13:
Graffiti is such a contextual art form by nature. Maybe that sounds silly to phrase it like that but seriously, without being situated in a time and place, graffiti is so powerless. It’s interesting considering that fact that so many people are careless in the documentation of their work. Furthermore, sometimes it’s interesting to consider the reaction of the average person to your pieces, even stay a little longer than usual when taking a photo and really watch your art exist in a living and breathing world. In fear of diverting off on another tangent, I’ll rein this in for the sake of telling this particular story.
Given ‘The Eye Of Providence’ is such a loaded symbol it goes without saying that it may evoke all types of reaction from passer-bys if painted large in a public space. As the initial reports of world economic crisis started to buzz their way around the international media, much of the debate between Dyle52 (Saves) and myself during our evening 10km runs seemed to become more relevant than ever. Considering that Dyle52 is a very devout and studious Christian and I am the product of 3 generations devoid of religion and parents who were into punk rock, it would seem unlikely how often we are on the same page about world events right? Amazing how two people with such contrasting viewpoints can arrive at the same assessment of world events. We spoke about doing a mural work that married some popular conspiracy theories with events prophesised in the ‘Book Of Revelations’. Considering my earlier references to St.John The Evangelist it made a lot of sense. An obvious stream was developing.
I found an image of a hand pulling the puppet by its strings on the Internet one day whilst surfing conspiracy blogs. I loved the image immediately and wanted to play on this in the wall. I drew up a rough plan for the wall only minutes before Dyle52 arrived to go paint.
So to break down this wall, firstly you have the title ‘The Fall Of An Empire’. This refers to the fall of the major economic power of our time, a popular interpretation of events prophesised in ‘Revelations’. In the place where religious and conspiratorial predictions align, many have speculated that this is the recent economic crisis experienced in the US. It makes some sort of ‘practical’ sense when you think in terms of the US as the major ‘Empire’ of the 20th Century but also the perceived ‘cracks’ in US stability, unpopular international regard for it’s previous leadership and foreign policy. All speculation aside though, as we all know logic rarely dictates the future, from the outside looking in the US can appear to be imploding from it’s own vices.
Fall Of An Empire, Askew and Dyle52 (Saves), Mt.Eden, Auckland, 2008.
The ‘Pyramid Dude’ stands in an imposing Godzilla-like stance, towering over the burning ruins of a city. The ‘S’s’ of our names are painted as dollar symbols, suspended from the puppet strings tied to his fingers. It’s a little over the top and its pretty sensationalist but we both felt world events were speaking to us respectively.
Where this gets interesting is that this work got removed… Not by the landlords, not by the City Council contractors either. This artwork was there at 6pm on a Sunday night as the adjacent business closed for the day and then it was gone by 7am Monday morning when they arrived back. That’s right, the wall was painted-out during the night by some completely anonymous person. Not only did they buff the wall, but did a reasonably professional job as well!
We came back a short time after to paint the sequel production. We arrived assuming that the art had been removed by the City Council but learned the true story in the morning just before we started painting. The store-owner was suggesting to me that perhaps I needed to consider painting more people-pleasing work. I can be a terrible ‘Yes-man’ sometimes because I was agreeing and telling him that’s what we had planned, all the while clutching my sketch of ‘Pyramid Dude’ wearing a US Army helmet, firing an M-16 off and about to throw a grenade, standing over his stockpiles of oil. It pains me to lie sometimes but I strongly felt we needed to up the anti on this one! Dyle52 painted the ‘Stop War’ letters while I handled the background and character duties.
Stop War, Askew and Dyle52 (Saves), Mt.Eden, Auckland, 2009.
To be continued…
11:
Use of ‘The Eye Of Providence’ in art is hardly a novel concept. It was with a little bit of trepidation that I started using this symbol in my art work but it’s interesting to look back on how it developed and become almost synonymous with my pieces these past few years.
‘The Eye Of Providence’ or ‘The All Seeing Eye Of God’ has its origins in religious imagery occurring in Egyptian mythology (The Eye Of Horus), Buddhism and Christianity (The Holy Trinity). Since 1782 it has featured on the reverse of the ‘Great Seal Of The United States’ and since 1935 appeared on the US one dollar bill. Most people would generally make the association with the ‘Freemasonry’ but more specifically ‘Masonic Conspiracies’. These conspiracies generally centre on politics (One World Order), religion (accusations of satanic practice) and culture (numerology and Masonic symbolism in corporate logos and entertainment).
‘The Eye Of Providence’ is obviously a symbol steeped in history, loaded with religious and political subtext but I have also often wondered why the triangle as a symbol really resonates with people at a totally primary level? Could it be that triangles are the strongest geometric shape and occur commonly in architecture? Or perhaps it’s that the triangle has appeared since early civilizations as the symbol of the trilogy or the triad that makes all existence possible. For example -‘The Father, The Son, The Holy Ghost’. Triangles and definitely Pyramids often symbolise hierarchy, especially in relation to societal structure and the distribution of knowledge, power and wealth. Regardless of whether you subscribe to the notion of a structured ‘Illuminati’, ‘pulling the strings’ it has to be said that a ‘Big Brother’ concept married with the idea of ‘The Haves’ dictating their will upon ‘The Have Nots’ is intrinsically intertwined with this symbol.
Some examples of Freemason-esque design in local logos:
Auckland City Council, NZ Made, NZX, North Shore City Council
These are some examples of my first forays into discussing this subject matter in my work:
Most of these pieces feature either ‘The Eye’ not contained in the pyramid or just the pyramid. My main addition to the eye was the stylised ‘B-Boy’ eyebrow. I don’t think I was the first to have incorporated these ideas into my pieces by any means.
