Street Treats, Vol. 8

It has been a while since our last Street Treats volume (sorry about that, we’ve had a bit on…), but that means we have a pretty decent archive of the smaller things that make our city streets exciting – so we look forward to a slew of volumes coming thick and fast over the next few months! We think it is vital that the small details are given a platform, not least as we get closer and closer to the launch of our first ever Little Street Art Festival in November. It is the smaller things, the more subversive things, the thoughtful things and the rebellious things that make a city come to life. These things serve as a barometer of the multitude of voices surrounding us, not the authorised and endorsed, but the dissenting and adventurous. This is the driving energy of these Street Treats series, the desire to celebrate the full spectrum of urban art’s creative impulses. So we are proud to present this series of works, straight from our city to you…

This volume features work from Irons, KP, Dove, Tepid, bz.streetart, The Losers, Bloom, Bols, Astro, Dark Ballad, Klaudia, HonHonn, and tributes to DSOLV.

Postcard from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland is a strange beast. It is the only mega-city in Aotearoa,  and when you touch down from Ōtautahi it is hard to comprehend the sheer spread of the northern metropolis. While you can easily navigate Christchurch’s inner city in 15 minutes, Auckland’s urban centre seemingly sprawls on forever, with each area displaying a distinct identity. Our quick trip to Tāmaki meant we didn’t get to endlessly explore the diversity of the city, but we did get to see a fair bit of art. Of course, there is no chance we could have achieved a full coverage of the city, but what we saw, we loved. Auckland has the longest and largest history of Aotearoa graffiti and street art, so spotting a legendary figure’s name or character, whether fresh or faded, is always a possibility, but still exciting for a nerd like me, while you can always find a new name that is on the come up as well. It also has a truly urban feel, where you can get lost down alleyways, led by the trace of some preceding presence who was compelled to leave their mark. It is a real city, and it’s streets are always talking…

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Where should our next postcard cover? Let us know at hello@watchthisspace.org.nz

 

Showtime!

Friday the 4th of March was a busy night, with two events marking the opening of significant urban art events in Ōtautahi, signalling an exploding energy in the local scene. First up was the opening event for the Flare Street Art Festival, held at the pop-up exhibition space on High Street, which is host for all the information you will need about the festival and a collection of work by Flare artists and a number of local stars. Across town at TyanHAUS, Slap City’s International Paste-Up and Sticker Festival was also celebrating it’s opening night, with the interior exhibition of work from across the globe completely taking over the space. We were lucky enough to make it along to both events, with a palpable sense of excitement permeating both spaces…

With both events taking place in the red traffic light setting, it was great to see the organisers ensuring people were masked up (except for a quick photo here and there!) and that group sizes were kept appropriate!

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Flare Street Art Festival opening event @ Flare Central, Friday, 4th March, 2022

Beginning with a opening address by Mayor Liane Dalziel, the Flare Festival launched on Friday (although artists had been at work on their walls since Wednesday the 2nd) at the Flare Central pop-up. The exhibited works ranged from Flare headline artists to a roster of local talent such as Chile One, Nick Lowry, Jacob Yikes, Ghostcat, Jen Heads and more. A relaxed vibe highlighted the feeling that such festivals bring, with new friendships and old connections re-established. Check out flare.nz for the festival’s full programme

Slap City presents The International Paste-Up and Sticker Festival @ TyanHAUS, Friday, 4th March, 2022

The Slap City collective have been an unmissable presence in the local scene over the last two years, their widespread community ensuring Ōtautahi has a thriving and diverse array of art in the streets. The International Paste-Up and Sticker Festival harnesses that diversity and community into an impressive exhibition and programme. Completely taking over the TyanHAUS space, the challenge proved to be where to start! Diving into the cacophonous selection of paste-ups, examing the sticker bombs or considering the Hello We Are exhibition, there was no shortage of attention grabbing activity! Follow the event on Facebook for more of the festival’s programme…

 

 

 

Slap City presents The International Paste-Up and Sticker Festival, March 2022

Slap City has become a central part of Ōtautahi Christchurch’s urban art scene, and now they are bringing even more international flavour to the city with the first International Paste-Up and Sticker Festival in early March, 2022! The 8 day festival will feature a massive exhibition of stickers, paste-ups and associated works at Sydenham’s TyanHAUS, as well as public installations and workshops. With an array of artists from across the globe, it will be a brilliant cacophonous celebration of paper-based street art in all it’s glory! To get the lowdown we spoke to Slap City stalwarts and festival organisers and participants Vez, teeth like screwdrivers and Cape of Storms

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How did the idea for the International Paste-Up and Sticker Festival come about?

