Banksy may have brought street art into the public consciousness, but in August Atzaro unleashed urban art in the Ibiza countryside.

IT was a strange symmetry seeing (predominantly UK-produced) street art in the lavish, landscaped gardens of the outer Sant Joan orange groves. The idyllic surroundings of Atzaro hotel’s rural oasis are more often associated with spas, sun loungers and sushi than street art: a form more familiar to the back streets of Bristol than the Balearic Islands.

But urban art has progressed far beyond tags on trains and the unsanctioned abolishment of public property to become a valued creative phenomenon thanks to Banksy and his contemporaries, many of whom exhibited at this year’s Urban in Ibiza including Goldie, K-Guy, Dan Baldwin, Fin Dac and Shoe.

Uniting art, music and fashion, Urban in Ibiza celebrated its second successful year with live music by west London duo Dogz or Godz and catwalk shows by Ibiza designer Sasha Moon and sassy underwear line Dirty Pretty Things, debuted by Dee Murren and Claire Merry.

‘We love Ibiza. It’s a really special thing for us to actually do the show in Ibiza,’ Murren said. ‘The collection is really quite suited to here,’ added Merry. ‘There are a lot of strong colours, a lot of the stuff you could wear on the beach.’

Award-winning urban artist Tom ‘Inkie’ Bingle, curator of the event and a significant innovator of the street art movement, hand-picked each of the artists alongside promoter Paul Dizzi Saunders and performed a live spray of his own work on the night. ‘Atzaro’s an amazing venue,’ he said. ’It’s stunning to be here. It’s the perfect environment.’

Urban in Ibiza has definitely raised the bar this year and succeeded phenomenally in bringing street culture to an island famed for its clubs and coastline. We can’t wait to see what urban antics they have in store for this pastoral estate in 2011.

First published in Ibiza Style Magazine, Ibiza, September 2010.
© Abbey Stirling

Graffiti artist Sickboy is cementing his move to the capital with his highly-anticipated Stay Free exhibition, opening today in Shoreditch.

FRESH from the Bristol scene, which has spawned a whole new generation of street artists including Nick Walker, Robert Del Naja and Banksy, he says London definitely lives up to his expectations. ‘Yeah, my studio costs far too much!’ But then he didn’t come here for fame and fortune. ‘If I did, I never found it. But on a serious note, it could have been any capital across Europe. London seemed a logical place to start. Bristol the city became a town, and then slowly but surely, the town became a village.’

Stay Free brings inspiration from Roald Dahl’s legendary written masterpiece Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (‘It has personal ramifications’) and will see him transform a Victorian grade two listed, East End building into a 3D creative playground, including a 14-foot factory art installation. To fit with the concept this will then be bequeathed to one lucky guest who unlocks the factory with the winning golden key.

Gold, his signature colour, is a recurring theme. Is he trying to make his artwork more valuable?

‘Not at all. It was originally a way for my work to stand out and be specific to me. I have used colour combinations as a constant element in a lot of my work; I generally use gold in unison with a selection of other colours: black, white, fluoro, red and yellow. When used together, they kind of become ‘my’ colours.’

Tipped as one of the street art movement’s most investable artists, Sickboy defiantly stays true to his rebel roots with a career that’s seen him spraying walls and wheelie bins worldwide with his iconic temple logo and Save the Youth slogan. ‘Apparently, even from a young age, my parents used to mock me by singing “I did it my way” at stuff I used to do. You turn right, I want to turn left.’

So what inspires his work?

‘It’s hard to put my finger on what initially inspired me to start graffiti; I think it’s a mixture of being a bit arty and wanting to do my own thing.

‘Over the last year, a lot has happened as the spotlight shines on the so-called ‘street art’. A lot of it rubbed me up the wrong way. Don’t get me wrong, making an honest pound out of your creative labour is fine, and allows you to keep producing better work with consistency; it also allows for stagnation as people become blinded by doing art for the wrong reasons. And corporate backing of street art ventures by large galleries kind of tipped me over the edge.

‘Stay Free, for me, is a DIY exhibition, self-funded and trying to stay true to what I have always loved – and that, in its purest form, is putting pen to paper, paint to brush or spray to wall. Not bogging myself down with the rights and wrongs beyond those simple rules. The factory was born from a sketch I did. I like creating environments on my pieces, and this is a way of realising it in 3D.’

First published on The London Word, December 2008.
© Abbey Stirling

Dan Baldwin’s only UK exhibition this year, Dead Innocent, a much anticipated collection of new paintings, ceramics and installations, is now showing at the Forster Gallery in East London.

HAVING enjoyed phenomenal acclaim amongst critics and collectors, Dan has spent the past year away from the art world’s gaze, creating a new body of work with images and references borrowed from popular culture, art, religious and political history.

From the symbolic 17th century Vanitas painters, to political paintings of the ’60s by Rauschenberg and Johns, to skate graphics, eBay and aerosols, Baldwin’s influences span the centuries. His dynamic canvases often combine elements of painting, collage, appliqué and printing and give insight to his personal approach as an artist. His works resonate with his thought process and activity, his obsessive layering of paint, print and objects, religious artefacts and rare knick-knacks cohabit in fantastical arenas, where Christ can exist alongside Hitler, whilst birds and butterflies keep score.

“I love the contradictions,” he says. “It’s always about balance. There’s always a balance and harmony between life and death and beauty; yet they evoke certain feelings and open up suggestions and arguments between the elements. I want the beauty to draw the viewer in, the colour, the surface, the narrative between the elements, but also the juxtapositioning of the elements to create a fresh evocative energy – be it childlike or sinister or both.”

Baldwin’s works can be surprising, shocking even, but also humorous. There is an uneasy democracy between his subjects; the realisation that each figure is reduced by the digestion and regurgitation of our popular culture and has become diluted and impotent is as shocking as their narrative.

Baldwin has exhibited widely across the UK and abroad over the last 10 years, including Miami, Basel and New York. His work has featured in magazines such as Dazed and Confused, I.D, Modern Painters, Vogue, Elle Decoration and Elle.

First published on The London Word, October 2008.
© Abbey Stirling