Archive for the ‘Metro’ Tag
Small acts, amazing effects.
Filed under: Art, Street Art | Tags: Melbourne, Metro, public space, swoon, TED
Comments (2) Regular readers of this blog will know that I tend not to do announcements about upcoming shows, figuring that there are plenty of other blogs and sites that do a sterling job in that respect.
But every now and then shows come along which either seem so unmissable or they involve work by artists whom I really respect or admire.
Coming up at Metro gallery in Melbourne is an exhibition that falls into both these categories. Metro is hosting Swoon’s first solo exhibition in Australia.
I’ve written about Swoon’s work before on this blog: you can read that post here. I’ve long been an admirer of her art: it is diverse but coherent, it moves beyond street and gallery with apparently effortless ease, and it has evolved in fascinating ways so that as well as adding artworks to buildings and other parts of the built environment, Swoon has in recent years been creating new built environments herself.
Sometimes these have been elaborate structures designed to float on rivers and seas, such as the rafts which sailed the Adriatic into Venice, to gatecrash the Biennale. At other times, they are specifically designed buildings, intensely site-specific works which also have all the functionality of a building – they are made for particular purposes, such as the Konbit Shelter in Haiti. In relation to this latter project, Swoon has working with architects and urban designers as part of a group seeking to assist in the reconstruction of Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake there. (You can read more about that project here.)
To get more of a sense of Swoon’s work, it’s worth doing a couple of things. First of all, have a look at a recent post on the excellent blog Brooklyn Street Art, which describes a studio visit with Swoon and has lots of great photos of her at work. Then, check out YouTube. Have a look at this:
Only three minutes long, but it gives a great sense of both of Swoon’s art and her energy and enthusiasm…
And then, check this one out:
This is a TED talk given by Swoon in Brooklyn recently, in which she talks at greater length about her work. Totally inspiring and, again, such infectious enthusiasm.
I was fortunate enough to meet Swoon last April in New York, and it really was one of the highlights of my time researching in this area. We spoke at length about the transformative potential of art and about the nature of relationships between people (and art) in public space, in neighbourhoods, in derelict spaces, on water, and in buildings.
in November 2010, Swoon created a site-specific installation for the exhibition Small Acts of Resistance at Black Rat Projects in London. The exhibition was designed around the work of several artists whose work combines ‘the artist’s aesthetic vision and the activist’s world changing ambition’. In Swoon’s work we see this combination at its most effective. The acts of a street artist may be relatively small, but their effects – well, their effects go far beyond the limits of any one paste-up or sculpture. Maybe art like this can change the way you see or the way you think.
Go and see the show. It’s on from today until 5th March 2011, Metro Gallery, 1214 High Street, Armadale.
The window cleaner
About 18 months ago, I wrote about being on a train on the London Underground one night when someone stuck a sticker on the carriage wall (it read ‘Peak hours may necessitate that someone sits on your lap’, and looked just like the ‘official’ stickers placed on the carriage for information by the Transport for London corporation (you can read about this sticker here and updated here).
Today I was on the Paris Metro. I was sitting on one of the folding seats next to the carriage door. A man entered at the far end of the carriage and sat down. I didn’t pay him much attention at first. he was carrying a roll of paper towels and whatever the French equivalent of Windex is.
I assumed that he had been shopping and was on his way home. It turned out that this was not the case.
He seemed to notice something on the glass of the window in the door next to where I sat, and he got up and came over to look closer at it. Windows on the Paris Metro often have a lot of scratchiti and tags applied with paint or marker pen, and this window was no different. What the man had noticed was a tag, and he ran his finger over it several times, then sprayed Windex all over the glass. When the glass was quite wet, he proceeded to scrub away at it with one of his paper towels.
Because the tag he was rubbing away at was applied with some kind of paint, his efforts had no effect upon the window (except to remove whatever smudges and streaks had resulted from passengers going in and out of the train all day). Nevertheless, as the train neared the next station and people began to cluster around the doorway prior to getting off, he turned and said to another passenger, ‘That’s better, isn’t it?’
It could be that he was indeed someone who had been out shopping and who was simply inspired for some reason to use his Windex to clean the window. But I don’t think so. I think he was one of those people who make a project – one might almost say, sometimes, a crusade – out of removing graffiti from the surfaces of the city. They are not council workers or people doing this as their job; they are ordinary people who set themselves the task of graffiti removal.
For this man it meant cleaning windows on the trains in the Metro. I feel pretty lucky to have seen this guy in action – a case of being there just at the right moment (again) to witness an act of anti-graffiti taking place.
Images to Live By 