StreetArtLocator

12th November 2009, Rebecca Laing

Next week sees the opening of The Thousands, London’s latest pop-up art exhibition. Curated by 18 year-old RJ Rushmore it brings together some of street art’s biggest names for a fleeting five day visit. We had a chat with him about the show, his age and why he thinks Mr Brainwash is over-rated.

So what makes this exhibition different to any of the others cropping up across the country at the moment? Maybe it’s the unconventional ethos; most of the artwork on display is not for sale as the aim of the event isn’t to sell the work, it’s to publicise it and raise awareness of the talent to be found within the street art scene. Or perhaps it’s the fact that the curator is a mere 18 years-old. One thing’s for sure, with some of the most formidable names in the business (Banksy, Faile, Nick Walker, Shepard Fairey and Blek Le Rat to name a few) involved, The Thousands is certainly pricking up the ears of those in the know.

We caught up with curator RJ during a break in his busy schedule.

A street art exhibition curated and organised by myself. It’s also a book launch for my book ‘The Thousands: Painting Outside, Breaking In.’ The exhibition came first, but doing a book just seemed like a logical extension of the project.

The show is about bringing together some of the world’s best street art by some of the world’s best artists. Because most of the work is on loan from private collections, I don’t have to worry about trying to sell out the show, and I have access to great art that people truly love and want to show off, not the pieces that they want to discard from their collections in order to buy better work or a new car.

Some of the artists, like Armsrock and Chris Stain, helped me decide what to include in the exhibition, but other artists told me to go ahead and do whatever I wanted and let them know how it all turns out. Most of the work comes from private collections, but there will be a few brand new pieces.

The most involved artists have been Burning Candy (BC). All nine members of BC are helping to paint a huge mural on the outside wall of the show, and just about everybody in the crew has also decided to put painting inside as well.

My dad started collecting street art and we became interested in it together. I enjoyed going to openings and being able to discover new pieces of art just by taking a wrong turn down a dark alleyway, so I did everything I could to meet people and get more involved with the scene. Blogging seemed like the natural thing to do because I was already spending hours each day reading about street art online, and I’m a computer geek at heart (RJ runs Vandalog, a successful street art blog).

I think at this point I’m expected to make up some PR-friendly story, but frankly I’m in a fortunate position financially and wanted to do something cool. So in that sense, I could find the money to put on an exhibition and that’s the first step sorted.

Of course, even with the funding, organising an exhibition of this magnitude isn’t a simple matter, and I thought that it would be made much more challenging by my age. But most people have embraced it and it’s become an advantage. There are some collectors involved who don’t often loan work to exhibitions. You might think that they would be less inclined to loan their prized artwork to a teenager, but as it turns out, I think my age has made people more excited to be involved.

For the artists who are directly involved I imagine it has been a bit weird taking orders from somebody the same age as their child (I definitely find it weird), but so far it’s worked out fine.

I probably could have gotten in touch with a spray paint company and sorted out some amazing artists to fly out to London and paint the outside wall of The Thousands for free, but instead I’ve decided to stay local and buy all the paint for BC to paint the wall. BC are the forerunners of the London street art scene for their great characters, ability to hit the best walls and collaborative style.

Internationally, Blu, Know Hope and Roa are all rising stars. Know Hope is probably the artist whose work most consistently moves me. I’m pretty sure that if I filled a room with his artwork, I would burst into tears every time I stepped through the doorway. Roa is a Belgian artist who paints these amazing black and white animals. He recently visited London, so if you spot a giant animal spray-painted on or near Brick Lane, that’s Roa. And Blu is one of the most underrated street artists. Almost anyone who sees his massive street pieces think will that his surreal drawings are genius, and his animations like Muto and Combo are internet sensations, but because Blu doesn’t do much commercial work for galleries, he doesn’t have anybody fighting to make his name huge.

My political answer is Banksy. Don’t get me wrong, Banksy may be the greatest artist of the 21st century, but he’s also the only street artist that anybody knows. Any graffiti writer or street artist will tell you that people come up to them on a regular basis to ask if they are Banksy.

My less political answer (though still probably not very controversial) is Mr.Brainwash (MBW). He’s absolute rubbish and I’m tempted to picket outside his upcoming London solo show so that people don’t forget it! He managed to get a bunch of celebrities to his solo show in LA and sold everything on the basis of the hype surrounding him. He even “designed” Madonna’s most recent album cover. Everything MBW tries to sell as art is epically clichéd and of poor quality. Nobody should want these things on their wall, and yet Carson Daily called him the most recognizable street artist in the world. At first, some people thought this had something to do with Banksy; either MBW was Banksy trying to make it as an artist again from the ground up, or MBW was a false persona created by Banksy to play a massive joke on the art world about how hype can make anything popular, no matter how terrible it is, but now it’s pretty clear that MBW is a real person who thinks he is an artist.

I have no idea. More street art things I hope. I may curate another, much smaller and more commercial, exhibition before heading to Philadelphia next fall for university. At some point, I would like to bring a version of The Thousands into a museum.