Moniker Art Fair, Adam Neate, Frieze

Moniker Art Fair, 14 – 17 Oct 2010
Holywell Lane, London EC2A 3PQ

Adam Neate “The Flock Series”, 12 – 30 Oct 2010
Elms Lester Painting Rooms, 1-5 Flitcroft St, London, WC2H 8DH

Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, 14 – 17 Oct 2010

{links above go to location maps}

All photos: nolionsinengland


Graffoto had an awesome day’s release from the grindstone today (Thursday 14 Oct 2010), spent hours at Frieze Art Fair, then cycled down to Elms Lester to see the 5 new Adam Neates on display, over then to Shoreditch for Moniker Art Fair and finally Choque Cultural Brazilian street art at Pure Evil gallery. Those legs need a rub. One day encompassed just about every valid form of contemporary art other than graffiti that is happening in London and, by extrapolation, the World.

Frieze is an overwhelming and exhausting experience. Quite a lot to like, quite a lot not worth giving two figs about. Adam Neate however has continued his trajectory and theme, creating anonymous portraits using multi-media coloured, painted, mirrored and transparent Perspex and metal. Compared to his incredible show there last year, there seems to be more depth literally in the 3D sense to the work but the movement seems to have been replaced by form, contour and shadowplay. At Frieze I saw nothing that was as interesting from an art perspective or as challenging, beautiful to behold and stimulating.


Elaine Sturtevant, Frieze


Reflecting on Frieze I realised that there wasn’t a single artist displayed who I would be aware of as being street or urban. Why is that? Culturally, graffiti, street art and urban art has an enormous fan base extending to almost anyone who has grown up through hip-hop, music and art in the past 40 years yet there is no evidence of this culture at the top end art fairs.


Adam Neate


The point of this write up is to highlight Moniker Art Fairs’ attempt to create a satellite urban art fair to bring this work to the wider more “received” art aficionados who this week grind the line between Cork St and Regents Park (Frieze) and to fill the void left after the demise of Zoo.

Throwing a few descriptive words out there to capture Moniker Art Fair:

Street Art – artists with work on display and or even creating live include, in no particular order Steve Powers, Faith47, Ben Eine, Herakut, Date Farmers, Jaybo, Swoon, Bast, Titifreak, Polly Morgan (ok, hand aloft – I don’t get how Polly Morgan fits into the street art scene unless the link is that you find dead animals by the side of the road, but I love her stuff so I’m not quibbling). If that looks like a list of weird unknowns to you, get thyself to Moniker for free and painless removal of scales from eyes. There is even a token Banksy (No Ball Games print) but that looks dull and jaded by comparison with the company it keeps.


Steve Powers


International: galleries from London, New York, Berlin, Milan, Los Angeles mainly focussing on their domestic artists


Jaybo Monk, CircleCulture, Berlin


Solo projects – a number of areas are given over to installations and mini solo shows which artists have really used to push themselves, this isn’t just junk that hadn’t shifted since the art bubble popped. Don’t miss:

Herakut – a section which reminded me loads of the red parlour room downstairs at the Dirty Laundry show in 2008, three or four delicious paintings and, must most eye-poppingly, a sculptural casting. Fascinating to see a characteristic Herakut animal masked figure rendered in 3 dimensions;


Herakut – Campbarbossa, London


Eine – a wall mounted collection of landscape font fetishising single word signs, some probably 10 to 15 feet long exploring a whole range of different fonts not normally seen in the EINE lexicon, plus a street alley tableau featuring a couple of shutters, a stickered and graffiti’d wall with props to a bunch of his London mates (not to mention I reckon quite a few websites guerrilla ambushing the wall with their stickers). I confess to being reminded of the signs Cyclops exhibited in several previous shows.

Polly Morgan – a coffin in a crypt erupting with stuffed chicks sits opposite a recreation of a taxidermist’s studio, creating an impact similar to the Banksy studio recreated at his Bristol show.


Polly Morgan


Films – there is a schedule of screenings of key films, I look forward to seeing Beautiful Losers for the first time and Bomb It II is being previewed.
Faces: at the opening tonight you couldn’t swing a cat stuffed by Polly Morgan without striking a key participant in the street art scene, an artist at your elbow, a gallerist smoozing, a photographer sliding off a bar, all forms of life present. We could call register but there isn’t space, doubtless those private view “court and social” photos will pop up on flickr.


