Archive for the ‘galleries’ Tag

An old favourite

Posted June 4, 2012
Filed under: art, Art, Street Art | Tags: , , , , , ,
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I arrived in Paris last Thursday night, with just enough time to get to the opening of a new show by Miss.Tic. Miss.Tic is something of a cultural (and countercultural institution) in Paris. She has been making stencils and putting them up for many, many years – probably about two and a half decades.

Her works are tremendously recognizable, because they always feature the same devices: a woman, or a woman and a man together, occasionally a cat or a woman and a cat. The images have a nicely stark, graphic appeal, and accompany a brief line of text. The text, for Miss.Tic, is the crucial thing: she describes herself as a ‘poet’ rather than an artist. the words are carefully chosen, and play on language, using puns, double meanings, and subtle satire. The text often has a feminist overtone, which is then placed in tension with the illustrating image, in that the woman in the picture often assumes poses that are stereotypically provocative. For many years, the woman in the images was a representation of Miss.Tic herself; in later years, she has created a generic female, who appears with a stereotypically ‘beefcake’ male.

Her work is now regarded very highly in French art circles. The show was held in the Galerie Lelia Mordoch, in a very trendy part of Paris. The opening was filled with chic Parisiens, all clutching plastic cups of white wine or Evian, and all desperate to speak to the artist.

When I was in Paris two years ago, Miss.Tic was kind enough to do an interview with me, so I felt brave enough to go up and say hello. She appeared to remember me (‘Ah oui, la petite Australienne’) but there were certainly too many people around to have any kind of conversation. Here are a couple of examples of her work, one inside the gallery and one in the street nearby:

(Sorry for the slightly dubious photographic quality – it was very unclear whether it was OK to take pictures so I was being very hasty, and it’s not the best framed shot.)

Every now and then in Paris, especially in certain areas like La Butte aux Cailles, it’s possible to come across street-based works by Miss.Tic. These are a great pleasure; they seem much more raw than the gallery works (which, by the way, have rather large price tags – many of the works in the current show are priced between 8000 and 14000 euros). Here’s one I saw yesterday:

And here’s one on a gallery door (Le Cabinet D’Amateur, near Ledru Rollin):

And just in case you thought, when I said that Miss.Tic is something of a cultural institution in France, that this was just a figure of speech, check this out:

Miss.Tic’s work has been immortalised on a set of stamps, an indicator that a previously minoritarian activity is becoming increasingly mainstream. But aside from that, I love it. She’s on a set of stamps! How cool is that?

On the road again….

Posted June 4, 2012
Filed under: art, Art, Street Art | Tags: , , , ,
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I’m travelling right now. In the last 9 days, I’ve been in London (briefly), Oxford, Bristol, and now Paris. Tomorrow, I’ll be heading back to London, to spend 10 days there. So what’s the reason for all this gallivanting? Over the last four years, as some readers may know, I’ve been researching the emergence of street art as a distinctive cultural practice, and the range of social, cultural, political and legal responses to it. The project has been a comparative one, and I’ve been able to travel to San Francisco, New York, London, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin, to meet artists, collectors, bloggers, gallerists and curators, as well as in my home base of Melbourne. I ended up interviewing 62 artists and over 20 gallerists and other art professionals. I walked many miles in different cities, photographing what was on the walls.

And now I’m in the process of writing up this research. In addition to academic articles along the way, it will be published as a book, tentatively entitled Crime and the Urban Imagination, in 2013 by Routledge. (I just have to write it, of course – no problem!)

One of the things that became clear over the last four years was the increasing interest shown in street art by galleries, museums, graphic design, architecture and advertising, among other fields. It was also clear that the art market was deeply interested in the collectability and marketability of street art. So last year, I applied for funding from the Australian Research Council to extend my research by investigating these developments – to examine what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has called the ‘cultural field’ as it relates to street art.

My application was successful, and the project is now underway. This trip is the first fieldwork trip of the research; I’m also hoping to get to Berlin and the Fame Festival in Grottaglie in September.

So that’s what I’m doing, on the road again. The emphasis of the project is different from the previous research, so I’ve been going to galleries and taking notes on what it’s like to be a spectator of ‘urban art’ as it’s exhibited in gallery settings. But of course there’s the art all around on the walls of the streets, too… So it has meant that I find myself to be incredibly busy – visiting galleries, trying to meet gallerists and dealers, sometimes getting stood up for appointments by said gallerists and dealers (grrr), and always, always, walking, walking, walking. I’ve seen some great things on this trip so far, and a few posts will be following this one. My feet may be aching, but my eyes are happy.