INVURT

There’s just something about art and backyards that go together – drinks, bbqs and good weather makes for a pretty ideal day, and, when you couple that with a bunch of highly creative friends, you often get art jams that are second to none.

Taking it one step further, Primo! Mag and The Outsiders decided that just hanging out and doing art wasn’t enough – they wanted to share it with everyone, and so Backyard Play was born!

"PRIMO! Magazine & The Outsiders are two like mind crews who have already established a place in the local Art scene. They have joined forces to create a burgeoning new collective called BACKYARD PLAY. This collective aims to cultivate a greater sense of community amongst Street & Graffiti Artist. They hope to break down the stigma that surrounds their beloved chosen Art forms.

The idea, to bring together Artists, friends & community in a way that personalises the medium of their Art as well as promotes creativity & collaboration in their very own backyards. Through shared experience, BACKYARD PLAY hopes to bring more understanding of the process of creating Street Art & Graffiti as well as the shared experience of childhood play & the shared experience of a dedicated day of painting together. The first of these days took place on 6.8.2011 in a backyard in Sydney & the result is the first BACKYARD PLAY exhibition.

6 Artists created works inspired by the theme Backyard Play using a range of media such as aerosol, pen, paint and texta. They barbecued, drank beer & painted together, making Art in the same place at the same time they influence each others work & created an inspiring work environment. This day also held a deeper message of reflection for the Artists, with a loose theme of nostalgia & ‘childhood’, which encouraged them to draw upon their background & influence in order to convey their message. This is all reflected in the show in what we hope to turn into a regular playtime.

BACKYARD PLAY is a celebration of the things that hold a community together & knit you to your community like pride, nostalgia, diversity & notions of home."

You probably even recognise a few of the names from the Sydney Secret Wars list – there’s quite a few of the competitors taking part in this event.There will also be a really cool doco of the event on show, which was made by Will Hodgett & Daniel Repetti – along with the photography that’ll also be on display you’ll be able to get a great sense of how the show developed. Put it all together, and this looks mad – get to it!

Who: Cam Wall, Sprinkles, Kon, Mr. Sweet, Teem, photography by Hannah Wang and doco by Will Hodgett & Daniel Repetti
What: Backyard Play collaborative exhibition
Where: 240 Enmore Road, Enmore, Sydney, NSW
When: Opens Thursday 8th December and runs til Wednesday 14th December

Check out the Backyard Play facebook page as well as the facebook event page for heaps more info on the event.

You would think that the boys from aMBUSH Gallery would have their hands full with the ongoing Outpost Project, but no – these guys just keep powering on, and the next show up at aMBUSH Gallery sees a bunch of our favourites smashing it down in Sydney with an awesome group show, Surface Tension.

"Australia’s new wave of street art is already here. Following on from their curatorial hit Outpost Project at Cockatoo Island, aMBUSH proudly presents Surface Tension, featuring artists E.L.K. (Luke Cornish,
VIC), Heesco (VIC), Shida (QLD), Slurpree Slug (NSW), Sofles (VIC) and Sprinkles (NSW).

The artists will paint and transform the gallery walls, integrating the space itself into their body of works. Hailing from Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, the stellar emergent line-up represents the next epoch, the next movement. Come and see where it all starts.

The opening will take place on Friday 25 November from 6-9pm at aMBUSH Gallery, 4A James Street Waterloo. Join us for complimentary drinks provided by Absolut and future leaning beats and Hip-hop
between provided by Zwelli.

On the billing will be Brisbane born, cut-back king, Sofles, recently returned from the San Francisco all-Australian show ‘Young and Free’ – himself one of the country’s finest graffiti exports. Also from Brisbane,
Shida’s vicious extra dimensional figures will grin across the concrete backdrop.

