Review: The Cans Festival 2008

Following on from successful projects in Paris and Barcelona, the London Cans festival kicked off at the weekend, (Saturday the 3rd of May) following five days of hard graft from an army of some of the worlds leading names in Street Art.

By the Bank holiday Monday, the news had spread like wild-fire, the queues were so big that people were being ferried across the road to another queue, where they were being told that it was approximately 1 ¾ hour wait to get in.. No-one seemed to be fazed by this, even with the scorching sun beating down on the revelling Londoners, in perhaps the hottest day this year. I couldn't help noticing the rich mixture of people in the queue - from Adults, teenagers, kids, babies, even the 70+ made a turnout. The demographic was surprising, It was far more reminiscent of queuing up to see the “Da-Vinci” exhibition in the late 1980's than to get into a dark skanky tunnel to see burnt out cars & graffiti. But in amongst this excitement and anticipation, it dawned on me - Street Art has finally crossed over, and is now appealing to quintessential middle England. Even in a dirty pissy squat of a tunnel [which only a few weeks earlier had been a open plan living quarters for some of Waterloo's more well-to do tramps], its political, subversive, expressive and often comical style drew some of the most unlikely crowds.

One of the reasons I was so excited about it all is because I can't remember when the last time I felt & saw such a buzz about art, not maybe since Andy Warhol's creations the 60's who's original style still get requested for us to produce bespoke artwork, 40 years on. But what exactly have we had to get excited about for the last couple of decades? Sharks cut in half in Formaldehyde, or Unmade beds? I'm not criticising modern art here, after all, the Turner prize last year was officially given for State Britain, an installation featuring all the objects in Brian Haw's anti-war display in Parliament Square since 2001. I just find it refreshing that for the first time, certainly in my life-time, that there is such a huge buzz about looking at good, old fashioned art. We all like art, we love to admire pictures, but there seems to have been a distinct last of it in recent years, now events like the “Cans Festival” have almost regressed back to looking at pre-historic cave drawings on walls. It's funny how things move full circle.

Talking of cave drawings, one of Bansky's new cheeky new installation featured the very same, a representation of a council worker removing some cave paintings. His means of conjuring up thought provoking forms of self-expression through the creation of something beautiful to admire is precisely why thousands of people are queued up outside to try and get into this dark tunnel whilst the sun is out in full effect. The graffiti remover piece really is indicative of our current Governments attitude to art, and not just art, anything beautiful or old really. Get rid of it, bury it, build over it. In Leicester where I currently reside, numerous criminal acts occurred in the concrete 60's they built over a medieval Roman Village, and examples of this kind of “vandalism” can be found in every city in Britain. It's such a shame now that our culture seems to value things not on their aesthetics or quality, but just how cheep it is. Our modern architecture is embarrassing, our streets are littered with corporate graffiti in the forms of ugly, cumbersome Billboards.. It's a refreshing change to see something that has values, meaning and soul, and isn't money or profit related.

Perhaps the boldest and most beautiful act of vandalism to the old walls in the bridge at the Festival came from Alexandre Farto aka “Vhils” His Two enormous Murial's of faces were chipped and chiseled away at to take the layer of white paint off the wall in an increasingly popular “reverse graffiti” style. It formed what can only be described as a sculpture, taking on incredible three dimensional proportions.

Run Don't Walk's installation occupied a large section of the entrance on the left, filled with giant bright pink animals, and contrasted with some great attention to detail on the floor with loads of little toads and pigins.

DOLK's had certainly re-affirmed position with his cheeky "Pope Monroe" and another install on a beautiful textured wall featuring Warhol's banana sitting in a chair.

Other stand out installs were Eelus's (famed for his Star Wars Satire stencils) Piss Funny Audrey being malled by her cat, along with the 'Winged Girls' Stencil, you can see them all with a nice little sequence of photos on his website) One of my old favourites, the New York Collective FAILE collective did an install on a Escort Van using their trademark Barking Dog Logo.

It's great that events like this are happening like this in the UK. It can only be good for the entire art & design industry, as it still feels to me like a resurgence in looking at good quality, highly original art.

May I just also add that we;ve had quite a few people getting their photo's of the Can's festival printed onto canvas already, I might as well point out to everyone that we can provide this service, (in 1-2 working days turnaround) you can visit our Custom pages for more info on how to upload your picture to us.