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SHOK 1
Art News - Sept 2006
"Heads" Will
Roll ...
The notorious serial iller known as "The HeadHunter" was requested to make a public appearance at Kidrobot's Paintball exhibition in New York recently but was deemed too dangerous to be released from maximum security incarceration. Evidence of his crimes will be appearing at the Kidrobot NY store shortly, along with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Take a look here :
http://shok1.com/headhunter.htm
Viva La Muralists Festival of Street Art 2006. A new festival in Manchester England. A lot is going on so I will just mention the parts that I am involved in.
I'm going to be a guest speaker on the subject of globalisation of street culture along with my friend Olivier Stak from Paris at the big and shiny URBIS Museum. There is a selection of panel discussions with other speakers on various topics running from 2 - 5pm on Sat 30th Sept. Tickets are £5 from the URBIS shop.
I'll be making a street level installation and I think I will be showing some new work inside the museum itself as well.
For more detailed information,
check the blog on their Myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/vivalamuralists
This pilot project is part of Viva La Muralists but I think it's pretty exciting so I thought it deserved a plug of it's own. My longtime colleague Dreph and myself will be presenting the first graffiti character class also at URBIS on Sat 30th Sept, 10am-12pm ... We've got over 40 years of experience between us and many years of teaching so it should be a productive session.
For more info and bookings,
contact Joanna : jo@joannakay.com
I have been getting a lot of mail from people saying they can't get hold of the SHOK 1 "War Head" Dunny figures so I made the standard edition available on my site for people who can't afford the uber-collectible Special Edition.
Check it out here :
http://www.shok1.com/warheadlinks.htm
Also, the brand new 3" SHOK 1 figure for Kidrobot's FatCap
Series 1 is on it's way over to me now. These nozzleheads rattle like spraycans
when you shake them. See it here :
http://www.shok1.com/shok1fatcap.htm
One of the strange coincidences
that my life seems to be full of ... having just thought up the "HeadHunter"
prisoner figure, the next day I was invited to fly over to New York to
make mural installations with young inmates at Riker's Island correctional
facility. I'm long overdue for a return to the Big Apple so ...
I had an image rush last Sunday and drew up designs for more than 50 original toy customisations. These are pretty different from what's out there currently ... Now I am thinking what to do with it all and considering yet another show concept and/or a new site at some point.
I dislike the predominant cuteness in the urban vinyl scene so I found myself making some grimy, some thought-provoking and some outright filthy and controversial designs.
Corrupting superficial cuteness
really appeals to me.
I have an interview appearing on the Razordolls porn site soon. I think you have to be a member to see the interviews but I guess it might be worth it - they have features on some top artists including Ron English, Daze, Mike Giant, Dalek etc plus a lot of tattoo artists and band interviews. They asked me some quality questions like : "Do you think Porn will ever be an accepted art form?"
If you need an excuse to look at naked punk girls then pretending to be arty could be the way to explain it to your lover or mother when you get caught.
This link to the listing of interviews is smut-free apart from a banner with some pert tits at the top :
http://www.razordolls.com/features.php
From Google:
SHOK (Stop Hurting Our
Kids) is an ad-hoc group of parents from all corners of America who are
compelled to speak out to protect innocent children from ...
www.shokbikes.org/ - 21k - Cached -
Similar pages
SHOK 1
Art News - August 2006
I have been planning a two-man show with my talented friend Calma from Brazil before he leaves the UK. Since his work is very Brazilian in style and subject matter and mine tends to be pretty English, that would seem to be the starting point for the theme. Our discussions have been wide-ranging thus far, including Brazilian street voodoo, skinheads, the idea that the English are very polite and pure (?!) and overtly bearded transvestites.
We're looking for the right London gallery ...
I have been working on new works in a variety of media including some drawings on found paper in black and white inks with tea, and some paintings in acrylic. I put a few examples on the site :
I've been getting excellent feedback from the blot paintings I put on the new site. I have committed to reconciling increasingly elaborate messes, and also combining them with some street rubbish collage (translation: "sidewalk trash collage" ?)
I have taken a minute out to study some more Sumi-e books. No doubt the old masters would be horrified by my chaotic inversion of the Zen principal. There is no peace, nature or tranquility represented here, only urban disarray, confusion and grime, and perhaps a desire to make some sense of it all. Unless you count cack-leg pigeons as "nature".
I don't.
I have been invited to make a street installation at Walthamstow Festival in East London this weekend. For more info :
I will also most likely be appearing at Viva La Muralists in Manchester soon. As well as painting, they want me to sit a panel discussion but I think this is probably a bad idea! I will confirm in the next newsletter.
I didn't paint at Lovebox in the end. It wasn't a booking, I should add, so no shirking of duty here. It was way, way too hot and I was way too ill, having drunk a pint of vodka on an empty stomach for some unknown but clearly self-destructive reason. It was concealed in a water bottle - "Special Volvic", I dubbed it to avoid irritating the sponsors, before passing out under a tree. Some strangers gave me jelly babies but they didn't help.
To celebrate reaching 3000 friends on Myspace, apparently now the third highest traffic site on the web, I published the following satirical piece on my blog. Cheers for all the support.
