Category Archives: Reviews

Changing the Urban Wallpaper

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Advertising Shits in Your Head is a new handy pocket guide to modern advertising and, more importantly, how it can be subverted. Published by Dog Section Press just last year it has already run into a second edition. The book’s title was originally used in an article by a certain Bill Posters where he attacks advertisers who surreptitiously “shit in your head”. Expanding on this Advertising Shits in Your Head discusses why advertising should be regarded as such a problem and how it can be tackled effectively. The publishers tell me the book is “intended as a call to arms against the outdoor advertising industry particularly, and capitalism generally. It’s also an exploration of the origins of the modern day, international subvertising movement, and a guide to some of the theory and practice underpinning it.”

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Berlin Gold

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Auri Sacra Fames 5

At 232 pages the new Auri Sacra Fames is basically a book rather than a magazine. A range of seven different chapters, each with their own style and content, rolled into one publication. This fifth instalment is the ‘Legend’ issue. So alongside two sections of Berlin trains are features on five legendary Berlin crews and individuals. The introduction defines a graff legend as having achieved “a real long-term relevance” through a combination of quality and quantity. Interestingly this description is printed alongside the dictionary definition which labels a legend as a “narrative, which can not be proved or which is grotesquely exaggerated.” Continue reading →

Adam Void Interview

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Adam Void

Nirvana Rules is the latest of offering from among the many excellent zines Adam Void has produced. The title gives a clue to the content within which focuses on the ‘Nirvana Rules’ tag he first noticed on the streets of Baltimore. The graffiti is unconventional, both in its form and style, yet being well-executed and repeated often this clearly isn’t just a series of spontaneous tributes left by random Nirvana fans. In the introduction to the zine Adam Void points out that it’s not unusual to see a popular band’s name on a wall. Fans of various groups eg; KIϟϟ, Iron Maiden, or Slayer seem to enjoy slapping a bit of emulsion on brick or writing on a toilet door. However the Nirvana Rules tag appears to be unique in that it has a dual function as one person’s tag. Presented over the pages of the zine in black and white the tag is shown to have a clear aesthetic being placed on a variety of surfaces and mediums.

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Understanding Vans

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places-2

Following a recent trip to Canada a friend kindly came back with the third issue of a tidy little magazine called Names and Places. Surprisingly this was actually the only domestic publication to be found among a wide selection of European train mags over there. Anyway as it happens Names and Places turns out to be a real gem!

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Freight Trainz

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Fumez

Starting out life as a black & white affair during the nineties Fumez has been given a fresh lease of life. Issue 1 of the newly released publication is now a full colour, slender looking, magazine roughly about A5 size. The cover of the mag proudly states that there are “over 100 photos” within. Considering its size, this amount of content could’ve resulted in small poor quality images. However the editor has done a good job in ensuring that the photographs are all nicely sized and of a high quality. Listing nine contributors Fumez covers nearly three decades of freight graffiti up to the present day.

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A Lifeline

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Henkireikä frontcover

Henkireikä is a recently released magazine hailing from Sweden. The publication brings together some of the vibrant work of the graffiti artist Rikard Olsen. Working on the idea of a blackbook it is designed to display his work in a form that can be physically distributed. Olsen describes the painting of his work as a breathing-space or even a lifeline. At some time, during a conversation with a friend about art, Olsen came across the Finnish word ‘Henkireikä‘ which translates as something similar to the process of Olsen’s graffiti. With family ties to that country it seemed an obvious title for his first foray into publishing.

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Illicit Activity

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Podpolie

Belarus is the European anomaly that the rest of the continent views as its ‘last dictatorship’. Although it’s recently been in the news most people, including myself, know little about this country and its culture. So it’s interesting to come across a new magazine that attempts to remedy this. Podpolie, which roughly translates as ‘illicit activity’, is the first and only publication to focus on the scene in this far-flung part of Eastern Europe.

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Urinals, Public Space & Murals

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Trains, Travels & Murals

This month marks a hundred years since the artist Marcel Duchamp submitted his now famous artwork, Fountain, to an international exhibition in New York. Influenced by Dadaism his submission was simply a urinal he’d bought in a local shop. Duchamp’s surrealist questioning of institutional definitions of art has had a defining impact on modern art. Now, rather then creating something, a contemporary artist will add the label ‘art’ (and therefore implicit meaning) to anything they choose. Duchamp’s legacy has left a large portion of the public completely baffled when they enter a contemporary art gallery. Alongside its increasing commodification and institutionalisation this pretentiousness has also crept into urban art. This is what leads Pietro Rivasi, writing at the start of Trains, Travels & Murals, to declare that “we are living in the dark, medieval times of urban art.”

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