Vez: I had this idea since I moved here, I wanted to put more paste-ups around Christchurch, to bring in more international artists and turn it into an event. I had that dream when I first got here two years ago…

teeth like screwdrivers: I’ve actually got a page on my website that’s about doing the same thing. Originally, I wanted to cover one of the giant cans and make it a festival. But one night we were at Fiksate and we were having a few drinks…

V: And doing karaoke…

tls: Someone said something to us, I won’t say what they said, but someone said something to both of us and we were like, well, that seals it! It was an instant decision, right there, let’s do this…

You two hadn’t talked about it together, even though you both had the same idea?

tls: No, but we had both seen other shows around the world and put our own work into other shows around the world, and we knew Christchurch could deal with a show like this.

A paste-up festival is a great fit, firstly because of the amazing community around the Slap City scene, but also it is a perfect form to involve an even wider community, paste-up and sticker culture seems to be about networks and collaborations…

tls: Completely, especially if you put it under the heading of street art, if you look at other types of street art, they are based around not doing that, like graffiti is based around not collaborating.

Cape of Storms: Yeah, it’s more anonymous…

tls: And it is also about going over someone else, being higher or being louder…

It also requires a literal presence; you have to physically be in the place where you’re writing…

tls: Years and years ago, we used Flickr and maybe occasionally we would get contacts through that, but with Instagram the ability to connect with people anywhere in the world and instantly trade with them is part of why I like it, because it’s a positive thing all the time. There’s no negativity.

V: What I also like about paper-based art is it’s really inclusive. With graffiti, not everybody has got the skill to do it, including myself, but with paper-based art you can just collage or you can take things out of magazines or you can draw, or you can work digitally, there are loads of different ways you can produce work, so everybody can contribute if they want to…

CoS: I feel like with paper-based art, its more towards the art side, rather than the tagging thing, so people who don’t feel comfortable with that element of street art, it’s still something where you can have integrity about where you place your art. It’s transient. It’s not going to be there forever. It’s going to dissolve with rain and water or a little bit of elbow grease, but it still has the same effect…

tls: We’ve all kind of come to an agreement, whether consciously or subconsciously, that we’re not sticking it on people’s houses or businesses, you know? Personally speaking, I’m an older dude, I’ve got three kids of my own and if they see my art on the street, I don’t want them to go, why have you stuck your art on that?

A Cape of Storms paste-up in central Christchurch

But at the same time, you don’t want them to not know that you are doing it, right?

tls: Exactly. They always see my pencils and they always comment on them, but they’re not seeing them on people’s houses, they’re seeing them on derelict buildings, or council electrical boxes, because they are boring and they need paint or stickers or something! I’m probably speaking for you guys, but we kind of had a subconscious agreement that we’re not destroying shit, we’re adding to it.

CoS: It is financially accessible as well, it’s not as expensive as buying loads of spray cans.

tls: It might be low impact physically, but not in the messages…

Not visually or conceptually…

tls: I will argue that any one of us who is putting up 1000 pictures of whatever it is we are putting up is going to have an equal impact to anyone tagging…

There’s also the really interesting longer lineage; revolutionary posters, political posters, advertising, sloganeering…

tls: Yeah, I found a picture other day, it was in Paris, an advertising hoarding and it looks like what we’re doing, but it’s a hundred and something years old! It looks exactly the same as what we do…

The Victorian Street in the Canterbury Museum has a fence that is covered in pasted posters…

tls: Because wheat paste was cheap and easy, posters got your message across for free essentially!

CoS: Graffiti writing is beautiful in its own way, but this is maybe a little bit more accessible to people that aren’t so into graffiti necessarily. It’s got a sense of humour, like Vez’s spoons are there to bring joy to people, to make them think, this is so out of place, let’s not be so serious about life! Christchurch can be quite a dull and flat and miserable place…

tls: No! I can’t believe you said that!