Date Farmers – New Image Art, LA


Activities: Nicked off the Moniker website –

October 15th
- 11am-9pm/ Open to the public
- 12pm onwards/ Live Paint on Exterior Walls by Artists HERKUT
- 11.30pm-12.45 / RJ Rushmore [Vandalog prime mover} Inside/Outside Fair Walk-through
- 1.30pm-2.45 / RJ Rushmore Inside/Outside Fair Walk-through
- 5pm-7pm/ Film Screening - Guerilla Art by Sebastian Peiter
- 7pm-9pm/ Very Nearly Almost Magazine Launch - Guest List Only

October 16th
- 11am-9pm/ Open to the public
- 12pm onwards/ Live Paint on Exterior Walls by Artist CASE
- 7pm-9pm/ Film Screening - Beautiful Losers by Aaron Rose

October 17th
- 11am-5pm/ Open to the public/
- 12pm onwards/ Live Paint on Exterior Walls by Artist TITI-FREAK
- 1pm-3pm/ Film Screening - Bomb It 2 by Jon Reiss


Graffoto obviously preaches to the converted so we suggest that if you have a friend planning to attend any of the West End shows, specially Frieze, tell them that at Moniker there will be no queues, cool art and a far less tiring and twat filled (ok – you might want to paraphrase that part) environment that at Frieze and they will come away enthused rather than knackered. Tell them to go to Moniker first in the morning because in the evening they will be wiped out if they have been to Frieze first and they can swan around Frieze muttering loudly about the cool and cutting edge event they just went to out in East London, though its actually very easy to get to, about 10 mins walk from Liverpool street or Old Street tubes and after Moniker Regents Park is barely 20 mins tube ride way.


Futura – Campbarbossa


Tell them also not to miss the delicious wood paintings by South African Faith 47 tucked away on a very obscure wall by the rear fire exit, behind where the bouncers congregate.

In some ways the idea is not too dissimilar to The Thousands show staged here last year but the key is the variety that comes with the different international galleries and the timing to coincide with London for one week being the very epicentre of the international art world.

Just so you know, no one at Moniker or anywhere else for that matter has asked for this to be written or even knows that Graffoto holds this opinion and plans to write this. Graffoto will be maintaining its rigorous stance on not publishing flyers nor promoting forth coming shows with gallery blurb, we just felt on this occasion this needed to be said.


WK Interact – Carmichael Gallery (if memory serves), LA

More photos here

Herakut - Dirty Laundry

27th NOV - 7th DEC 2008
22 Wellington Street, London,

As the year draws to a close (how do artists tell when its holidays?), German boy and girl duo Herakut have staged a show of new commissioned art works through Campbarbossa, gallery with no fixed abode. The show is a sumptuous ensemble of the recent fruits of their labour and as nothing is for sale, it’s a pressure-free tribute and worship-fest.

The setting consists of a small white walled space at street level, walls maxed out with the familiar flesh tones of characteristic Herakut canvasses, while the basement becomes a sort of Dickensian upstairs-downstairs kind of maid’s parlour taking the theme of the show’s title, which itself is a title of one of the canvasses. On show are paintings by Herakut, sketches by Hera and installation elements.

Herakut: Dirty Laundry. photo: Wallkandy


Herakut is the blended word identity of the two artists Hera and Akut, and the first lesson in the increasing difficult game of spotting the artist the Herakut template is to notice the photorealistic finish imparted by Akut to eyes, lips, and the more honey skinned flesh. Hera is behind the more dramatic and flowing figurative touches and the pasty monochromatic skin not to mention the surreal blending of humans and animals as well as the slightly bizarre written statements.

At last year’s well received London show “Permission To Paint”, a piece which continues to resonate was called God Loves Ugly, this confidence boosting statement reflects Hera’s ugly ducking syndrome and is key to understanding the sentiment behind a number of the works in the Dirty Laundry show.


God Loves Ugly

A Herakut figure can be incredibly elfin, pert and slender, or with heavy thighs, broad hips and generous midriff. The details may be drawn as if they are ugly, but God isn’t the only one who loves them. Curious to note some seriously over-size feet in a couple of the pictures.

