It’s all going off in South Yorks. Off the back of Kid Acne’s and DJ Slick Dixxx’s South Yorks Vol 1, a release bathed in true steel city heritage and aiming to highlight the ‘missing link between Tupac and Sheffield’, fellow Sheffield-ite Toddla T boils it right down to a powerful molten mixture with his own version. Head over to Lex to grab the aural goodness.

While on the subject, take a peak at Kid Acne’s artistic documentation on violent girl gangs in South America with his new publication Stabby Women.

Finally and shamelessly for more Kid Acne and Toddla T action why not check out our interviews with them in issue 02 and issue 03 respectively.

The work of UK street-artist Cept always brings a smile to the face. Often appropriating familiar images of superheros and adopting a pop-art style, his piece of street work that samples the lyrics to Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart has just been released as a print entitled Again and Again (OG image right, print left). OMG as one of Litchenstein’s characters would undoubtedly have exclaimed.

Polish artist M-City’s work is currently being shown at the Carmichael Gallery. Wielding a spray can, scalpel and cardboard, M-City’s work is, like Logan Hicks’ output, about the method; the images are built up from complex, overlayed stencils that reveal images built within images. For his visuals think Sim City meets Lego meets a frustrated town planner with a spraycan. Recurring themes include ballooning tower-blocks and industrial cities painted on to walls and exude an energy fit for an urban space. 

Running between July 10 – August 7, 2010, the show includes new canvases, a site-specific gallery installation and outdoor mural project. 

Italian street-art general Blu has released another one of his jaw-dropping wall-painted animation videos. Entitled Big Bang Big Boom, it’s Blu’s take on evolution and it’s consequences. Take five and soak in some next level visual dopeness.

Tuesday night saw a small section of West London’s Portobello Road awash with the sound of splitting skinny jeans and squeaky air bubbles, as the hipsters and rudeboys of London’s ever-growing street-art scene descended upon Graffik for a three day exhibition, featuring five NYC writers, currently plying their trade by defacing (hey, that’s the point, remember?) MTA maps with their favourite throw-ups, dubs, characters, and tags.

Graffik, having opened its doors to the public in August 2009, has been pushing the latest art-crack to trendy West Londoners and tourists alike, by offering affordable art to the discerning urban nerd, for the best part of a year, and to celebrate the NYC Subway Battles event, threw an invitation-only party at Acklam Road’s former Subterranea, now known as Supperclub.

The night was a packed affair, with young and old street-heads alike – Bonafide even got talking to an 11 year-old young buck, posca in hand, ready for some damage – squeezing through the narrow corridors and stairways of the tiny gallery, supping on sponsored beer, set to a backdrop of classic hip-hop and the rattle of paint cans. One of NYC’s finest up, Meres, was dropping some live ish in the back yard, while punters and admirers were free to browse the artwork for sale – a series of paper subway maps used as a canvas for colorful characters harking to a bygone era.

With the new-and-improved London Overground shuttling potential whole-cars past on an elevated track, you could be forgiven for thinking that the show was indeed popping off somewhere in The Big Apple, but the surrounding pubs heaving with World Cup watching soccer fans reminded us that we were in fact still within the M25, and that it’s football, not soccer, but what the hey, it was a nice vibe free from the cultural prejudices that such events can often fall foul of.

Alongside the writing on the walls, the night was also aimed at promoting the launch of a new line of fairly garish graffiti-ridden garms, soon to be available at Footlocker under the witty moniker Sprayground. The line features caps, tees, and other aerosol art-related apparel adorned with airbrushed throw-ups and dubs, all evoking the New York writer’s bench. The focus, however, definitely rested on the paper and pen efforts, of which there were some 50 or so hanging on the interior walls.

Some of the pieces were amazing, and there is no doubt that the link between trainspotter and train-writer is made more apparent by the common admiration of a well presented subway map. Aesthetically, the names of fifty-whatever-street station at the corner of this-and-that street, peeping out from behind a mini-burner help to beautifully compound the undeniable history that lies beneath today’s street-art movement, namely that graff as we know it now, originated on the tracks of New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority.

The pieces, all one-of-one, were all available for purchase, most priced at a rather unaffordable £300 and up, though there were plenty of empty picture-hooks at the end of this, the buyers preview night. The show continues through Friday, and there remains a lot of eye-catching material on offer separate from the exhibition, making Graffik still worth worth a peep.

Not so, unfortunately, for Supperclub, who came off as toys for their wildly overpriced drinks at the after-party, though this didn’t seem to perturb the majority of heads, being as there were still plenty of hips shaking by the time we headed home to the Bonafide bed. Whether Style Wars heroes and all-round OG New York kings Dondi, Kase2, and Mare would have approved the £10 rum and cokes is a matter beyond debate.

WORDS & PICTURES BY JOHN WHYBROW

Caught looks like a sumptiuous slice of contemporary illustration, graff and audio visual goodness and promises to be something special for the Leeds art scene.

Stemming from the BestJoinedUp nights, Caught brings together the likes of Will Barras, The Pern, Replete, Inkie, Sri McKinnon, Drew Millward and Phlegm and will uncover some of the treasures retrived during the BestJoinedUp sessions and also unveil some brand-new-it’s-still wet work.

Caught will run from the 21st May to the 7th June. Check the site for the skinny.

We’ve mentioned the work of artist Ericailcane (Eric the Dog) a few times. Having witnessed his handywork first hand, we can safely say that, in terms of ideas and execution, there are not many better artists roaming the streets. It’s great news that his new website has been launched. Take five minutes to get to know the characters of Funny Games (see above) and their friends, all of whom populate a darkly funny world. Beatrix Potter this aint.

Kicks and Canvas is a new exhibition by Soleheaven and Zero Cool Gallery, and features 21 artists customizing 21 pairs of kicks and 21 canvases. Running until 18th the artistic talent involved includes Goldie, Insa and Mr Jago and representing Leeds Jon Lawrence. Jon provided visuals for issue 03 of Bonafide and his sculptural work puts a new twist on iconic hip-hop products. In other words, it’s proper boxfresh art.

Finally got round to seeing Exit Through The Gift Shop and it lived up to its billing.

Floating around three central characters; video addict/artist Thierry Guetta, an LA-based Frenchman who moves from being behind a shop counter to being (permanently) behind a camera before becoming Mr Brainwash (MBW); Banksy and Shepard Fairey. The film begins describing how Guetta picks up a camera and ends up documenting the street-art scene and how that leads to him building a rapport with Bansky and finally the launch of his artistic career (sic.) as MBW.

Kind of like Hustle but stripped back with a Who’s Been Framed DIY quality, the magic of this film is that those who have made it are experts in the dark arts of deception and myth making.

You leave the film, entertained but full of questions. Is MBW, with his appropriation of familiar/tired pop culture signifiers, the logical conclusion for street art? Possibly.

Is it an essay on how empty modern art is and a way of demonstrating that if the art establishment catches a whiff of hype and excitement then it can almost force feed people to suggest that (in this case Guetta’s) show has artistic credibility and vision? I’d hazard a guess, yes. Indeed the shot of a deadpan Shepard Fairey as he responds to the gawd-awful art he is seeing at the MBW exhibition is cinematic gold.

Is the film, as the opening credits highlight, a demonstration that those in the street-art game have a genuine motivation for their art and enjoy taking risks and retain a healthy prankster mentality? Most definitely.

This film isn’t what you expect and is hugely beguiling. Two ink stained thumbs up!