Moving further down south, representing Sydney will be Sprinkles, co-founder of Half-Star clothing, with his hyper-cartoon skulls stalking the back of your thoughts. Marking his exclusive gallery appearance is the mysterious street thrasher, Slurpee Slug, with his raw psychedelia a cross between whizz fizz characters and acid. From the Melbourne camp, and representing Blender studios we have Heesco and E.L.K.

Heesco, the current Sydney Secret Wars champion, has a talent in creating anguished faces and loose figures caught in motion.
E.L.K. (Luke Cornish) is widely regarded as a National stencil treasure, able to bring photorealistic portrayals in muted tones through painstaking execution of layering, deconstructing and reconstructing his works with his own flair. E.L.K. was the winner of the 2010 Australian Stencil Art Prize, and made the cover of Monthly Art Magazine, April 2011.

The exhibition will also run alongside an online catalogue with works for sale from Saturday 26 November and runs until 4 December, allowing interstate buyers to remotely buy works. Information regarding this will be available on the aMBUSH website from the opening night."

Damn. We love aMBUSH more and more every day – and you should too!

Who: E.L.K., Heesco, Shida, Slurpee Slug, Sofles, Sprinkles
What: Surface Tension group show
Where: aMBUSH Gallery, 4a James St, Waterloo, Sydney, NSW
When: Show opens Friday 25th November, and runs til Tuesday 29th November.

Check out the aMBUSH gallery website and the facebook event page for more info on the show.

We had the pleasure of attending the first On The Wall at Finders Keepers here in Melbourne, and thought that the quality of the artwork on display was top notch.

For the next Finders Keepers in Sydney, it looks like they’ve pumped it up even more, and just browsing the list there is a huge crop of talent.

If you haven’t had the chance to get to a Finders Keepers market yet, and you’re in Sydney, then this is a good opportunity to do so. Not only will there be lots of crafty design goodness, but there’ll be a hell of a lot of great art as well.

Who: Alex Louisa, The Gently Unfurling Sneak, Anna Louise Mould, Ben Shackleton, Brooke Holm, Danielle Reck, Dilshani Jayawardene, Elisa Mazzone, Emma Leonard, Grace Brown, Grace McKellar, Hollie Martin, Pannikin, Enyáj, j-b0x, Joanne Young, Kate McCarthy, Kirbee Lawler, me & oli, Laura Carey, Leanne, Melinda Francis , Michelle Crowe, Mishy Lane, Mister Edwards, Niina Aoki, Renee Anne, Zahra Zainal
What: On The Wall – Finders Keepers exhibition
Where: Finders Keepers Market,
When: Friday the 2nd December from 6pm til 10pm and Saturday 3rd December 10am til 5pm.

Check out the Finders Keepers website for more details, as well as the facebook event page.

Well, we’re pretty sure that this weeks Transmissions beats all the rest and is the largest we’ve done yet – in sheer number count anyways! With so many videos we’ve seen this week that piqued our interest, we wont delay – get watching and enjoy it all as much as we have …

As he’s one of our favourite artists, and as we helped out Art Series Hotels in their time up at Cockatoo Island, well, we have to start out with this video showcasing ROA at the event – love his work.

CDH was in the news last week, and, we’re sure you would agree, but removing this piece of implemented art, which actually added to the piece and made it quite amazing, was a fair wrong turn for Melbourne City Council – why not leave it as it was? It was pretty damn brilliant … read more of this story behind the sculpture on CDHs website.

On the Outpost Project tip – Art Nation had a special segment on the event, and if you haven’t been or haven’t thought much of it, this’ll probably make you want to go.

A little more on Outpost, as ArtSeries also did a piece a few days ago on the Oi! You! Exhibition – and there’s a bit of an interview in here with George Shaw, who put it together …

Numskull has the opening of his "Mixed Messages" exhibition tonight, and here’s a great sneak peek preview of the show.

