Chris Cunningham – Clean Cut Visuals 20 November 2012
Posted by Irish Street Art in Featured Street Artist.Tags: Belfast, Canvas Galleries, Chris Cunningham, Christmas 200
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From his live showings at Whitewash to exhibiting at ‘More Than Meets The Eye’ at the Little Green Street Gallery in Dublin, 2012 has been a very busy year for, Christopher Cunningham. The Belfast stencil artist describes himself; ‘First and foremost ‘I am a painter, although I do like to think of myself as a bit of a jack of all trades and dabble in other forms of visual art.’
Cunningham, who for the most part, produces his work on canvas, tells us ‘As a stencil artist I painstakingly take blade to card and cut clean and precise marks to produce layers which are sprayed with aerosol paint to build up each line and colour on the canvas.’
‘For me everything I create from paintings to small vinyl toys have to have a crisp, clean cut machine like aesthetic. Although everything I make is done by hand I want the viewer to be mystified at how each piece is produced and ultimately question if it is machine or man made. Each piece I make is done so with this clean cut approach and ethic.
‘Thematically as a painter I heavily focus on my contemporary surroundings for inspiration and ask people to question certain ideals that people sometimes take as fact and not opinion. Advertising and media feature heavily in my work along with unquestioned ideals of capitalism and government ruling. I don’t profess to give any answers through my paintings I merely subvert and provide my own social commentary on contemporary issues in order to show other perspectives and open a dialogue for the viewer to draw their own opinions, and hopefully question the social norms that we are force fed by todays media outlets and governing bodies.
Most recently Chris has been creating for Canvas Galleries‘ ‘Christmas 200‘ exhibition which runs from Saturday 24th November 2012 until 24th December. With 20% of each sale going to mencap (supporting people with learning disabilities) the show is well worth a visit if you’re Christmas shopping in Belfast in the coming weeks. For more visit Canvas Galleries on Facebook For more great stencil work from Chris pop over to his portfolio site; Clean Cut Visuals or check out Chris Cunningham Art on Facebook
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Friz Interview 20 September 2012
Posted by Irish Street Art in Featured Street Artist.Tags: Belfast, Dublin, Friz, illustration, Sligo
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Fresh from her monster piece ‘Godzilla Vs The 15′ Luchador‘ on the Lisburn Road in Belfast, Friz hooked up with IrishStreetArt.com to share a few stories. Enjoy!
Why the name Friz?
I grew up near the graveyard where W.B.Yeats is buried and we used to spend lots of time hanging around there in the Summertime when we were little( there’s a tea-house and the owner used to give us free ice-cream). Just as you’re leaving the graveyard there’s an old headstone with the name ‘Frizzelle’ on it. I used to take note of names I liked and found interesting to name my characters and I’ve always loved that one. I’ve been using Frizelle (my memory obviously leaving out the second z) for years and just shortened it to Friz for convenience.
How would you explain your technique and style?
I studied classical animation so that’s had a huge impact on my style, with Western and Eastern influences. My work is usually stylised and illustrative, I tend to break the rules of anatomy for my own needs when it suits. Technique-wise, when I’m using spray paint, I’m currently going for an animated cel-shading look with defined shadows. I just like to keep it clean and sharp, with lots of cut backs. I’ve been meaning to experiment more with tonal shading so that’s where I think my stuff will be heading down the line. I love me a skinny cap.
What brought you from Sligo to Belfast?
I was actually in Edinburgh before moving to Belfast. I just felt like a change and my boyfriend was based in Belfast so I figured I’d give it a go. I’m glad I did because the music and art scene here is so energetic, don’t think I would have started painting murals if I’d gone anywhere else.
Could you tell us about the SPOOM Collective?
SPOOM came about pretty organically as a collective of artists/mates who frequently collaborated on large scale pieces. I did a ‘Street Art’ course in Belfast run by Trans when I moved over originally, that’s where I met KVLR (who was facilitating), Redmonk, Horsegoat and Lucas. Eventually expanded to include Bad Seed and MarcaMix. The line up changes with each piece but it’s all SPOOM. There’s also a host of other collaborators we’ve had the pleasure of working with. Members are pretty spread out over Ireland and the UK at the moment: Belfast, Dublin, London and Edinburgh. I love that everyone involved has a really unique style so the challenge is to make a piece look harmonious.