CoS: But it’s the people and the sense of humour and the unexpected juxtaposition, that’s why we do it, we can put something funny out there…

Two of Vez’s iconic spoon paste-ups

It’s a lovely juxtaposition, from the seriousness of signs and the coercion of advertising…

tls: And tilt slabs! That is why it doesn’t feel so quite so awkward. We’re not fighting that, we are just putting stickers and paste-ups up on streets covered in stickers and paste-ups, they’re just from McDonald’s or Coke. I’m not political in that sense, it doesn’t justify what I’m doing, but it just makes me go, I’m OK with this because I’m surrounded any way, we’re just adding our own take to what’s already there.

We did a massive sticker and paste-up installation at Spectrum in 2014. At that time, the local paste-up scene definitely didn’t have the numbers it has now. We had artists contributing from quite faraway places, but Slap City has such a larger network, I’m really looking forward to the breadth of work. Where has work come from and which artists are you most excited for people to see?

V: I’ve written a list… There is work from the UK, USA, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Spain, Finland, Slovakia, Australia, Canada…

tls: In terms of who we are excited about, I’m going to go first because I’m so stoked about this big piece by The Postman. They are a collective based in Brighton in the UK. I’ve been asking them for a long time because I’ve put Björk pastes up all around the city and when I saw their Björk one, I was like, I need one of those! So, I hassled them and they were like, yeah, we’ll send one to you. It’s huge and I want to take it home, but I’m not going to! I would like a photograph, can I put it out there now? Me standing in front of that please with a big smile on my face! I would love that! I love their stuff, it’s phenomenal. They are a good example of paste-ups as a legit art form. They do everything from whole streets in Shoreditch in London to millionaires’ houses, they do everything. They also work with the artists that take the photos they use to get permission. They are ace!

An example of teeth like screwdrivers’ Bjork paste-ups

V: A lot of the people that have sent paste-up packs are people that I trade with quite regularly, so I’m most excited about seeing the work of locals, like Jen and Dr Suits, because I don’t see that many of their paste-ups. I know they’ve been doing it for a long time, but I’ve only seen Jen paste up twice! I’m just super excited to see what some of the people here in Christchurch create and just to have us all together in one space…

CoS: We went with her to do that giant head on the side of that building in town, and we were like, there she is in action!

tls: For people coming to view the show, they won’t know a lot of these artists as well as you do or I do or any of us in the crew do, because we’re always in cahoots and collaborations with them anyways, we’re seeing all their feeds constantly, but if there’s someone coming here for the first time, they’re going to see Vision or YAYA for the first time, and they are going to be like we were when we first saw them, that’s amazing!

CoS: I’m keen to see some of our younger Slap City members or people that work on their own stuff and don’t necessarily always paste with us, alongside all these other guys that are really well-seasoned. I can’t wait to see their growth. I’ve grown so much, because of Vez really, she invited me to the first Slap City and I helped hold the bucket when she put up all the YAYA stuff around town, so that was my initiation and from then I’ve been hooked and just seeing other people get that joy from the show will be amazing.

A Slap City collaboration featuring international artists, including YAYA, Vision and more…

When you’re getting work from so many sources, you often also get an insight into the stories behind the artists. For instance, we had a 6-year-old, who drew robots in New York and pasted them up with his dad, send work in, there was someone who sent work from Iran, and just to get it out of there was a big deal. Have you had any interesting stories come up?

tls: We are not getting stuff out of Iran, but honestly, I’m getting people trying to send stuff to New Zealand and we are not on the list of places to send stuff to for a lot of countries at the moment. There was one person, they sent it to someone else in another country, because then that person could send it here. You wouldn’t ever think that would be an issue.

A selection of the sticker frames set for the International Paste-Up and Sticker Festival

I guess you can get around that by sending a digital file as well…

V: I’ve committed to printing for about three or four people who have struggled to post stuff. It keeps people included.

tls: We don’t need to have the physical person here to do it, although [Australian artist] Tweet is saying she’d love to try and get across, you know people are keen and if the borders were in the right place, we’d probably have a few Aussies coming over.

V: Tweet is in Melbourne, we’ve swapped a few packs, and we’ve developed a friendship, we chat regularly, not even just about art anymore. She’s really keen to come over for the festival and help us out…

tls: Panty Baggers and Larf’n [from Dunedin] were all talking about trying to get up. So, there are Instagram friends sending their artwork and they want to come up…

CoS: When we take photos and put them on Instagram and tag our international friends, it always feels like there’s a great sense of wow, look at us up in New Zealand!

tls: There is a sense of New Zealand being so far away, it is like: I made it to all the way to New Zealand!