We’re still seeing a lot of stuff turning up from D*Faces visit to us last month, but this is a more than excellent book ending to a grand visit! Check out the Bright Things TV segment on the artist …

At ten minutes, its pretty long – but this is an entire walkthrough and look at all the work up in the Pastemoderism 3 show – so much artwork …

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They’ve been working on this for a while now, but Kaff-eine, Precious Little, Tig-tab and Blacklodge have been working on a pretty cool urban exploration show that’ll be on in January – we have the feeling that this is going to be something really quite extraordinary.

As we mentioned yesterday, Anthony Lister was in Sydney for Outpost as well – and this is a preview of the piece that’s launching today, Rainbow City Gaze. Nice.

Here’s a great time lapse of a recent piece by Makatron – love it.

Max Berry and Mark Alsweiler also have a show on this week, and this is preview of it – All Things Lost.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t put this up – Acclaim Magazine are celebrating their 25th issue soon, and they had Ken Done do the cover! Between Ken Done and Dropbears, we just can’t think of anything more fittingly Aussie.

Ironlak posted this up today of the Deer Duck Bistro being painted up in Brisbane by the Anomyart crew.

Lastly for this week, something quite cool – Tanja Jade, who opened a show at Backwoods last week, and Simon Peters put together this cute little cartoon – pretty funny stuff!

Well, that’s all we have again! Don’t forget to browse through previous weeks, and, if you have a cool video you want us to include – send it through!

We’re starting with our rounds of November Top 10s, and, of course, first up is Dean Sunshine with his set of the best ten images he’s seen in the past few weeks.

Really nice collection, this one – looking forward to the rest of this months!

1. Dface – Sth Melb
2. Baby Gurl – Brunswick
3. ROA – Sydney
4. Kaffeine + Precious Little, Brunswick
5. Be Free – Brunswick
6. Chapel st, Windsor
7. Mysterious Al, Ed Bechervaise & Rad 11 – Richmond
8. South Melb
9. Awol crew – Fitzroy
10. Sydney

We’re big fans of seeing artists putting on their first solo shows – and this coming show is no exception. So Mann is one of the directors of the wonderful Sydney gallery, Monstrosity – and his first outing looks pretty intriguing!

"Sol’s first solo exhibition is a chaotic mish mash of drawings, paintings collages and prints using any and every technique.

Drawing from a deep and turbulent underground river, bubbling with sexual desire, half-remembered song lyrics, half-forgotten dreams, wry self-analysis, commercial detritus, and an almost limitless and child-like joy in existence, Sol puts into pictures what everyone is thinking but no one wants to say."

Head down and check out this cool show, as well as Monstrosity gallery, if you’re around Sydneytown this weekend.

Who: Sol
What: Blow Up Sol solo show
Where: Monstrosity Gallery, 93 Bourke St, Woolloomooloo, Sydney
When: Show opens Friday 24th November, 6pm til 8pm, and runs til December 9th

Check out the Monstrosity facebook group and the facebook event for more details on the show!

What Eddie Zammit and T-World have accomplished with NEXT: The Future Of T-Shirt Graphics is either insanely amazing or amazingly insane, but, mostly, its just astonishing.

With over a thousand t-shirts on display, including specially made designs forecasting what leading designers think will be the future of t-shirts in 2015, its a visual feast of wearable brilliance. There are so many gorgeous designs in this room that it is hard to know where to look – luckily, there are a whole bunch of amazing, descriptive placards and photographs of designers, and their thoughts on shirts. These photos were all done by Nicole Reed and are exclusive for NEXT – and, we have to say, we love Nicoles photographic work, it really adds to the whole atmosphere of the exhibition.

We also were lucky enough to have a look at the next issue of T-world this past weekend, and all we can say is that god damn, we want a copy. Badly. Like, last week. T-World issue 7 is what good print publications aspire to be. It’ll be out pretty soon, so be sure keep an eye out for info here on its release party and where to buy it …

For now, enjoy some pics from a few of our visits to NEXT.