Up The SPOOM!
You seemed to have a crazy productive summer can you fill us in on your highlights?
Yeah, happy to say I’ve been busy! Highlights I guess would be revisiting a wall in Belfast with KVLR as part of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival that we’d painted a few years back, it was nice to give it a facelift since I’ve gained confidence using spray cans and the original piece was only the second time I’d spray painted anything. Hit a few festivals this year, Kings of Concrete, No Place Like Dome, Glasgowbury and Bray Summerfest. There’ve been two epic Whitewash events this summer run by the mighty DMC, always lethal craic with good people. Also particularly happy with the two pieces I did in my hometown this Summer, both steeped in local myth and legend, one of which was on 500′ of hoarding. Painting on the Peace-line in Belfast is also up, it’s such a historic wall and there’ve been some amazing pieces painted there. Got a chance to collaborate with some old and new faces as well, KVLR, Verz, DMC, JMK, Rask, Art by Eoin and This Means Nothing.
What can we look forward to from Friz in the future?
Really excited about the Fesitval of Urban Art Sandyford 21st-23rd which I’ll be painting at on the Saturday and Sunday. The line up is immense. Culture Night in Belfast the Friday before is setting up to be epic as well, going to be lots of artists live painting on the day. Also going to be collaborating with Conor McGrath (FALL Longboards) and Kieron Black on an exhibition early next year in Belfast where we’ll painting on skate decks, yeo!
Shout Outs?
Adam, KVLR, Redmonk, BadSeed, HorseGoat, Bore, Lucas, MarcaMix, Doc, Danleo, Mick Minogue, DMC, JMK, Rask, Verz , This Means Nothing.
For more Follow Friz on Facebook or visit ‘ThisisFriz.com‘
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ArtByEoin – From Belfast to Bantry! 2 August 2012
Posted by Irish Street Art in Ireland.Tags: ArtByEoin, Bantry, Belfast, Lahinch, Phlegm
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After Eoin’s first live painting event at Make A Move in Limerick on the 7th July the Lahinch based street artist went on a trip around Ireland leaving a trail of pieces in his wake.
Eoin told IrishStreetArt.com “Working alongside some super talented artists that have been in this game for a long time now was amazing! The stories from the beginnings of graffiti in Ireland to the opportunities that their crafts have brought them and the growing inclusion of street art and graffiti by communities around the country.”
In Bantry, following a visit by Phlegm, the town was all talk about street art. “I had the opportunity to try out something I’d never even thought of attempting before with my limited knowledge of spraying, a large scale photorealistic piece entitled ‘Hope’. The response to the work within the community was amazing and it has opened up a whole new area of my art that I have had in mind for a long time – I cant wait to see where it takes me now!”
Eoin is traveling around Australia and Hawaii over the winter to leave his mark behind, “I have one more giant piece that I am waiting for final approval for before I leave for the winter, fingers crossed it gets the green light, its ridiculously big!!”
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This Means Nothing in Berlin 13 July 2012
Posted by Irish Street Art in International Street Art.Tags: Belfast, Berlin, This Means Nothing
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Belfast street artist, This Means Nothing shared his unorthodox time-lapse piece from Berlin with IrishStreetArt.com. Shot by Stevie Teague and music is Hasir by Modeselektor.
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Prime Cuts – Temple Bar, Dublin 7 June 2012
Posted by Irish Street Art in Street Art Events.Tags: ADW, Belfast, DMC, Dublin, Morgan, Solus
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Four Acclaimed street/urban artists, ADW, Solus, Morgan and DMC have come together to bring you this long anticipated group show in NGG Temple Bar. ADW, one of Ireland‘s most recognised stencil artists, best known for humurous stencils. ADW has had 2 solo shows in Dublin in recent years you may be familiar with some of his iconic steet art. Solus, the last punk left in town, returns to the NGG after a successful solo show there last year. His work can be seen in the streets of Dublin and sometimes elsewhere. Morgan is one of Ireland‘s most innovative artists he has exhibited extensively throughout Ireland and further a field. He works with a range of different mediums but is more street than leafy suburbs. DMC is one of Belfast‘s best known street artists. His new work will blow you away.
