Yesterday I got attacked in Chelsea. Shaq attacked! Shaquille O’Neal, the basketball player, flew to New York to give me and a bunch of other asshole reporters an in-depth tour of the art show he curated at the Flag Gallery. All this despite his injury. Read more »
A long time ago I lived in an old London warehouse with a guy called Steve, who was a questionable character and a cocktail of mental illnesses. Steve and I were both penniless; I worked full-time for a respectable fashion label but got awful pay for incredible PR, sales, and marketing skills, whereas Steve was a bum and deserved to be broke. On the outside of our building, near our front door, was some graffiti: a Banksy rat. The most famous of Banksy’s work, the one in all the coffee table books, the one that drew in hipster tourists every day to photograph it. I liked the rat. It made me smile a little each morning as I left the house. Read more »
Photo by Michele Bressan
We came across Tom Wilson via our friend Gabi from the New York office. Tom and his co-author, Milos Jovanovic, have just released 100 To Watch, a sort of directory of the new wave of Romanian art. They made 1,000 limited-edition copies, and an accompanying website. Chances are that even if you fancy yourself to be pretty ‘up’ on art and all that, then you could still do with learning a bit more about art in Romania. Tom sent us 20 copies of the book, BUT WE’VE NOW GIVEN THEM ALL AWAY TO YOU GUYS, SO DON’T EMAIL US. Read this chat we had with Tom about art, Romania, himself and our ignorance instead. Read more »
You may have heard about this competition we’re doing with Levi’s. It requires everyone being totally artistic, which is very exciting. We’ve had thousands of entries, which is encouraging, but while most of them are at least passable, and some of them are actually quite good, some are big curdled bladders of crap. Like these ones, the crapiest of the crap. Enjoy.
You might remember our friend Wim from funny and irreverent articles about rats with peeing disorders, black kids getting harassed by the French police, and the secrets of ER. For reasons explained in Cunts by Nuts, for Nuts, Wim has been going to therapy for about a year now, the kind where you make pictures and sculptures to deal with emotional crisis and express things that you have a hard time formulating with words. Or something, we’re not sure. Wim’s the expert on this actually, so take it away, Wim.
This is Jasper Joffe. He’s very high here. High on hubris. High on being Jasper Joffe. As if the Britart “me, me, me ” generation hadn’t gone far enough – as if Tracey Emin sketching herself masturbating (how did she hold the pencil steady?) wasn’t onanistic enough to put you off your copy of Art Now – Jasper Joffe has recently also concluded that l’art c’est moi. Read more »
I have a fearful reaction when I hear the phrases “performance art” and “experimental theater.” I’ve spent many a conversation about my school days trying to gloss over my theater background–I don’t want to be outed. Not that I even earned that despicable title of Theater Person while in high school; I spent more time backstage listening to Tool with the techies than preening for my breakthrough appearance as a maid in A Tale of Two Cities. My brief career did, unfortunately, extend beyond school property. I starred as Alice in a community theater production of Through the Looking Glass. I remember pissing off my director when I buzzed off most of my hair immediately after getting cast. But it was one of those experimental productions, so we worked it in–I got to be a post-modern angsty Alice…and I shudder when I remember how in the opening scene they made me talk to a Tamagotchi instead of a kitty. Ah, late-90s technophilia. Read more »
Anthony Gormley’s taken some time off from casting his impressive physique to take over Trafalgar Square’s unoccupied fourth plinth from Monday. I went down to see how the project was faring. Read more »
Our friend and regular Vice contributor, Jiro Bevis, is having a show tomorrow night at Jaguar Shoes on Kingsland Road. We don’t like trying to describe our friends’ work, because it makes us sound like suck ups, so look below for some examples of Jiro’s work and details of the show. Read more »
The other day our friend Jose came into the office holding this business card that he’d found on the tube. At first glance it looked like some exercise in post-modern self-promotion from a bald British artist, but actually it’s much much better than that. The website printed on the back, ThatsMyFace.com, is a place where all your most self-obsessed daydreams can be realised. Ever wondered what you would look like as an old Chinese woman? Every Christmas do you wish you could give your niece a collection of dolls with your face to play with? Or give your mother a shrunken-head amulet of your dead father? How about a beautified version of your lover, mounted on a board as though you shot them in a forest? Here’s the place for that and more. Click through to see their convincing promotional video. Read more »
It’s funny how you don’t think you’re squeamish until someone drops a freshly severed rabbit’s head in front of you and tells you to stick your hand up it and turn its ears inside out. I’ve tried to explain this to people. “What did you expect?” they ask. But knowing what taxidermy is does not prepare you for the reality. I went on this course to research the subject for something, but also because I thought it would be good to wrench myself from my comfort zone for a bit. “Why didn’t you just jump out of a plane like everyone else?” someone asked afterwards. He had a point. On that Saturday morning, looking at a queue of rabbit heads while prodding all the brain from a squirrel’s skull, a 30,000 feet fall seemed a very comfortable idea. Read more »
Brahma, who make that nice beer from Brazil, have teamed up with artichoke to auction off an original Banksy print for 1p. Yes, a print that would usually be about £50,000 could be yours for nearly nothing. The print is currently being housed in a pop-up shop just off Carnaby Street at 3 Newburgh St, W1 so you can go and salivate over its beauty. The auction is only open to one person, so you had better hope you win the draw. Just go here and register, if you win you can always give it to your mum for mothers day!
Racist photography enthusiasts are so difficult to buy presents for. For a start, you don’t want to buy them anything too big, or overtly racist, i.e. flags, banners or posters like these, as they might not want to put them up in their house for everyone to see. So they’ll have to lie to your face and pretend that they have, when in fact all they’ve really done is quickly stuck them up with Blu Tack just before you pop round their house.
Surely there’s a way to ease this pressure? Yes! There is! Thankfully some kind people on eBay have created a ‘Hasselblad gollywog’, in fact, they’ve created ten of them and they all come with their own certificate of authenticity to show that they really are ‘Hasselblad golliwogs’! Classy enough for Carol Thatcher and racist enough for your most bigoted backstreet ethnic cleanser.
Thank god, I’d hate to think that some pervert could just sit in their house creating these humerous little statues without an authentic endorsement from Hasselblad, or the international golliwog foundation…
Does anything say “suave eccentric billionaire on holiday” more than a slightly battered vintage briefcase and a perfectly coordinated leisure/flight suit?
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Being excited about Maiden is a no-brainer, but being excited about people being excited about Maiden is so adorable it makes us want to build-a-bear.
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