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Oh, also? Watch this video for the story behind NEXT – it’ll give you a much better story behind the photos you just perused than these humble words …

Well, we’re back up in Sydney for Outpost Project, and today we’ll be covering Secret Wars as well as new stuff on the island since we were here for the opening – Mike Watt vs Shannon Crees! Well also cover some of the “Graffiti Hiphop” event. . Both start at 2pm!

.. So jump in by hitting play below, say hello, and ask us some questions and if there’s anything you’d like to see just let us know!

Theres always time on a Thursday lunchbreak to take a few minutes out and check out some cool assed videos from around Oz and NZ, and thats what the Transmissions are for! Watch on, viewers, as we compile this weeks videos we’ve seen around the traps …

 (image via The Conspiracies of Ha-Ha by Kieran Mangan)

Kieran Mangan has been doing a whole series of comics based on The Conspiracies of Ha-Ha lately, they’re fkn hilarious, and they want to turn it into a book – go and check it out, and donate to this more than worthy cause!! You should also check out this great video of Ha-Ha as he talks about his work, street art in Melbourne … and his theories on several conspiracies … but, seriously, if you haven’t seen the comic yet, you should!

Drypnz has a show coming up on Friday night, and he did this ultra cool preview trailer for it – take a look, its kinda fantastic as hell.

We missed this one a few weeks ago, but we wanted to put it up in light of his upcoming show – Drypnz does some silos. Nice

Michael Pecks show &quot;The Landing&quot; opened last night, and it was simply incredible. This is a really great short feature documentary on the artist and his work – also, check out the first part of our two aprt feature on Mr Peck here.

Just when we think we’ve seen everything that D*Face has been up to, Artygraffarti posts up some fun filled hotel room pasteup adventures from the man – very cool.

Prizm, Ben Frost and Anthony Lister teamed up recently for some tattoo mayhem. Mad!

Ben Frost Ghetto Ink from The Institute of Excellent on Vimeo.

"Acclaim Magazine sat down with Sydney born and bred, Tokyo based, Graphic Artist and co-founder of China Heights gallery Mark Drew to get the lowdown on his hat design for New Era" – he also has a show coming up in December, which we’ll let you know more about soon. Great collab this one!

I think that’s all we have for this week, apologies if we missed anything! You can send links through to any cool videos you may have or that you have seen here.Rockin!

Once again Friends of Leon bring us a gorgeous show from a great artist – Carla Fletcher’s almost illustrative styled paintings are a visual delight, and this Melbourne based artist has had quite a ride over the last few years. With her work featuring prominently in many an art connoisseurs mind, its looking like this show is set to open even more eyes to her work.

After her inclusion in last years Archibald finals, things have only gotten more hectic for the artist – not least of which includes her preparation for her next solo show, Premonition at Sydneys Friends Of Leon Gallery.

“This November, Melbourne artist Carla Fletcher will present her highly anticipated solo show at Friends of Leon Gallery in Sydney. An Archibald Finalist in 2010, Carla Fletcher has been making huge waves in the emerging arts scene since her acclaimed portrait of CW Stoneking received national recognition.

Carla Fletcher’s work is admired in Australia and overseas, some of her fans include Australian Hollywood star Joel Edgerton, singer Dan Sultan and graffiti artist Anthony Lister.

Her latest exhibition Premonition (Fight or flight) follows and delves into the inner world of dreams and premonitions. She has begun a visual dialogue with the unknown.

“In our contemporary life we can still experience the subconscious, the intuitive  along with the ancient traits that bind us as humans.  As symbols, animals and  nature can reflect our humanity – they can represent behaviours or experiences that are common to us all. This collection of works are symbolic for the experiences that are in the forces of nature – Fight or flight, growth, love, desire, freedom and death”

Fletcher has a beautiful and captivating style.  Her painstakingly detailed pencil illustrations combined with layers of liquid pencil, hot coloured spray paint and  burnished graphite makes her latest works visually arresting. Premonition show- cases  her paintings on 8 wooden circles specifically handcrafted for this show
by furniture designer Nick Blackmore.