CoS: There is a feeling of pride at their work making it all the way to this little island and look at what these people are doing for my art down there…

tls: It’s great! If you think about a street artist in the traditional sense, as someone who is doing pieces on the side of a building or murals, they have to be where their art is, but any one of us can say our art has been shown in numerous festivals around the world. There was one in Athens a couple of months ago. I’ve never been to Athens, but there on this stairway going up from the bottom floor to the mid floor of this building, there’s a giant pencil!

CoS: Vez sent a parcel to Captain Eyeliner in New York a while back and I snuck in some stuff just because I was there as she was packing the envelope and I got my stuff put up in New York!

tls: Some people are like that with New Zealand, like New Zealand!?! Hobbits!?! That’s what they’re thinking, because to the majority of the world, that’s exactly it, we’re on the other side of the world, so to have all that stuff here, in the ether, is pretty exciting. The audience won’t just be the hundred people we get through the door on the night, most of the audience will be online, on Instagram.

Another Slap City and friends collaboration

What have you got happening alongside the exhibition?

tls: Sticker trading is part of what we do. So, all the work that’s coming to us, Vez is doing an amazing job tallying it up and getting the return addresses so that at the end of the festival the leftover stickers will get sent back out to the people who sent stuff to us. It’s a trade like you do already, but instead of a trade with me and they just get a pack of my stupid pencils, its a trade with maybe a hundred artists from around the world that they might never have come across or might never have traded with.

V: I’ll also encourage all the Slap City people to put stickers in as well when we post packs back out.

tls: We’re also going to jazz up some of the spots in the city that we already use, so people can go and have a wander and explore the city as well, like the old Two Fat Indians spot and the Ao Tawhiti wall. It’s not legal, but they don’t get touched too often. We will include the bollard Bloom’s just done [The Paste-Up Project] as well, because that’s us too. We’ll include [New Regent Street bar] WILKO because we did a whole wall in there a few months back…

V: We are going to have an interactive map.

tls: It’s going to be beautifully created by Cape of Storms. This festival is trying to highlight what we do in terms of creating artwork via paper, both in a gallery-style setting, but also by directing people to be more observant in the real-world setting…

Bloom n Grow Gal completing her Paste-Up Project installation on Manchester Street

It’s an important part of events like this, to further instill the city’s reputation as an urban art destination, right?

tls: Street art capital, right? Lonely Planet said so! As a group, we have such a wide range of artistic endeavors, but we’re all tied together by a bucket of paste and a brush. We have people who come along and just draw smiley faces…

CoS: And we have some people working for weeks and weeks, spending months perfecting something. Or somebody like Lost Boy who listens to our conversations and cartoons what we’re chatting about and then pastes it up! I was saying something about how you should never microwave a sausage, because it’s not good, and he drew a cartoon strip about it! It was hilarious!

A Lost Boy paste-up

tls: Sometimes, I’d say relatively regularly actually, we’ll meet up somewhere and the meeting is more important than sitting down and drawing. It’s knowing that you’re just checking in with everybody and having a good week and is everything alright and we’re all good. I might draw two pencils on a piece of paper and that might be it. Other times I might sit down and not talk to anybody and draw 50, it doesn’t matter. We’ve had people come in for one session and we never see them again. We’ve had a kid come with their dad…

CoS: That kid was so shy, but he was so happy to be there.

tls: We’ve also had kids come along on walks and freak out because they get to put a sticker on the side of a wall. We’re not molding it into one thing. It just is what it is.

CoS: It’s also not a session where you necessarily need to bring anything, and you can take away whatever you want from it. I feel like I do a lot of my cutting out, rather than making my collages, which requires a lot of space and a lot of focus. I just get the energy that I need. Also, the confidence of being in a group is important, going out on your own is quite daunting.

tls: That’s the thing we do differently, there’s safety in a gang. We haven’t got patches, but we go out and there’s a couple of spots on Manchester Street where you don’t want to be hanging around by yourself at 10:30pm at night on a Wednesday, but when you’ve got a group giggling, laughing and joking, it makes light of the situation, for sure.

CoS: It also gives us the opportunity to mix our art together in the streets, so we’re not individuals, it becomes a collective thing…

V: One of the nicest things we’ve done is where we take over a whole box and we collage it…

CoS: It’s everybody’s work all at once. It’s so instant, although sometimes people don’t want it to be too chaotic!

