Berlin-based artist, Jan Vormann, diverts our architectural attention with his global Dispatchwork series. While shining a light on urban histories he celebrates the spirit of repair through his vibrantly incongruous restorations.
Still in his 20s, his artwork has taken him from cities as varied as Tel Aviv and New York (both above) to countries as diverse as Ecuador and Serbia with sponsors including the Amsterdam Centre for Architecture. Some works seek to merely mend weathered decay while others fill scars left by war, such as in Berlin’s Mitte neighbourhood.
Lego has produced more than 400 billion units since the 1930’s, deriving its name from the Danish phrase to “play well.” Relevantly Jan often employs an inclusive approach – enlisting the help of passers-by and even encouraging others to take up his approach and send him photos of their creations from across the globe. Other times he works alone though admits that this can be demanding as in the case at a South American heritage church where he had to dodge thugs, nuns and security officers.
Jan’s streetscape interruptions playfully direct us to spaces-between, hidden-histories and untold-tales. And fittingly he uses a medium that we associate with unhindered childhood imaginings with which to fill the gaps.
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Earlier this month I spent time in Delhi with my old pal Arti Sandhu, putting up our exhibition Overlap at the Mocha Arthouse. Arti and I have been intersecting across the globe for a decade now – in New Zealand, India, Hong Kong and the US. Sharing a fondness for hand-rendered, vernacular artforms, we conceived the show around our varied perspectives of Indianess – touching on the desi and diasporic, the traditional and typographic alongside explorations of language and locality.
My own work included two series which I designed and had executed by sign-writers in Ahmedabad and exhibited previously at the Glasgow School of Art. The English of India series came from noting that visitors to India are so often surprised by the amount of English one encounters – on the street, peppered through films and even in remote villages. I aimed to capture the localisation of the global spread of English through the flair of local sign-writing.
The second series, Bollywood Soul – A Vernacular Walk of Fame playfully created a set which displays divas and heralds heros of national cinema, employing local portraiture and typographic styles commonly used to decorate rickshaws. I collaborated with a local legend who earns his living painting rickshaw mudflaps from his roadside ’studio’ – and committed his brush to rubber shoe-soles for the project.
Arti grew up in an Army family which meant she covered a lot of ground in India from a young age. A love of drawing and customising her barbie to look more Indian led her study fashion at NIFT in Delhi and later in the UK. Since then she has lectured globally and is currently an assistant professor of Fashion Design in Chicago. Her artworks explore identity and migration and provide insightful perspectives on the eccentricities of the modern and mundane in India and abroad.
On annual visits home to India Arti began to notice the idiosyncratic qualities of everyday life which she had previously taken in her stride. She drew on these observations to create the ‘A’ is for Akshar series in which she re-visits her motherland and language while providing a visual commentary on India through the lens of a migrant.
Exploring cultural baggage and excess baggage, Arti’s Mahila Moments series is inspired by Madhubani folk art. Here she delves into the dilemmas of modern day India, fashion and migration with a love for line, pattern and repetition. Reminiscent of Ganjifa playing cards, the series crosses borders of locality and globalisation in an interplay of what Indian womanhood has come to mean at home and further afield.
Included in the exhibition was a large format poster by New Zealand-based graphic designer and typographer Anton Hart. A few years back he landed up in Bombay on a work sabbatical. Like many before him and many to come, he was smitten. But the touristy tabernacles of Agra and Rajasthan were not what caught his eye. Instead he was enraptured by the truck painters of Bombay and farther afield. His Horn Please typeface and ornaments are a tribute to their flamboyant creativity.
The show Overlap: Intersections of Desi and Diasporic is hosted by the good folk at Box Design & Research and will be up at Delhi’s Mocha Arthouse, DLF Promenade, Vasant Kunj through March, 2010.
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Viva Vernacular
Indian Street Graphics (Flickr)
I first photographed the work of French street artist C215 in Paris in 2007. This week here in Delhi I hit the streets of Karol Bagh to see if I could find any remaining examples of the works he produced in the vicinity late in 2008. It proved to be an ambitious task which led to many alley-way adventures.