“Working on wood has allowed for intensive sanding, erasing and burnishing – there is just as much involved in removing the surface as applying it.”

Carla Fletcher will be painting the windows of Friends of Leon Gallery  the week prior to the exhibition.”

Check out an artist who is further emerging into the limelight with this great exhibition at a great gallery!

Who: Carla Fletcher
What: Premonition solo show
Where: Friends of Leon Gallery, 82 Marlborough St, Surry Hills, Sydney, NSW
When: Show opens Thursday 17th November from 6pm til 8pm, and runs til 4th December

Check out  Friends Of Leon for more info.

With a huge range of international talent, Self Est. lands in Sydney this Thursday with a massive feast of art and works from both here at home, and across the seas. Curated by Joseph Allen Shea and Marty Routledge, who hail the event as "Contemporary Art From Outside The Institutions" Self Est. is another feather in the cap for Sydney, showcasing street art, graffiti, illustration, painting and everything in between.

"Self Est is a four day art event exploring contemporary art from alternative backgrounds. This first installment of Self Est (short for Self Established) investigates the study of letterforms and pavement-based education. Self Est presents art created outside the traditional academy that has infiltrated the institution.

These art forms may be self-taught, intuitive or born from marginal activities such as commercial art, graffiti or skateboarding. Taking motivation from these auxiliary artistic pursuits these artists bring unconventional and unique twists to fine art and are being recognised by galleries and institutions."

Look at the lineup of artists below, and tell me you don’t want to be there on every day of this event.

Who: Roid, Dmote, Horfe, Jeff Canham, Ben Barretto, Topsafe & Cameron McAuliffe
What: Self Est. – Contemporary Art From Outside The Institution.
Where: See below for the list of venues on each day of the event.
When: Show runs from Thursday November 17th til Sunday November 20th. See below for full details on whats on when

Thursday 17th, 6pm, Open till 20th Nov
Paintings and installations
by Roid, Horfé & Dmote
kind of — gallery, 72 Oxford St, Darlinghurst

Friday 18th, 6pm, Open till 2nd dec
Paintings and installations
by Jeff Canham & Ben Barretto
Gallery A.S. 53-55 Brisbane st, Surry Hills

Saturday 19th, 12-1.30pm
Conversations: A discussion and Q and A with Self Est. artists and experts on unconventional sources for fine art.
Ben Barretto (AUST) – artist
Jeff Canham (USA) – artist
Fred Forsyth (UK) – director of Topsafe & Crack & Shine
Cameron Macauliffe (AUST) – public art expert
Gallery A.S, 53-55 Brisbane st Surry Hills

Saturday 19th, 4-9pm
Murals by Roid, Horfé, &
sign painting by Jeff Canham
Kippax & Lt Riley st

Check out the Self Est. website, as well as the facebook page for more info.

Here we go with our Outpost photos – we’ve been sorting through them all week looking for nuggets of goodness, and there are a whole heap. After posting up our last one of the iphone photos (that 4s does a nice job, hey?) this is another random assortment – we’ll have some feature sets coming up over the weekend.

Enjoy – we did!

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Having that love in the bones for our ancestral home in the West, seeing great art come out of there is always pretty cool – but couple that with an equally fine selection of artistry from the east coast just completes the awesome factor.

Taking nine artists from the west coast, and nine artists from the east coast, Bryan Dalli and Luke Thomas have forged an intriguing show, East West, which will be opening at National Grid Gallery this coming Friday.

Having seen a couple of the preview images from this show, it really is of the highest calibre, traversing street, illustration, painting stencils and more, it really has something for everyone. Even from the few preview images, there really does seem to be a cohesion amongst the works in the show. Taking those opposite counterpoints, and hand picking the artists by which to balance the theme looks like it has produced a really unique collection of new works.

