Monthly Archives: August 2019

Cash Is King Again

Bob Osbourne and Carrie Reichardt created a stir last year with the book Cash Is King featuring real currency notes abused, defaced and revalued by artists. Not satisfied with one book of defaced cash they have only gone and done it again and published Volume 2 of Cash Is.

Cash Is King, Saatchi Gallery, Bob Osbourne, Carrie Reichardt, money, notes, coins, street art

Antony Lister, Daze in Cash Is King Vol 2

Last year the book launched at the Saatchi Gallery on the Kings Road and a bevvy of artists grabbed copies to vandalise the covers more than they were already. Same thing is going to happen again this Tuesday can you believe.

Money Talks!

As well as copies of this subversive tome, specimens of paper money in frames from many artists are available to be purchased at what may look like attractive prices. Capitalists welcome.

We Fail in Cash Is King Vol 2

Many artists have contributed art and provided explanations that sometimes seen even quite lucid. There are several fascinating essays and even a small section from me mulling over that wobbly intersection between cash and street art, don’t say you haven’t been warned. My fav essay is one by Jonathan Harris who recaps a career of burning money, it includes musings on theories of money, human nature, hallucinations and builds towards an anecdote involving a staged money burning at the entrance to a graveyard in 2016, crowned with the genius gag “Failure now would have grave consequences”.

Arthur Uther Pendragon’s £23 Note

Apart from Bob and Carrie, various other people have winged some form of curation in the exhibition including Olly Walker, Suze Hansen , Martyn Reed, sxselli, Rosie Osbourne and mutoid waste.

Copies of the book can be acquired through the author Bob Osbourne or from Saatchi Gallery.

The framed notes can be viewed at and purchased from the Saatchi website or from the exhibition which is live and open to the public from Wednesday, closes 8^th September. Do try to make it.

One of the Cash Is King dust jackets photographed in Cash Is King 2 is “Mommon” by Peter Dunne, which provides a tenuous in the extreme leap street artist Mammon (as in “wealth regarded as an evil influence or false object of worship and devotion”) who put up three slogans fabricated out of coins late last week, literally turning cash into street art.

DREAM BIGGER by Mammon

HELLO SLAVE by Mammon

SLAVE by Mammon

Links:

Bob Osbourne Instagram

Carrie Reichardt instagram

Olly Walker Instagram

Saatchi Gallery Cash Is King 2 webpage

Street art photos by Dave Stuart

Other images from book, copyright in art as stated in the book.

Tellin’ Stories: Street Art

The lovely people at Speak Media just off Brick Lane have just published a cool feature about street art story telling featuring Shoreditch Street Art Tours founder and chief guide Dave.

It’s a lovely little piece, the photos look stunning and we hope that we won’t be around in 1000 years to see if our prediction for future story telling is accurate.

Just for fun, here are a couple of bonus photos of two moments related in the Speak Media feature;

Alex Patterson from The Orb, rocking the Pure Evil Gallery basement, 2012

Bankers grieve at the K-Guy Boom Economy Memorial, October 2008

Check out the Speak Media piece here.

Links:

Speak Media homepage

Pure Evil gallery website

K-Guy website

Beer! Art! Street Art!

Ever wondered if Chicago is anything like Shoreditch? Ever wondered what a craft 5. 9% IPA might taste like? Thanks to a very unusual mural and beer promotion fusion, you can now investigate both of these (terms and conditions and chance apply!).

Street Art tour, Shoreditch Street Art Tour, Street Art Guide, Goose Island Brewpub, Graffiti Life, Free Beer

Shoreditch Street Art Tour Guests possibly being persuaded to have a beer

To get a free pint of Goose Island beer and possibly win a trip to Chicago, you just have to check out the mural on Ebor Street in Shoreditch where Goose Island have come up with a pretty novel promotional wheeze. A commissioned mural has been covered with 2500 cans, they giving away 50 cans day for three days. You take the can down to The Goose Island Brewpub on Shoreditch High Street just a couple of hundred yards away where you exchange the can for a free pint of lager AND you are entered into a draw to win a flight to Chicago.

Goose: pick a can, any can..

The mural has been executed by the guys at Graffiti Life, known for applying their graffiti skills to painting commercial murals – skills pay bills. The Graffiti Life guys have awesome skills but in general we don’t gush over adverts on walls where art should be,it is rarely a stop for the tour. However, this one has novelty and – come on, it’s a free pint of beer!

Got one

Reckon this one has “Chicago or bust” written all over it?”

Now we have seen cans in street art before, notably the brilliant art of Jakuna Melata who came over from Barcelona last summer.

Jakuna Melata, Soho, 2018

We have also seen spray cans painted by artists and left as a piece of free art.

Savant, May 2017

This wall though really is quite novel. Apparently the team is going to be there one more day, Sunday which at the time of writing is tomorrow, They’ll be there for about two hours or until the day’s allocation of 50 cans has been given away. We don’t know which two hours though, so you’re going to have to take pot luck.

Do say “Same again, thank you very much”

(yes yes ok, I did have one of their free beers but other than that there is no association with any other organisation mentioned in this post)

Links:

Graffiti Life instagram

Goose Island Brewpub website

Chicago website

Photographer: Dave Stuart