A beautiful bird paste-up by Slap City member Salsa Stark

We were talking about the other events…

tls: Oh shit! Yes! So, you’ve got workshops, on the Wednesday after the opening night, it will be similar to what we do already, and we might do one for younger people beforehand. We have the ability to share stuff on the wall here, we have the ability to play music here, we have the ability to do lots of things, which is why we are having it here at TyanHAUS.

How did that relationship with TyanHAUS start?

tls: I judged a youth skateboard competition that was run here on a wet day a while back. We were going to run it at Two Thumbs Brewery, but it was too wet. So, I came down to help Jack [from local skate brand DuckEwe] to judge. I was looking at this big wall and I thought we could cover that! The guys from TYAN were like, yeah, sure, go for it! We did a few workshops here where I drove my car inside and we lay down on the nice clean floor. We talked to them and they were keen to host this festival, so we said yeah let’s do this! Now it’s almost here…

It is going to be a busy time with Flare Street Art Festival as well…

V: We talked about cross promotion, but I feel like everything’s happening at the same time, so people that are interested in street art are going to find out about both…

It is awesome to see these two things overlapping, speaking about the same culture, just from different perspectives…

CoS: I imagine the audience is going to be the same, so I hope that people check out both shows. We’ve done a few of the graffiti workshops at the giant cans and that was awesome. This cross section across the two events is great, with some really big names in graffiti and we have some really big names in paste-up culture, as well as a lot of people that are virtually unknown…

tls: We had to force Lost Boy to get on Instagram, because we wanted to tag him in posts. But he is also totally fine with just coming along and drawing his drawing funny pictures about shit we say. He’s actually got an exhibition opening on the 22nd, its fucking grand! Along with the paste-up show, there will be a Hello! I am the Show exhibition with members of Slap City. It’s not specifically about paper art, but it is connected…

How can people find out more? How can they make sure they don’t miss out on anything?

V: It’s all on our Instagram account, we’ve got a Facebook event set up as well and we are going to get posters printed and pasted up.

Who is supporting the festival?

tls: We’ve got obviously TyanHAUS on board, they’re amazing, we’ve got Hello, who is doing our lovely art show, Karma Cola are doing drinks and there’s talk of a beer and wine sponsor, we don’t need much else. It would be great if there’s someone out there who makes wallpaper paste, hook us up! Or people who can print some stuff for us, hit us up on the Instagram page!

Is there anything else you want to add?

tls: Come along!

CoS: Participate! Do the workshops! Support local artists!

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Follow Slap City on Instagram and Facebook for more information about The International Paste-Up and Sticker Festival. The Festival runs from March 4th to March 12th at TyanHAUS on Carlyle Street, Sydenham

Street Treats, Vol. 6

It has been a while since our last Street Treats edition, in part due to the lock-down situation, but even as we all play catch up on the livelihoods that were put on hold, the streets were a fascinating site to explore with the range of expressions and interventions to be found. This volume of Street Treats features a cacophony of diverse forms, and rather than dealing with explicitly political messaging, they are affirmative and declarative and playful, inherently meaningful concepts in a time where it is easy to feel invisible and somewhat powerless. Graffiti is a strong presence, bursts of colourful existential expression, bound by certain conventions but constantly searching for ways to stand out. The examples here run the gamut of styles and modes of production (some are legal, others not so much), but importantly they speak to the game and represent both a here and now and the countless numbers that have come before, a lineage of urban commentary. The repetition of other, non-signature forms lives up to the concept of post-graffiti, like characters, pencils, flowers and rocket ships, these symbols are both as mysterious as calligraphic tags, and yet also familiar and therefore more approachable. They share the idea of proclamation in the public realm, but are perhaps satisfied with intrigue rather than alienation. Why do so many find it more challenging when someone boldly writes their name than the positioning of an iconographic proxy to do the same job? Is a name a more confrontational and confident vessel for expression? Regardless of your take, the effect is the same; the city speaks, quietly, loudly, in whispers or in defiantly boisterous screams…

Stay tuned for more Street Treats soon!

If you have any corrections for the credits above, let us know in the comments!