“East West came to fruition one balmy summer evening in late 2010 when some light drunken banter between two like minded friends, (one from Yallingup, WA, and the other from Narrabeen, NSW), developed into a fully fledged group exhibition of artists from opposite sides of Australia.

Art loving east coaster, Bryan Dalli, and west coast creative all rounder, Luke Thomas, have culminated their artistic networks to curate an exhibition of nine artists from the west coast of Australia, and nine artists from the east coast of Australia.

“Louie and I saw a gap in art show space. There were no stand out events that brought together talent from such polar opposites, we felt the need to set the benchmark and bridge the gap” BD.

The exhibition showcases the assorted talents and artistic techniques of emerging to established artists, normally separated by geography, in a communal space. Each of the 18 artists were hand picked to compliment the groups dynamics, and to bring their own unique style and flavour to the event.

“We set out to select a broad mix of skills and artistic genres, so we pulled together friends and colleagues from different backgrounds and compiled a pretty hard hitting line up. The show has stencils and graffiti, juxtaposed with low brow art, and epic garage pieces.” LT.

There will be a live airbrushing display on the opening night with the final product being sold by silent auction. The 2011 East West event debuts in Sydney (11/11/11), with the show set to start touring coast to coast next year.”

Very nice indeed.

West Coast Artists:
Ian Mutch (Kingbrown), Jen Thomas, Holdfast Tattoo Studios Artists, Phil Smart, Suzi Q, Lauren Fenlon, Ryan Young, Nathan B, Saira Kwol

East Coast Artists:
Caspian De Looze, Bec Crockett, Emily Reid, Laure Ives, Nick Bazarow, Patrick Indo, Rad Dan, Sam Clark, Desmond Sweeney (Live Airbrushing)

What: East West Group Show
Where: The National Grid, 24 Chard Road, Brookvale, Sydney
When: Show opens Friday 11th November, 630pm and runs til December 2nd.

Check out the National Grid Gallery for more info.

Whilst we sit here over the next few days and process the thousands of images and hours of video that we took over the four days we were at Cockatoo Island for the Outpost Project, we have placed a whole bunch of images we took for our live blog in our gallery. Theres lots more here than was posted, and a hell of a lot of great art.

View on for a small snapshot of just some of the artwork imagery we’ll be posting over the next week …

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If you have any sets of images you would like us to add to our Snapshots categories, please feel free to send them in to us.

Welcome to our live blogging from the Outpost Project!

It’s Saturday here on Cockatoo Island, and we’re back for more live posting from Outpost Festival. This weekend we’ll be covering as much as we can here and on other posts, so keep checking all the Outpost Project feeds to keep up on what’s going on. Click through for our live blog, and scroll down to replay the previous days escapades …

Day 4 – Sunday November 6th

Day #3 – Saturday 5th November – LIVE

Day #2 – Friday 4th November

Opening Night Live Blog

The Outpost Project opens tomorrow and amongst all the glitz and art glamour Urban Uprising rises.

Urban Uprising Gallery is hosting a pop up gallery at the festival featuring limited edition prints and works by Meggs, Deb, Justin Fueurring, Heesco Cut Collective, Vexta and the Concrete and Resin Sculptures by Will Coles (pictured below).

“Urban Uprising gallery has Australia’s largest selection of international and Australian street and outsider art. All items will  be on sale and prices are being kept especially LOW for the festival. As mentioned the SPECIAL editions are limited and wont last long.”

Just another integral site to see at the already pumped up festival.

Some of our Invurt cats and cholos have already hit Sydney so now its your turn.

Who: Meggs, Rone, Shannon Crees, Vexta, Deb, Marsha 2026, Laz, Justin Fueurring, Palmer, K-Guy, Heesco, STYLO, Will Coles, Cut Collective and more
What: Urban Uprising Pop Up Gallery
Where: Outpost Project – Cockatoo Island, Sydney
When: Friday 4th November – 10th December 2011

Check the Facebook Page and Website for more info, as well as our Outpost Project Rough Guide and our Outpost feed.