Christian Guémy (aka C215: self portrait above in Delhi) resides in Paris where he has developed his distinctive street-art style. Armed with a Masters in Art History from Sorbonne and an arsenal of aerosols plus painting paraphernalia, he hits the streets with persistent zeal. He has taken his skills further afield to Casablanca, Dakar, Jerusalem, Sao Paulo and beyond, alongside gallery showings in Paris and London. He has collaborated with the Norwegian Children at Risk Foundation (CARF) to raise money for their projects in Brazil – where he also visited to give workshops to local youth and make his mark in surrounding favelas.
Back here in Delhi I located a handful of C215’s works which have survived. One old woman in a poor neighbourhood recalls “They brought so much energy to our area with children all crowding round to watch this strange foreign-type painting just for the love of it.”
Guémy gifted some works on paper to various locals plus stencilled t-shirts for young onlookers and boxes for shoe-shine boys. He fondly remembers one shy girl whom he gave a framed work – indeed she was too shy to be photographed by me with the piece but was happy to take it down from it’s proud perch in her tiny home and let me capture it being held by a neighbour. [below left]
Along the way I encountered frequent examples of Indian vernacular flair – from rickshaw decorations to juice stall signs – showing that creativity is alive and well in this crowded corner of Delhi… both local and imported.
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Street Art Gets Behind the Wheel
Visitors to India are frequently enchanted by the spirited decoration of trucks which traverse the nation. We are immediately drawn to the quaintness of English phrases like Horn Please which are commonly emblazoned on the rear of commercial vehicles.
However we often miss the assortment of Hindi phrases – the most common of which reads Mera Bharat Mahan (मेरा भारत महान) meaning My India is Great. This patriotic declaration was popularised by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in his campaigning efforts to evoke a spirit of modernity across the nation. It went on to become a favoured proclamation of Indian cricket fans. The slogan prevalently graces the tailgates of trucks which cross state and cultural boundaries in a diversely painted salute to national pride.
Sometimes the sentiment is translated into English…
And other times things get a bit jumbled…
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Street Art Gets Behind the Wheel
Wellington’s Blow Festival by the College of Creative Arts at Massey University hosted a Type-Walk this week on a blustery evening which lived up to the festival’s name. This didn’t deter the typo-centric amongst us who had turned up in numbers to the guided alphabetic amble. Highlighting the illicit alongside the historic – the walk encompassed character and characters from the Wellington cityscape.
Indicators of transitioning tenancy (above) were singled out on the Edwadian Baroque styled General Officer Commanding Building (1912) on the corner of Taranaki and Buckle Sts. It was originally built at the site of a former Maori settlement and is likely to be the country’s longest standing military administration building.
The Arthur St Boys Institute was built in 1906, in an interpretive Queen Anne style – which originally contained a gym, swimming pool and classrooms. More recently it has housed a printer and a musical institute and was moved 13 meters in 2005 to make way for the Inner City Bypass. It now attracts an abundant collection of street art.
Further down Cuba St was a coincidental sighting of Peaches & Cream set in Cooper Black – which had been referred to the day before in a public lecture by visiting Australian typographer Stephen Banham. He mentioned that he was initially so taken by the vibrant use of the 1920s typeface that he hadn’t realised that the sign (in a micro red-light zone) referred neither to seasonal produce nor dairy products!
Earlier this year Banham had devised his own urban tribute to type – Characters & Spaces: 1 City Block. 17 Stories. The comprehensive and highly successful initiative “takes one city block of Melbourne and peels back layers of graphic design. It tells stories we see in our visual environment, things we may pass every day… ”
Onwards on Cuba St we were directed to Catherine Griffiths typographic sculpture
A E I O U – 5 vowels in steel – launched earlier this year. Stitching together historic and contemporary buildings, the piece was commissioned by the local architects of the Cubana apartments (to the right of the sculpture). Catherine had been a significant driver of this year’s exceptional TypeShed 11 symposium at which I had the privlege of presenting.