And That Was… July 2021

The weather has been incredibly unpredictable throughout these recent weeks, sunshine, clouds, rain, all coming and going without abandon. That sense of unpredictability is frustrating when it comes to weather but is refreshing when it comes to life more generally. I’ve never been much of a planner, partially because I don’t do expectation and anticipation well (impatient much?), but also because I tend to see the world unfolding around me and the joy in taking what comes. That isn’t to say I’m reckless, it’s just that I favour flexibility. So when I look back at last month, my initial thoughts were what have I seen and what have I done? Nothing stood out, but then I started writing down some ideas and they flowed forth. A full calendar sometimes means you miss out on the little, unexpected things…

Anyway, after that little philosophical rambling, here is a list of the things that stood out in July 2021…

A Trip to Te Whanganui-a-Tara

I got some family time away at the beginning of July, heading off to the capital city. It’s no secret I love Wellington – from eats at Sweet Mother’s Kitchen, to trips to the amazing Zealandia and the Surrealists exhibition at Te Papa, it delivered again. I also, as usual, took in as much urban art as I could, from the many playful DSide paintings to Askew’s amazing Rita Angus mural and the smaller bits and pieces along the always vibrant Cuba Street…

Play Again?

In the heart of the Burwood East X East Red Zone, this new Play Again? mural by Porta and Bols is an extension of the Power Up! project by the same artists from 2020, continuing the video game theme to represent the red zone as a space of memories, nostalgia and play. Visible from the nearby motorway, it makes for a cool visual! Supported by Life in Vacant Spaces and the Christchurch City’s Council’s Red Zone Transitional Projects Fund, it is hopefully just one of many creative additions to the space…

Bloom n’ Grow Gal Pastes

Bloom n Grow Gal has been on a roll recently, with her colourful A4 flower posters reinforcing positive vibes, albeit with some tongue in cheek. The blocky shapes and gridded layout add to the overall effect as well, like colourful street confetti! We are big fans!

Slaps and Pastes Workshops for Kidsfest

Joining forces with the amazing Teeth Like Screwdrivers, we recently hosted two Kidsfest workshops for young people to explore sticker making and paste ups – with a focus on allowing the participants to do whatever they were drawn to, it was super fun and inspiring! Thanks to GapFiller and Placemaking at One Central for the opportunity! We hope it becomes a regular thing!

Bye Bye Mayo… 

Not a highlight, but definitely notable – the demolition of the rear building of the YMCA’s Papa Hou space meant the disappearance of works by Mayonaize (2017), Sean Duffell (2013) and a host of younger artists (at the time of writing, I think Ikarus’ Spectrum piece is safe, and the works visible from Hereford Street remain). Of course, it is an eventuality and inevitability, but it is no less a shot in the gut to see a beloved piece literally reduced to rubble…

Check out our social media feeds on Instagram and Facebook (@watchthisspacechch) to see what else we love!

And That Was… June 2021 with DREAM.R

When we asked DJ DREAM.R to compile our And That Was… for June, we knew she would have plenty of rad things to talk about – the flip side of that is it becomes a tough task for someone who is constantly juggling projects and events to find time! Like the champion DREAM.R is though, she made time and came back to us with an amazing list of things she has loved from the last month – from creative workshops to morning raves and bubbling plans for murals in Wellington, this is most definitely the list of a true creative who spreads across the realms of making, doing and thriving! From choice-cuts that get the crowds dancing to funky pots and earrings as well as a surrounding circle of friends that guarantee wicked plans, DREAM.R was a perfect choice to recap June 2021…

Jess Johnson and M/K Press Workshops at the Christchurch Art Gallery

I recently attended a few workshops at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, including a session with artist Jess Johnson, who creates intricate otherworldly pieces that I have been drawn to for their pastel colours, symmetry and sci-fi strangeness. She does most excellent collaborations with Simon Ward and together they make their worlds come to life with virtual reality. If you ever get a chance to check this out, don’t sit on it – get involved!  It was insightful to learn her techniques and inspirations and I got to play around with my own piece on the day.

I also attended another great workshop with Jane Maloney from M/K Press who brought in her risograph and showed us how it all worked. I got to create a few fun prints working in with some backgrounds she had already printed. Using the risograph was magic, and so satisfying to watch. I had no idea how it worked and now that I have had a play, I am itching for more! M/K Press’s 12-month collaboration with Fiksate Gallery, of a limited run of prints each month with a new urban artist is amazing!

