lions gig appearing in the middle of my usual build, work started early in June, dragging the sideshows out, fixing trailers, building 28 foot mouths the usual thing for a uncrew carnie . Each year we ask a new artist to paint the hoardings in the unfairground. I’ve know Inkie for many years and thought his style would give a post victorian edge to our twisted fairground setting.
This year i brought a new sideshow, Small fortunes, Dystopian futures that favour the unfair! Cross there palms in silver and delve into the future from our resident fortune tellers the Queens of the Underworld and Ted’s Walker. We had queues of the curious leaving satified if not perplexed.
We had a cracking year, with the misery of the previous years festival forgotten. No one can remember a hotter build, a fuller or friendlier festival. We had a Cracker!
Usual thanks to all the Uncrew! The folly family, our incredible production staff, everyone on the bars back stage and back! Jagz kooner, Bez, Scouse and fatty for the battle bus stage. OIf course for Sam Haggerty making it all happen in the first place and all those who came, watched the freak shows, danced and drank the night away or those that lost their shirts on the sideshows.
It was a cracking year, always a little Unfair but a bloody good laugh
After a crazy week in Tokyo it was a quick dash on the Shinkansen (bullet train) down to meet old friends kenichi yamamura (ken) and Ben Eine and Massagon. It was a blur of paint drink and laughter in equal measure. Christ we got drunk! First off painted Malu the craziest hairdresser in Osaka, he has a full recording studio and VJ set up inside, working as he cuts hair…Thanks for the haircut! Then a quick stop at Banquet and great bar round the corner and a couple of small works dotted around while i sampled the joys of Japanese whisky.
Ben, Ken and Massagon are dangerous guys to go out for an evening with, if it wasn’t for then i may have never found my way home. Waking up in the morning finding photos of things i didn’t remember…like painting people’s clothes in the street? The next day saw an early hungover start and some more rude kids on shutters at Kenmuri Then a quick visit to the mayor..?..!..?
Of course the evening turned out stranger than i can remember and on the last day in Osaka another wall and another bar…
I love Osaka, mostly because of the people . Thank you so much Ken and massagon your amazing hosts, thanks for keeping us all safe and sound finding some great walls and great bars and restaurants. Great to spend some time with Ben and MC, see you both in London! It was a great 3 daze!
Just back from Japan, i had a great time! First off a week in Tokyo with Gypsy eyes showing me around town, helping me find walls and the gallery Kawamatsu for a show on the 8th of October. I first visited Kawamatsu 4 years ago when i first had a show in Tokyo. The owner is a keen street art fan and had one of the only walls that you could paint legally in town. 4 years later i was exhibiting inside. Thanks to everyone who came, bought something and drank a little too much Asahi beer, it was a great night!
photograph Yuki Loroi
Finding walls to paint in Tokyo is tricky, Its a dense city with complicated wall ownership and a young appreciation of art on the street. However Gypsy eyes pulled it out of the bag with this stunning newly renovated cafe/bar soon to open calledKitsune (fox). A weird shape and full of windows with only the stencils i came with to work i think it worked. God knows it took us a couple of very long days to finish! Thanks to Taro who was an incredible help thorough out the week and to Murao who drove like a crazy man to get me around! Thanks all you made a fantastic visit!
address of the cafe
inside
outside
quick skateboard during the night.
Hidden Civil War is a month long programme of activity in Newcastle upon Tyne, commissioned by The NewBridge Project. Throughout October 2016 activists and artists contribute to a series of events that expose, collate and present evidence of a Hidden Civil War in Britain today.
Just back from Newcastle painting for the Hidden Civil War show . Had a cracking few days painting the ‘Union banner for the dispossessed’ both in the gallery and on the front of Cobalt studios in Ouseburn. The event happens across the city, with friends and family from the Unfairground dropping sculptures here and there, Jimmy Caulty with his riot in a container, protest jukeboxes and showings of the Battle of the bean field. The show is at Newbridge project gallery and well worth a visit. i even got a chance to do some urban exploring in the tunnels under Ouseburn and drop off a few kids.
Cobalt studios in Ouseburn was the location for my public mural in Newcastle. Surrounded by an ever increasing development of student accommodation Cobalt is fighting for it’s right to be arty. The wall faces the office of the developers and hopefully sends the right message. Gentrification happens because of places like Cobalt and it’s a ignorant developer that ignores the reason why people are drawn in the area in the first palce.
The gallery show is in the centre of town at the Newbridge Project gallery. A cracking space with a great team behind it. The space will host a series of works made for the hidden civil war dialogue. Pop in pick up a newspaper, watch a movie or put on a protest song on the jukebox…show opens on the 30th of September. The program and paper are available here
Of course there was some time for some late night fun!
Just before i set off to Glastonbury Festival for the Unfaiground a few things came together in a weird culmination of events from several different strands. 10 days before i left we met on Portobello Road to discuss the promotion of a collaboration i was doing with Pills and dollar Bills. Around the table were, Attollo art,Graffik gallery, Pills and dollar bills and myself, June is a bugger for me, Glastonbury breaks me every year, I return a shell of myself and can’t face leaving the bed for daze. The festival ends on the 29th so the proposed date of the 1st was put back to the 14th… It was all still a stretch!
I got so much done before i left for the unfairground, but still it was a hell of a schedule when i got back. Add a large install into Home House members club (see next post) to the list of a solo show, a large mural to be done in a day it was going to be a tough week.
The show
Show photos by Bronwyn Boyle
Cant believe we got a Chelsea hero to wear a shirt! Thanks Mikel! Well we managed it all, can’t say it was easy, but with the help of Jay, ollie, Kate, Vestalia, Tamsin, Rashid, Webbo, Dani, Bronwyn and joy it was a dam sight easier!
