The Thousands

BrewDog sponsors The Thousands

vandalog — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:35:51 +0000

As of November 1st, The Thousands has a beer sponsor. BrewDog has come in at the 11th hour to make sure I didn’t have to ask for beer donations at the bar during the opening of The Thousands. I had emailed BrewDog about a week ago and didn’t really expect anything, but they are cool guys and not only responded to my email but wanted to get involved with The Thousands.

So a big thank you to BrewDog for their support. It could have been a pretty boring art opening without them.

New eflyer

vandalog — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:52:22 +0000

I’ve got a new flyer for The Thousands. Pass it on:

Burning Candy Mural

vandalog — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:33:29 +0000

This has been in the works and pretty much confirmed for a while, but I haven’t mentioned it for whatever reason. Burning Candy will be painting a mural outside of the exhibition. I think the Burning Candy crew includes most of the most important street artists currently living and painting in the UK. Their members include Sweet Toof, Tek33, Cyclops, Dscreet, Mighty Mo, Cept, Gold Peg, LL Brainwash and Rowdy.

Burning Candy are known for painting huge collaborative murals, so the space outside of Village Underground is perfect for them. Here’s an old photo of the wall from when Eine painted it:

Photo by unusualimage

The only exhibition where you can buy ice cream

vandalog — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:15:44 +0000

So this is crazy. I’m pretty sure that The Thousands will be the only art exhibition in London next month where you can buy ice cream at the opening. Gold Peg (photo of her street work below) is going to be hosting The Mad Beef Ice Cream Parlour. Only at the opening on November 18th though, so be there or be ice-cream-less…

Updates on The Thousands book

vandalog — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:13:39 +0000

You can now buy The Thousands: Painting Outside, Breaking In from Drago on their website. I’m very excited about this book and how it turned out. There are written contributions from people like Panik ATG, Mike Snelle of Black Rat Press and Elbowtoe. Artists profiled in the book include Banksy, Swoon, Judith Supine and Know Hope. Some of my favorites.

Also, check out the Drago website for the story of how the book came together…

Snags and HARD WORK

vandalog — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:01:58 +0000

Yes there has been a lack of updates on this blog. Not for lack of work, but for lack of interesting things I can announce publicly.

So here’s a quick update. As November 18th approaches, I’m started to get to that point where I start thinking: “Damn. This is real. There are Banksy prints in my house right now that I don’t own because there are going to be on display in November.”

And now that I’m not interning at EMI as I was for most of September (quite fun by the way), I am able to devote my entire day to art things. What am I learning? Organizing an exhibition is hard work and will probably involve less and less sleep as the opening approaches. But I’m working my butt off as much as possible and luckily I have a good support team of volunteers around the world (I’m serious, around the world) who see how important it is for The Thousands to be successful.

Drago will be publishing my book The Thousands: Painting Outside, Breaking In and they’ve put up a little teaser for the cover. I’ve got some great photos and a few contributors I am really proud to have on board like Panik ATG, Elisa Carmichael (Carmichael Gallery) and Mike Snelle (Black Rat Press).

Luckily, I still have time to make it to the occasional art opening, and might even be in Paris this weekend for JR‘s thing.

But not everything can go according to plan. Sometimes that means I’m having people offer to loan me artwork beyond my wildest dreams and that’s fantastic, but other times things not going according to plan means a lot more work for me to do. I’m still looking for a beer or spirit or wine sponsor. Everybody has cut their budgets it seems. Also, I haven’t been able to get all the artwork insured yet (a very serious issue), but that’s on it’s way to happening.

Os Gemeos

vandalog — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:19:37 +0000

I’m very excited to announce that there will be a significant artwork in The Thousands by Os Gemeos. If Bansky is the face of the UK’s street art scene, Os Gemeos are the faces of the Brazilian scene. And as much as artists like Vitche and Zezao excite me, Os Gemeos will probably be the only Brazilian artists represented in The Thousands. Frankly, I don’t think The Thousands would really be complete without something from Os Gemeos. After all, there aren’t many other artists whose murals get reviewed by The New York Times. I can’t post any photos yet, but Os Gemeos’ work is best seen in person anyway, so all the more reason to come to The Thousands on November 18th.

The Thousands, the fable

vandalog — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:22:22 +0000

Daniel Alarcón wrote a fable called The Thousands. It was published in McSweeney’s 28. For those who aren’t readers of random literary journals, McSweeney’s is a literary journal founded by writer Dave Eggers. It’s kind of a quirky literary journal for hipsters, and I mean that in a good way. McSweeney’s is the only literary journal I read.

McSweeney’s 28 arrived at my doorstep, I felt a bit jipped. Instead of a couple hundred pages of literary awesomeness, this issue was made up of 8 tiny books of 16 pages each and full of illustrations. Turns out, it wasn’t really fair of me to say that I expected a certain page count for my money. This issue particular of McSweeney’s is now one of my all time favorites. Why?

Pretty much entirely because of The Thousands (not that the rest of the issue was bad, I just particularly love this story). Alarcón’s fable is about a group that takes over abandoned lands outside of a large city using discarded materials. It’s beautiful and if you can find a copy, you should read it. At first, I was reminded of Swoon’s Swimming Cities project.

Then I had to come up with a name for this exhibition I knew I was curating. A few people suggested that I try to come up with a name like The Young British Artists or Beautiful Losers. I didn’t know it at the time, but it turns out the name Beautiful Losers was also stolen from a book while the curator was in a bit of a panic searching for a title. A friend suggested that I look at books for inspiration. I had The Thousands just sitting on my desk, and after rereading the story, my exhibition’s name was obvious.

So thanks to Daniel Alarcón for writing such an amazing story.

The Thousands on the blogs

vandalog — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 23:57:24 +0000

Been getting some great publicity thanks to a few of my favorite blogs. Thanks to everybody who has been talking about The Thousands.

Here’s a sample:

The book and why Drago Labs rocks

vandalog — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:45:33 +0000

This week I’ve been hard at work on the companion book to The Thousands, to be published by Drago Lab. I probably ought to have more of it done by now, but I’m getting there. Some of it is turning out very cool thanks to a few guest writers who will be contributing sections and the forward will be written by one of my favorite people in the art world, but other bits are a bit confusing and slower moving.

When I met with the guys from Drago in Rome earlier this summer, I’d mentioned the possibility of a book to them, but hadn’t discussed it much. So I brought it up over drinks. I think Paulo, Drago’s founder, was the first person to honestly believe that I was going to be curating The Thousands and that it wasn’t just a pipe dream. Why is that? We were talking about how I knew the show would lose money, and Paulo said something along the lines up “You should film a documentary of the process. That way you can sell that, and if things don’t work out, that film could sell too.” I think he was half joking. Most people just said “Good luck and I’ll see you at the opening.” Paulo was the first guy to say to me: “You know this might be a spectacular failure right?”

Luckily, I knew The Thousands might be a spectacular failure and so far it is isn’t looking like it will be.