The Mighty Dollar, 2007. 1500mm x 2200mm, Spray Paint on Perspex with Fluorescent light.
The Mighty Dollar
This was a more serious work done as a commission. It started as a series of pencil and ink drawings with studies of various plays on the ‘Eye Of Providence’ and the popular conspiracies connected with power, money, faith and apocalypse. The central image features several intersecting symbols -‘The cross’, ‘The Star Of David’, ‘The Eye Of Providence’ and the pyramid itself is built from the words ‘The Mighty Dollar’, obviously a play on ‘TMD’. To the left of this is my interpretation of ‘Michael The Archangel’ fighting the great battle in Heaven. This is based on the Luca Giordano painting circa 1663. At the bottom centre of the work is my version of St.John The Evangelist on the island of Patmos. I looked at several paintings depicting this scene including the 1518 panel from St. John Altar by Hans Burgkmair The Elder and noticed the reoccurrence of the black bird, which I also chose to include. At the bottom right is ‘WWW’ a play on the conspiracy surrounding the fact ‘W’ is the 6th letter/number in the Greek and Hebrew alphabets. The top right shows a battle between a snake and a dog. This refers characters I developed in my painting and illustrative work to show the two archetypal human personalities I’ve observed. It’s a very simplistic view but one I developed whilst redefining a lot of friendships and business relationships.
The Pyramid Dude
A healthy scepticism of mainstream media was a major motivator in my adoption of ‘The Eye’ into my art. Realising how skewed ratings-driven news media is as a concept I started to grow a real disdain for it. I also started to observe trends in our local media where sensationalist headlines tended to drive public opinion so much that it allowed highly ‘draconian’ legislation to be passed very easily. It seemed to me that if the ‘powers that be’ dress something up in the right clothes to make it a palatable concept, anything is possible. It’s political engineering and perhaps local media isn’t always as separate from that process as it should be. From this observation was where my initial ‘Pyramid Dude’ drawings drew inspiration.
The original ‘Pyramid Dude’ came like an epiphany to me whilst working on a T-Shirt Illustration for a friend of mine. It was such a simple merger of two iconic characters that encapsulated the issues so perfectly. Here you have the perfect vehicle for ‘The Powers That Be’ to dress their agendas as light entertainment or divert people’s attention away from the real issues. Also the extra play on it being so ‘Mickey Mouse’ was too hard to resist.
Photography by Rimoni
The ‘Life Is Just A Pyramid Scheme’ was the first time this character was painted in spray. This was a wall with Vents RTR, where if you notice, the character is gesturing to Auckland City and the Skytower.
To be continued…
09:
At Primary Flight, Miami 2009. Photo by: Jeremiah Garcia
Welcome to my new look site. I’ve been meaning to revise the format for a while and try some new approaches to blogging, sharing my inspirations, projects and process with you in a more in depth way.
What motivated this? Well, 2009 was a pretty epic year for me. I turned 30, something I didn’t think would mark such a monumental ‘coming of age’ but it actually did. 30 is one of those landmark ages where you tend to reflect on what you have achieved against what you may have expected to have achieved or perhaps what societies expectation of you is. Having chosen fairly young to take the path of being an artist, specifically a graffiti artist it’s needless to say that I don’t have much in the way of material wealth, assets or conventional accolades. I certainly haven’t lived a life that has afforded me a house or made me highly employable in the typical sense.
A couple of years back, I went through some hard times emotionally and I started to reflect on this a lot. I began to question my chosen path and wonder if it was all in vain. As I mentioned, I really had little to show for all my work. I often struggled to make ends meet and was still relying on my partner (a student at the time) to manage the cash flow in our household. I considered getting a ‘normal’ job but most potential employers didn’t understand ‘what’ I was as far as fitting me into a specific role. All the while I kept pushing myself as an artist, trying to work every angle. It was frustrating trying to approach galleries or speak with people within that world because there was always a hint of them not taking me seriously. I was starting to become consumed by that aspect, wondering why after all these years, with all this sweat, tears and perspiration, after all the stress, chases and injuries, even after all the attention to developing my painting technique and striving to be the best I could, why my work still felt futile when presented to the people I perceived as from the ‘art world’.
I reached a ‘epiphany’ of sorts when I realised its nobodies fault but our own (The writers) that we don’t get treated as credible artists. It’s almost entirely about our inner conflict about graffiti in the context of its place in the art world. I truly believe that is the heart of the matter.
What we (generally) lack as a community are these four main things: An understanding of art history, real concept development and research of ideas, being able to identify graffiti’s key point of difference within the realm of art and strong documentation that reinforces our paintings and contextualises them. Aside from that, it’s about presenting, sharing, debating and striving to evolve. It’s also about honesty, being true to yourself and finding your voice.
I didn’t go to art school. I didn’t have time to incubate good art practise during the span of my studies so this revelation may sound fairly rudimentary to some. Realising these things changed my outlook dramatically though. I found new ways to enjoy the journey. I found a new mechanism to set goals, develop my work, evaluate my principals and also explain my objectives to people outside of graffiti. This marked a massive change in how I feel about where I am at today. I look back at 2009 and I am blown away. I look at how far I’ve come and appreciate that. Mostly though, I feel excited about where I’m going. That’s where this new site comes into play.
In this main blog section of the site, I will share a lot about my projects, from the inspiration, the research, through to the drawings and eventual painting process. I will present this with writing, photos and videos. Once a visible ‘body’ of work is defined it will be summarised and posted in the ‘Works’ section. Basically you will see the ideas develop, this site will function as my journal for you all to see.
Thanks to everyone that has supported me thus far and stay tuned in 2010.
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