Morning People

I was recently asked to play an event called Morning People, which happened to be on a Thursday morning at 6:30am! Now, when I first heard about Morning People I was skeptical because, quite frankly, I am far from a morning person (more like a night owl). However, I went to the first show they did in Christchurch a while back and was surprised at how much fun I had and how refreshing it was. Leaving the club at 8am is a memory of the distant past …ye old Christchurch city life…out ze club and onto the first bus home no more!

The morning is designed to offer an early, clean one-and-a-half hour, one-DJ rave for people before they start their day. They serve coffee, fruit, protein bars, and my fav drink ‘Club Matè’ (an epic caffeinated beverage from South America). This is a recipe for the best start to the day I have experienced yet. I was buzzing all day from the energy the crowd gave me. Watching everyone just get into it and dance their lil’ butts off was so magical. From a DJ’s perspective, it was a totally nervous lead up (feeling the pressure of delivering a solid performance of dancey tuneage to full-on sober punters!) with an exciting and fun outcome where I really just had a fully focused and dedicated crowd of beautiful people who were there to move their bodies! What more could we ask for?!

Morning people are based in Auckland and they do early morning raves in Auckland, Christchurch and sometimes Wellington. Check them out and if you can do it, do it! I recommend trying it at least once to see if it’s for you!

Cosmic Undertakings

The temporary frontage of Cosmic Wellington, which will soon see some new art

As the Operations and Project Manager for Cosmic, I am working on a project for our Wellington store where we will be doing some murals on the store frontages. I have approached an artist for one, but they haven’t confirmed yet, so I won’t divulge (but I will say that they are one of my most favourite artists on the scene today and the work she creates is magic!). This would be for a roller door and a feature wall inside the new café/vape store. For the other roller door, I will be doing a piece with my lil’ babe of a friend Lil’ Ems, who is the heart of ‘Cute Gang’ (a worldwide gang of cute artists who share the love of street art and connections). I have no idea what we will come up with, so I cannot wait to get drawing! Ems just did a wee sign on our frontage to show we are still open throughout the renovations. We have already been tagged with ‘F**k the Police’, which we assumed would happen and may end up being a funny week of bomb tags, although I do hope the final images are respected and left as is. Wellington has some real beautiful wall coverings and it is always such a trip walking the streets and taking in the talented creations. This is less of a did-do… and more of a watch-this-space!
If anyone is interested in showing me their work and could see themselves doing a mural, please flick me some details and ideas to leila@cosmicnz.co.nz – we haven’t locked anyone in yet and it could still be up for grabs if it’s a fun and suitable match (Wellington-based ideally for ease of logistics!).

Warehouse fun and Shes.cutting.shapes!

A Shes.cuttin.shapes creation

A bunch of my crew just signed a short-term lease on a warehouse right in the centre of town. We have intentions to use this space as storage for our many behind-the-scene ventures and to make a studio where we can create new works while hanging with friends. We are called ‘Clubhouse Creative’ and while I am not sure where this new venture will take us, it is super exciting to think of the possibilities! I look forward to playing around with more painting and doing some bigger murals (practice for the Welly mission – I will attempt to paint a mural on the front roller door… I’m not sure who painted the one that is on there now, but I think it’s time for a refresh…), and to make space for my Shes.cuttin.shapes projects. I have been painting pots for all of my plant friends for a few years now. I use test pots from Resene and never plan them before I put brush to pot, I trust the process and enjoy the moment! I also make earrings from molding clay and have fun with my hands making cool patterns and shapes. I haven’t quite got them to the stage of selling, most of my creations are for me and my friends… I am hoping that this space will give me the creative space to share my love of these things!

Lots of creations on the horizon!

RDU’s Slaps Collection

I play with some good friends of mine on the Rhythm Zone show on RDU 98.5FM every second Friday from 6pm to 8pm. Being in the RDU studio, I have always spent any downtime in between mixes looking deeply into their slap sticker collections from over the years. It has been built up over years and shows a long history of the humans who have passed through and/or contributed their time to the station from all walks of life within the music industry. Each individual sticker represents a gig or a musician or a label or a brand – spanning many years of goodness!

Follow DREAM.R (and Shes.cuttin.shapes) on Instagram for more dreamy goodness!