Show opens on Thursday the 7th of June @ NGG (Culture Box) Temple Bar 6 – 10
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This Means Nothing – Belfast 15 May 2012
Posted by Irish Street Art in Featured Street Artist.Tags: Belfast, paste, This Means Nothing, Whitewash
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Fresh from his exhibition titled ‘Rented Spaces‘, ‘This Means Nothing‘ told IrishStreetArt.com of his most recent project. Rented Spaces was held in an unused coffee shop on Royal Avenue in Belfast. It was part of the open source project which aims to breath new life into empty retail units in Belfast through supporting the arts. ‘I was delighted to exhibit in a space of this nature rather than a traditional gallery setting.’
This Means Nothing has been living in Belfast for the past five years and his work represents his views on urban living ranging from the complex and disorderly nature of cities to the social and economic divisions within the metropolis. ‘I use paste-ups when working on the streets and use stencils when I have more time (permission) to paint.’
This Means Nothing will be painting at ‘Titanic Lock Down‘ on the 1st and 2nd of June at T13 in Belfast, as well as at Whitewash 6 in July. These are must not miss events for fans of Irish Street Art. To keep up to date with This Means Nothing follow his blog or facebook page.
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Friz – Sometimes Sassy, Sometimes Sensuous 21 March 2012
Posted by Irish Street Art in Featured Street Artist.Tags: Belfast, Friz, Sligo
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Friz is a Belfast based artist who works in both traditional and digital mediums. Her work is influenced by the study of classical animation. Friz is part of the SPOOM Collective, a group of artists who frequently collaborate on large-scale murals. Friz’s work largely revolves around the female form, creating a world of sometimes sassy, sometimes sensuous characters.
She has been invited as a guest artist to paint at such events as ‘Eurocultured’ in Manchester , ‘Smithfield Festival’ in Dublin, ‘N.P.L.D.’ Festival in Sligo and the ‘BASE Festival’ in Belfast.
Her works have been included in group exhibitions in both Belfast, Sligo and Dublin. In 2010 she was a member of the Dublin team competing in the Secret Wars Euro-League, the world’s premier live art battle involving 17 cities from around Europe. More recently her work has been showing as part of the ‘Tags not Labels’ exhibition in the Ulster Museum, which just finished up at the end of february. ‘A shot of my artwork from that show is on the current Northern Irish tourism board tv ad.’
She also just painted at the WhiteWash V live painting event alongside ADW, DMC, Visual Waste, SBK Fox, Matthew Knight, Chris Cunningham, Lee Boyd and BAG
She told IrishStreetArt.com ‘Once I have a character out of my head and down on a bit of paper, or on a wall or canvas, I’ve already started thinking about what I want to draw next, usually some form of fun, female character. I like using acrylic and spray paints for the same reason, they’re super quick to work with and you can get immediate results.’
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NOTA – None Of The Above 6 March 2012
Posted by Irish Street Art in Featured Street Artist, Irish Graffiti.Tags: Belfast, NOTA, straight edge
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IrishStreetArt.com recently caught up with Belfast‘s Nota, who told us of how he became a street artist. Forced to leave school at a young age, Nota grew up as part of the local punk scene passing the days drawing and tagging. He eventually moved on to painting characters and simple pieces. ‘I haven’t done so much work with lettering or typography, but these days that is what I’m mainly interested in.’
Along with past personal experiences, Nota takes alot of inspiration from the punk and straight edge ethos. -Being true to yourself is the only thing that counts! F*ck the rest.