On the corner of Cuba and Ghuznee, the former Hallensteins Brothers store was showcased. The founder Bendix Hallenstein had arrived in New Zealand from Germany during the goldrush and set up a menswear factory in Dunedin. This building was one of their 36 national branches, opened in 1920, which now houses Ernesto’s Cafe.
The Type-Walk made notable mention of various sightings of street art including the emerging form of urban or guerilla-knitting / yarn-storming or bombing. Its occasional inclusion of typographic characters and icons was discussed and I returned to the area today to snap this example on Vivian St.
Our typo-active guides were media designer Gerbrand van Melle and graphic artist Sarah Maxey. Gerbrand currently lectures at Massey University – a far cry from his native Dutch shores. He produced almost two decades worth of posters for the renowned Tivoli music venue in Utrecht which are being exhibited later in the week at the Blow Festival event: One Night Out. “Tivoli provided a playground to experiment with typographic and visual language and the opportunity to delve into experimental printing techniques.”
Sarah Maxey’s work has appeared across a range of print media from literary book covers to the New York Times and more recently in her fine stationery range . A fondness for hand-lettering features in both her commercial and exhibited work which often champions the happy accident. Earlier in the week she presented an exquisite selection of work while discussing the notion of Unexpected Outcomes.
Upon winding up the Type-Walk some of us headed down to the Matterhorn off Cuba Mall. I fondly remembered working next door some 20 years back when it was a kitschly Continental cafe which had been set up by Swiss brothers in its modernist building in 1963. (I still reminisce over their other-wordly asparagus rolls) It was later transformed by our good friends into the much-loved dining institution and wine bar that it is today. In keeping with its stylistic evolution, the Matterhorn was given a typographic make-over by my old pal and ever-talented colleague, Simon Endres, who has since ditched us to establish a design studio in New York. The Matterhorn provided us with a fitting spot to raise our glasses – for a celebratory toast to Type.
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Street Art Gets Behind the Wheel
Commanding commuter attention in New Zealand’s capital city is the Go Wellington Graffiti Bus that was launched earlier this year as part of the vibrant Cuba Street Carnival. While graffiti is often viewed through the lens of vandalism, its defenders claim that it creates a sense of belonging and expertise while providing a vehicle for publicly expressing personal, social and political viewpoints.
A chance meeting in a Wellington alley-way brought together the Goethe Institute and Auckland-based aerosol artists Cut Collective. This evolved into a collaboration with German collective Via Grafik resulting in an exhibition and panel discussions at Wellington’s New Dowse gallery and a live event at the carnival during which the bus was given its street-wise makeover.
By showcasing planned, commissioned and intricate works, exhibited urban artforms are placed on a higher plane than vandalism but reference to public space still seems relevant. Carnival organiser Chris Morely-Hall supported the idea that street art be hailed both in and outside the gallery context. Last year’s Street Art show at London’s Tate Modern similarly acknowledged a need to present works by urban artists outdoors rather than merely confine them to gallery interiors.
With urban surfaces becoming increasingly corporatised the bus also raises issues around the dynamics of disruption and motivations for street art.
“We are bound by our own decision-making framework that is based on pretty robust ethical values. We are business owners and ratepayers, so we are respectful of others in that position. By the same token, being contributing members of society in that way, we also feel we have some right of reply within a public space dominated by advertising imagery and messages.”
– Cut Collective member Ross Liew (aka Trust Me) Source: Unlimited
Go Wellington were amazingly cooperative in meeting my request to pull the bus out of circulation so that I could shoot it. While waiting at the expansive Kilbirnie bus depot I came across a driver who had been at the wheel of the bus on a number of occasions. He mentioned that it certainly gets a lot of attention on the street – good, bad and bewildered. Wherever I’ve come across it I’ve noted that while many people smile as they view this creative contrast to the usual corporate bus advertising, others frown at the irreverent path its cuts through Wellington streets. If a key role of art is to pose questions the
Graffiti Bus certainly qualifies – as it drives debate and salutes skills through the city’s main arteries.