 

 

And That Was… May 2021

They say good things take time, and this edition of And That Was… is cutting it fine! It has been a busy few weeks with lots happening and as such it seemed like the months have melded into one. But when looking back over images from the month of May, it was quickly apparent that those four weeks had their own flavour, a flood of memories came rushing back…

For this recap, we run back some our favourite paste ups, wall paintings, slaps, shows and even a doorway! We have largely stuck to urban art this month, temporarily returning to our formative roots, but that doesn’t mean we have forgotten the fact that all of these things are also entangled with our broader experiences of Otautahi’s central city, and in particular the food, the bars, the music, the people and all the vibrant things on offer. All of these things make up our urban culture and it is vital we celebrate and support these events, occurrences and interventions to keep our city lively!

So, after much delay, here is your And That Was… for May 2021…

Gary Silipa’s UFO Slaps…

I have been a fan of Gary Silipa‘s work and simplified iconography for years, especially his skulls and spaceships, which I found all over Wellington’s streets on a trip to the capital in April. The orbiting red UFO’s then appeared here in Christchurch in May, a legacy of the artist’s brief trip here. The ubiquitous presence in spaces high and low suggest the idea of exploration and observation, our strange contemporary customs intriguing to these small visitors…

Mark Catley’s Ascending Freak Angel

Mark Catley added a couple of fresh paste ups to the Boxed Quarter‘s ever-expanding collection of urban art. Taking his poor sack girl toy (pasted on Manchester Street) and twisting the image into a strange new appearance, the girl becomes a three-eyed ‘freak angel’ as the artist described, her outstretched hand now seemingly elevating her into the sky. Lit by a coincidental spot light, the seemingly celestial being is a trippy sight!

Jessie Rawcliffe’s Marriage of Figaro Mural

Jessie Rawcliffe‘s mural for the NZ Opera’s production of The Marriage of Figaro (which will be staged at the Isaac Theatre Royal here in Christchurch as part of a national run) was completed in May, with the artist’s stunning dry brush style giving the piece a stunning beauty against the smartly used graffiti-ed wall on which it was painted.

More: The Show

Back to the Boxed Quarter for More: The Show, an exhibition and event featuring talented Otautahi wahine artists. With a slew of our favourites and some new talent to explore (such as Sofiya Romanenko, who recently produced a beautiful photo essay for us), the show was a convergence of amazing talent and featuring a range of activity – unfortunately we forgot to take quality pictures! It was a one-weekend show so you had to be in quick!

Our favourite doorway…

Last, but definitely not least, we just had to include this doorway. OK, so it technically isn’t something that ‘happened’ in May, but we took this photo then, so it counts! Just look at it, it is a thing of beauty and couldn’t be left out!

Let us know what would make you list in the comments and if you know someone who would be a great guest writer for And That Was… – drop you suggestions there too!

 

Street Treats, Vol. 5

This edition of Street Treats is eclectic and varied, ranging from playful whimsy to blunt anti-establishment messaging. That ultimately is the beauty of guerrilla practice (or in the case of some of these works, permissioned but free from curatorial censorship), the opportunity to say what you want, how you want. As contemporary muralism has taken over the popular image of ‘street art’, it has also transformed the imagery and ideology deployed. While this still results in some pretty stunning works occupying our skylines and there are, admittedly, different levels of input and freedom, it is left to the smaller interventions to speak in an unfiltered voice. The content is not always explicitly political, but the act itself is, always. So whether it is a beautiful surreal flower sprouting from a concrete pillar,  a constantly recurring pencil, playfully collaged scenarios, vibrant names or scrawled messages that question the colonial history of our city, look and listen, they are speaking to you and about us…

If you have submissions for upcoming Street Treats volumes tag us on Instagram or email your pictures to hello@watchthisspace.org.nz!

Postcard from Wellington…

Wellington. It’s a personal favourite. The capital city is perfect for an urban weekend away, with it’s cool bars, vibrant street life and innumerable cafes for mornings after (personally, no trip to Wellington is complete without a breakfast burrito from Sweet Mother’s Kitchen). While Ōtautahi will always be home, a trip to Wellington always leaves me planning a return, looking for reasons to make my way back soon. The beauty of the city for me is that the main event (Wellington is a favourite gig venue personally) is supported so well by the city’s additional charms – I always take a day to simply wander, up and down Cuba Street, along the waterfront, up the hills, and in doing so, catch the urban art that marks its walls and alleys. From big murals by well-known local artists, to the array of smaller additions, Wellington’s urban art is always fun to explore and seems a good fit with the city’s lively profile and physical layout. From painted boats to schools of sharks, piles of skulls to bicycle rides, playful to meaningful, what follows is a postcard from Wellington’s streets!