For more visit manchini.co.uk nota86.blogspot.com
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DMC 31 August 2011
Posted by Irish Street Art in Featured Street Artist.Tags: ANewSpace, Belfast, DMC, Dublin, Dublin Contemporary
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Fresh from painting in Dublin, Belfast street artist Dermot McConaghy told IrishStreetArt.com “I painted Her Redundant Heart for the Roadworks theme of ‘Terrible Beauty’ (Art, Crisis, Change & the Office of Non-Compliance).” Roadworks has been curated by ANEWSPACE and Dublin Contemporary and is currently taking place Dublin.
“I am currently painting a series of ‘MissedCall Girls’. This is an ongoing series of heartbroken females who are downcast by the unfortunate unanswered call. Heartbroken from a call that may have changed things, a call that meant so much, a call that was missed.”
The work above,’Her Redundant Heart’ for ‘Roadworks’, was taken on St Andrews Lane, Dublin. Below is a collection of some of DMC‘s work to date.
For more visit manchini.co.uk
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Maser in Belfast 12 May 2011
Posted by Irish Street Art in Ireland.Tags: Belfast, Dublin, Maser, Video
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Matthew Knight – Beautiful Monsters 13 January 2011
Posted by Irish Street Art in Featured Street Artist.Tags: Belfast, Matthew Knight, Pakistan
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Belfast‘s Matthew Knight, is starting to make a name for himself lately with shows in Amsterdam and Dublin. His work can be found on an array of surfaces from the streets to abandoned buildings. The Ballygowan native paints characters and designs filled with crazy amounts of detail and patterns.
Knight grew up in Pakistan and this had a huge impact on him, ‘I experienced one hell of a crazy and wonderful upbringing. The influence that country had on me has never diminished.’ He explains how the troubles also were a real eye opener when he returned to Belfast. ‘The first I learned of the Troubles or any religious background that I had was on the flight over 2 hours before my plane landed. I was so used to Eastern culture that Western culture has always felt quite alien to me. So I draw from all those experiences putting that into each and every character I create.’
‘I like my grey backgrounds as it reflects how dull the backgrounds can be compared to the characters in them where I concentrate all the colour. As my style developes you can expect alot more detail to come. Dots, patterns,collections,collage 2D and 3D elements will continue to feature more and more as I go.’
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Anarkitty 4 November 2010
Posted by Irish Street Art in Featured Street Artist.Tags: Anarkitty, Belfast, London
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IrishStreetArt.com is delighted to feature the incredibly attractive, feline inspired, characters by Anarkitty. For those of you who have not yet been enchanted by the style icons of Anarkitty here is a little background info. Anarkitty (Emma Geary) is a thirty-two year old artist hailing from Ballycarry, just outside Belfast, who graduated from The University of Ulster with a Ba Hons degree in Art and Design. The name Anarkitty was born during the six years she lived in London. Whilst in London she creating mostly digital based character illustrations with her work appearing in publications such as Creative Review, Computer Arts and DPI (Taiwan) magazine and also created works for the likes of MTV, BBC and Pictoplasma’.
It was only on her return home she started to move her characters onto canvas. ‘In 2008 The Frameworks Gallery Belfast gave me my first solo exhibition and it took off from there’. Anarkitty‘s influences and inspirations come from Pinup girls, manga, tattoo, graffiti and toy cultures. ‘In general things like, Eyes, Pinup Girls, Manga/Anime, Cartoons, Girls with Tattoos and of course cats. I have had many Artist that have inspired me, all at different times. When I was a kid I loved Allen Lee, Brian Fraud, Kay Neelson ect. When I was in London I was really inspired by allot of Graffiti artist – Banksy, The London Police, Flying Fortress, Dalek, I could go on. Miss Van and Faffis work really inspired me to start painting again. Currently I am into Lowbrow, Pop surrealist artists like Audrey Kawasaki, Stella im hamburg, Amy Sol and Jaw Cooper once again to name but a few’.
On her Artist Statement: ‘I paint more for self discovery than as a means of expression. Inspiration comes from an amalgam of perceptions, and feelings from fleeting moments in time that I find beautiful, fascinating and provocative. Unable to make any sense of them in my mind, I draw. These daydreams/fantasy’s I play out through my paintings in an environment in which I feel confident and free.’
