WATER: Dripping Paint
By Shannon Brien
Notorious for being the destruction of public property, graffiti has now become a celebrated art form.
GraffitiStreet are supporting the street art industry by providing alternatives to cheap-mass produced art, offering limited edition pieces and encouraging new talent and supporting local charities. Their collection of street art soon turned into a passion and GraffitiStreet was established so that they could become more involved with this growing popular movement.
Pichiav, 2015, Street Capture of Polyxena
Over four hundred people turned up to the GraffitiStreet event ‘Underground’, showcasing the works of Bisser, Pahnl, My Dog Sighs, PichiAvo, 3Fountains, JPS, Hunto, Joachim and Art is Tra$h. Many of the artist gave a live spray painting demonstration, illuminating the crowd on the free-style art that is graffiti and installation artist, Bordalo II, unveiled his incredible four metre tall, ‘Big Trash Animal’. Many of the works displayed are a commentary on society and issues, a graffiti trend that has been popularised by artists such as Banksy.
Bordalo, 2015, Big Trash Animal
Photorealist artist Jason Brooks is renowned for his lifelike portraits of models like Kate Moss, but his new exhibition at Marlborough Contemporary sees his art go in a different, more colourful direction. ‘Origins’ displays seven seemingly abstract paintings that are identical in size and orientation.
Origin II, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 125.1 x 176.2 cm © Jason Brooks and courtesy Marlborough Contemporary. Photograph credit: Francis Ware
But that is where their similarities end.
His use of colour and rendering is unique as the models are transformed into blank canvases upon which he reinterprets and repaints them, creating an illusion of dripping paint that has created new visceral style where the art appears to be three dimensional.
This series is inspired by Courbet’s ‘The Origin of the World’ (1866) in the sense that his work has reimagined pre-existing objects and in doing so has ensured that his art doesn’t present a single perspective but is open to interpretation.
Origin V, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 125.1 x 176.2 cm © Jason Brooks and courtesy Marlborough Contemporary. Photograph credit: Francis Ware