Zoning

Many of the canvasses continue last years theme of blending human and animal characteristics, through flipping the dynamic Herakut refer to the pet lover’s habit of bestowing human characteristics upon their animals behaviour, Hera and Akut are both keen pet lovers. The pug has been seen in many Herakut pieces over the last 12 months but there is only one in this show and that followed a suggestion from the buyer who commissioned the piece.

Rapacious wolves, rat faces and bunny masks are common through the many of the pieces, and it is a signature characteristic of Herakut that there is an element of melancholy in the sad eyed juvenile faces protruding under the masks. A sexual metaphor is evident in many of the Herakut paintings, none more so than in those pieces featuring a wolf about to dine upon a poor hapless naked victim. Hera highlights the malevolent influence of sex as a root cause of abuse.

She Thought She Was Too Cute

Figures tend to be done with either a rich honey-skinned tone or a deathly, pastey pale, reflecting the hand applied the paint. Most eyecatching are the gorgeous renditions of soft and smooth flesh, usually culminating in a pair of young, firm breasts. That’ll do fine thank you.


For You I’ll Do The Wierdest Shit

Hera and Akut combine photorealism and monochrome figurative elements in a bewitching medley of images. Their unlikely merger of styles now increasingly blend seamlessly, a testimony they say to the growing way they trust each other to develop a piece. Sisters, shown below, has one eye done by Akut and one eye by Hera.

Without Their Arms They Were Sisters


One motif that repeats is several forms is a sad girl bearing a monkey on her back but this monkey has passed away (it is a dead monkey, it has ceased to be). As a linguistic gambit the “monkey on the back” usually refers to a burden to be shifted by making it someone else’s problem. Herakut’s title suggests that perhaps the concept relates to existence and mortality. As usual of course, this could be complete rubbish, it’s just a guess.

Maybe We Are Dead Already


The sketches tucked under the stairs are produced by Hera working on her own, signed under her hand only. Having been trained in the basic tools of art it is no surprise that Hera is capable of these vignettes, finely drawn with incredible economy of line. This illustrates a characteristic of Heras’s art in which her characters have twig like legs and no grounding, capturing a ballerina’s sense of almost weightless floating. Saves addressing the issue of feet which would be handy, guessing here, if your feet weren’t your favourite part of your body.

Real Recognise Real

It is perhaps more of a surprise to find that many of the sketches translate so faithfully onto the larger canvasses, where in contrast to the featherlight pencil lines Hera’s painting style becomes bold, loose and extravagant in execution. Compare this sketch with “She Thought She Was Too Cute” above, it seems the demeanour of the girl has changed dramatically from a challenging and defiant “do you worst” to a meek and submissive surrender to what we suppose to be her fate.

She Thought She Was Too Cute

The downstairs installation element of the show is deliberately under-staged with no great drama or over-bearing artiness. The ambience is something of a “below stairs” servants quarters with a very cosy, clubby relaxation space and an old fashioned almost Dickensian clay tiled “no mod cons” laundry room. The washed drips look like collateral damage from laundry battles past, and form a gorgeous extension of the drips in the paintings.

Hood Rats


While “Mom” does her laundry (it is hard to reconcile the Americanism with such an English set-up), Dad seeks respite from the clinical whiteness of the upstairs area to sink into a deep leather chair next to the fire in a homely though slightly distressed chill out zone.

All the work at this show is effectively pre-sold, and is displayed as a collection, each picture being en route to its final lucky owner. With no direct return on the expense of staging this show, Campbarbossa deserves big props for putting on this show.

Whether your preference is for the richness, drips and intrigue of the canvasses or the sparse cleanliness of the sketches it is a pure joy to be able to see the set of works collected together and showcasing one of the strongest talents emerging from the street art scene today. However, if anyone at the show whispers in your ear “that one is mine”, don’t spare their feelings, apply your cricket bat to maximum effect.

Nine Eleven


A full set of pictures can be seen here though as usual, the low light in some areas challenges the camera (nothing to do with the photographer of course).


In the build up to this show Herakut were generous in their granting time for some conversation, hopefully sometime soon, who knows when - who knows where, there will be a chance to report the fruits of those interviews, you will be the first to know.