A prevalent theme running through all of Anarkitty‘s pieces stems from her fascination with Cats! ‘Inspired by their idiosyncratic ways, my “Ladies” have the same arcane attitude encased in a provocative and curious beauty. I want them to be comfortable within their own bodies; know their own mind; to have no feeling of restraint from surrounding judgements. Like cats, they have their own complete and individual personality with which they have a total sense of ease.’
When speakin of her approach and technique, Anarkitty tells us ‘there is an inadvertent sort of dualism… My paintings possess a child like sweetness but with dark undertones. I use outlines that are strong and controlled whereas my blending technique is soft and light. My choice of colour, can change from bright and colourful to dark and moody. I currently use acrylic and graphite on wood which I am really enjoying at that at moment. I strive to avoid becoming too entrenched in my comfort zone as therein lies predictability. I need to keep evolving and although experimentation will bring me frustration and anxiety, it brings its own elation when successful.’
Anarkitty on Flickr »
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Belfast’s Peace Wall 23 August 2010
Posted by Irish Street Art in Irish Graffiti, Street Art Events.Tags: Belfast, Crucial333, Meeting of Styles
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Belfast‘s Peace Wall recieved a fresh lick of paint at this year’s ‘Meeting of Styles‘. The line up of writers included Stylo Solo One and Mear from VOP-Crew, Corze from London, the Welsh Rmer Hoxe Cruel Vapors Crew, Demo from Holland, Scotland’s Easy Riders as well as Estum, Dir One from Lithuania, TDA-Klann with Rask, Sums, Maser, Beta from Liverpool, Ireland’s RTM crew, Dex, Duso, Crap, Baqsr and Ciar and Dris, local lads of TDS.
A big thanks to Crucial333 for the great photos below. For the ful collection of this year’s graffiti from Belfast visit Crucial333 on flickr.
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Environmental Activism, Belfast 7 October 2009
Posted by Irish Street Art in Ireland.Tags: Belfast, Earth Devided, Ireland
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The Earth Divided movement that was brought to the attention of IrishStreetArt.com by Liam Moore. The multidisciplinary project aims to highlight the rising global concern of the planet. It developed from a single artistic expression into various forms of visual communication all with an emphasis on environmentalism.
Earth Divided began as a micro-project in early 2009, when Liam Moore was creating pieces of graphic-design/art. The pieces reflected current events in the media and blogosphere. Since then, two of the original pieces grew into a much bigger picture, project and idea. Moore asked “was it possible in Belfast to promote positive awareness of environmentalism through graphic design?”. To this a series of five logos (Power, Food, Tree, Water, Animals) were created to represent each of the five areas of Earth Divided. These logos were transformed into stencils for graffiti and canvas printing use. Earth Divided.com gives you the opportunity to create a simple pixel style stencil and begin your very own movement. Click here to create stencil »
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Filth – More than just a Belfast Skater! 16 September 2009
Posted by Irish Street Art in Featured Street Artist, Irish Graffiti.Tags: Belfast, Filth, Ireland, TDS crew
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Filth told IrishStreetArt.com his ‘artist’s statement’ usually consists of “Artist, skateboarder, crap at both.” He may not be able to nollie late flip but his deck art work is far from shoddy.
The Belfast native spoke of his work content: “My work revolves around text, whether its in graffiti or gallery pieces, nearly everything I paint involves words. Most of the time its the typography that interests me more than the actual words themselves, but slowly I’m finding the balance as I paint less pieces to put more effort into each one.”
When asked about his influeneces, Filth explained “My inspiration come from constantly looking at artists that are better than me, it drives me to want to be better at what I do. Skateboarding, graffiti, Belfast, reggae, punk and hardcore music, advertising and the people I encounter everyday are all huge influences on my work. I’ll paint with anyone. In Belfast, I usually paint with TDS crew, they’ve taught me a lot in a very short space of time and get me out painting more than I would if left to my own devices.”
Fore more of this impressive work check out Filth’s Blog.
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