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Melbourne Karachi Tram Project [external]
Note: more imagery follows in the Comments Section.
Respect to all mentioned in the article plus Lisa Mönchmeyer from the Goethe Institute, Flox + Component of Cut Collective, Go Wellington’s Siobhan O’Donovan + Darek Koper and my main man and personal bus driver – Alan.
Public space can be a contentious concept. Here’s a selection of global interactions encompassing New York, Palestine and Liberia – all aired out in the open – and thus subject to the court of public opinion.
New York’s lively Public Ad Campaign aims at “expanding curatorial responsibilties in the city”. It seeks to question the commodification of public space via outdoor advertising. This week it co-ordinated the volunteer whitewashing of over 100 illegal street-level billboards between Soho and Chelsea and their subsequent transformation by street artists.
[Via Wooster Collective and the Gothamist. Photo by Ji Lee]
Brings to mind another global activism platform in the public space – Palestinian peace efforts at Send a Message. You pay: Palestinians spray. For €30 you get your message sprayed on the Israeli Palestinian separation wall and 3 digital pictures disptached to you by email. Proceeds go to local NGOs. Check out the Guardian interview with the project’s co-ordinator Faris Asouri.
[Photo by delayed gratification]
And finally on a less activist note but definately in the realm of ‘public’ is Liberia’s Blackboard Blogger. Alfred Sirleaf chalks up daily news on blackboards which are centrally located in the country’s capital city, Monrovia. He co-ordinates news feeds through his mobile phone – and as part of his objective to deliver news to those who can’t afford newspapers, includes symbols and pictures on his boards so as to assist illiterate viewers.
[Via AfriGadget]
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Brilliant to note that the cover of this month’s issue of Creative Review Magazine (UK) was created as a collabration between dynamic Mumbai design house Grandmother and local taxi-transformers Swami Art on a real taxi on Indian soil.
“For any design-aware visitor, Mumbai’s yellow and black taxis, which constitute a major part of the city’s horrendous traffic, are a wondrous sight. The majority are richly decorated with a litany of the driver’s favourite things: like a MySpace page on wheels. The sacred and profane rub along on rear windscreens, wings and bumpers as visual references to gods mingle with film titles, western brand logos and complex geometric patterns. At night, these vivid forms dazzle under street lights and car headlamps. For our April issue, we commissioned our own Mumbai taxi.”
High praise to CR for featuring documentation of the fascinating process of vehicle customisation and for giving credit where credit’s due – to these unsung heros of the megacity’s dense visual texture.
It all brings back fond memories of my own collaboration with Indian graphic-wallahs a few years back which was exhibited at the Glasgow School of Art in 2007. Hollywood has its Walk of Fame which displays its divas and heralds its heros on the pavements of Sunset Boulevard. The exhibition sought to playfully create a Bollywood version employing local portraiture and typographic styles called Bollywood Soul: A Vernacular Walk of Fame.
I collaborated with local legend Bobby Solanki and his brother Ramesh and son Chetan – a talented family team who work on the roadside in the Old City in Ahmedabad and are kept busy six days a week customising rickshaws with flamboyant style that attracts drivers from far reaches of the sprawling city.
You can check out images from my Bollywood Soul exhibition on Flickr or read more about Indian street graphics on my previous post.
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Earlier this year I spoke at the TypeShed 11 symposium here in Wellington, New Zealand which was a great opportunity to catch up with global type-obsessives I already knew and to meet some new ones. Though I always feel a bit out on a limb in such company as I’m no craftsperson when it comes to typography (having a short attention span for form) – but rather like to poke around the socio-cultural manifestations, functions and implications of type and type-making.
I spoke on Indian street graphics, touching on issues such as multiple language, globalised brands and competing technologies alongside the pervasive flamboyance of idiomatic typography in India.
You can download a summary of the presentation entitled Sign-wallahs: Indian Streetscape (2MB) that was published last year by the good folk at Lab Magazine or check some of my Indian street graphics collection on Flickr.
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