"In 2011, all communication in the world will take place via Myspace. The
human genoform has mutated ... adapted to it's new habitat. The limbs have atrophied,
the vocal chords withered to a thread. We are pale, limbless invertebrates,
approaching pure concept.
Rupert Murdoch has become an immortal god figure, a vast, planet-sized flatulent hairy brain hanging in the immeasurable dayglo nothingness of media space like a suppurating testicle throbbing with lies and half-truths.
We will reproduce digitally, via friends requests. Women will have evolved into nothing but grotesquely inflated a**echeeks with a gaping USB port rammed imbetween.
Googleflops of bad bands swarm around the Murdochoform, absorbing genetically modified opinions like flies around freshly-laid dog s**t ... but there is no more dog s**t. Dogs have become nothing more than a concept - they only exist as a text string in a list of "interests".
In fact, nothing exists anymore. Life has become a low-resolution jpg and you don't belong to you : copyright of your existence, your every thought pattern and consequence, was signed away at the point of your conception. You are just an idea. A bad idea. An unoriginal thought transcribed in plain text format.
We used to dread the Orwellian Nightmare; that was nothing. Welcome to the Tommian Nightmare ...
Someone draw this for me. I can't be a**ed.
SHOK 1"
"The power of Tom compells thee ... The power of Tom compells
thee ..." Since no one has offered to illustrate this wholesome image for
me, I may be forced to do it myself.
I got a message from a fan in Washington DC the other day. She wrote to tell me that she ordered the SHOK 1 "War Head" Dunny figure as a gift for her best friend, and subsequently lied to him that it had been lost in transit so she could keep it for herself. It was on the desk next to her as she was writing to me.
Perfect.
SHOK 1
Art News - July 2006
A new SHOK 1 page is now live, pending launch of the forthcoming sites. It's something more than just a holder page but less than a full site. There are some new bits and pieces on it including a couple of my blot paintings. You can check it out at the usual address -
Apart from the new main site, I am also going to make an archive site which will have piles of work from 1984 to 2000 or so - the period in my career when I was really focussed on graffiti. There will be a lot of previously unpublished art included.
I kept most of my paintings, photos and drawings going back to 1985 ... It's all awaiting some lucky head who enjoys scanning. A lot.
The new webpage includes a link to a page where you can get hold of one of the remaining SHOK 1 "War Head" Dunny Special Edition collectible figures. Or you can click here:
More festival-ness; I *might*
be painting live at the Lovebox Weekender if I have time.
22-23rd July
Victoria Park, E3
London
http://www.volvic.loveboxweekender.com/
Having not been around graff in quite a while, I confess that I didn't do a great deal of painting at Sleeping Giants but instead caught up with many old friends and connected with many new ones.
I got way too engrossed in it all and forgot about the roasting sun and cremated myself; no sympathy is deserved, however, since I have completed failed to learn this simple lesson in 15 years of painting at summer events. My painting hand became burnt enough to swell up like a big porky sausage and I was forced to alleviate the swelling by pouring cold lager on it. Then a lot of straight tequila was needed "for medicinal purposes"... and then there were the Glaswegian nail marks all over me ... a lil' lady Liu with sinister cat eyes named Caution ... LA style beatdowns ... the world's most innocent girl wandering sweetly through a wilderness of vicious Essex girls, broken glass and vomit at 3am ... matching cheap trunk jewellry with graffiti pioneers ... It's all a blur.
Special thanks to Aroe, Catherine and Sri for all their hard work and hospitality. Big ups to LA's finest Revok, Sever and Rime - see you in the City of Angels - Pursue, Casroc, Gyro, and everyone else.
Die Gestalten Verlag - despite the vaguely terrifying name - publish international books so posh that your coffee table is unlikely to be worthy of them (don't get vexed - I dont even own a coffee table. Coffee doesn't last long enough around me to need something to put it on).
Anyway... some of my work will be published in their forthcoming graphic design book Tres Logos. I'll put the release date out on the newsletter when I know it.
What's 20" long and white? A clue: it's not me. Although the rumours continue to circulate.
www.shok1.com/shok1superfat.jpg
So clean .... so white. Customisation imminent.
Quite suddenly, a lot of people have stopped sending me opinions of my work and instead have started telling me they have been "seeing it around for years". It would seem that I am approaching O.G. status after 22 years of this art but I am not sure whether that's "Original Gangsta" or "Old Git". I feel like I am just getting started so damn them all either way.
The Staying Power project is getting uncomfortably apt!
SHOK 1 Art News - June
2006
Welcome to my new style
newsletter. the style is ... Spam Lite.
SHOK 1
New England quarter, Fleet
Street, Brighton and the Lagoon site – Kingsway, Hove, Brighton.
I will also be showing some work at The Art of Hip Hop Exhibition
"An exhibition which explores the history, styles and diversity of hip
hop art in the UK"
3rd - 8th July
Grand Parade Gallery, University of Brighton
10.00am – 5.00pm
free entry
There has been discussion regarding shows in New York, Montreal, Orlando
and Vienna but those aren't confirmed yet.
