TrustoCorp

TrustoCorp is a collective that takes parody seriously. They source out locations and augment them with their spoofs of advertising, signage and pop culture references. Their most recent stunt planted altered issues of popular celebrity magazines with headlines like 'Donald Trump Pregnant' along with graphic novel type illustrations in great monochrome color palettes. Their ad spoof stuff has a similar graphic language to that of ESPO aka Steve Powers in that it has a 50s graphic simplicity to it, though most of it is black and white.

Check it out here.

Prefab77

Prefab77 is a collective of artists from Northeast England. They take imagery from popular culture like fashion, fame, politics and history and collage it together in inspired and contrasting ways. Most of their work is about breaking down British culture and doing away with the old ways. They just did a great installation for Dublin Contemporary 2011 that uses type contrasted with fashion imagery in a really beautiful yet stark way.

Check it out here.

Alexandre Farto aka Vhils

Besides having an awesome name, Alexandre aka Vhils has an awesome style too. He has pioneered deconstructive stenciling. He covers a wall with plaster, or maybe it was already there. Then stencils on his design and goes to town on it with a hammer drill. Removing layers of plaster rather than adding layers of paint. He draws the figures out of the wall in a truly ghostly way.

Check it out here.

Noma Bar

Noma Bar is an Israeli illustrator who focuses on using negative space as a positive thing. He develops images that create a play between the negative and positive space that are both insightful and humorous.
His latest project is a giant plastic dye cutting dog sculpture that allows the user to create their own neg/pos images and artworks.

Check it out here.

Lloyd Schermer

Lloyd started his career in newspaper publishing and so he spent the majority of his time surrounded by block type. Wood metal or otherwise, he always thought it had a peculiar beauty so when he left the business he hung on to a larger personal collection of the stuff as well as picking up any and all type he could find. Eventually he got the idea to put these large block letters together in artful compositions and hang them on the wall. His idea caught the eye of galleries and collectors and so here he is today. With work in the Smithsonian, The Newseum and many publishers boardrooms. It's pretty awesome looking work.

Check it out here.

Missum, Works on Paper Show, Brighton, UK - October 21st - Check it out.

I recently featured the work of Miss Bugs on here and saw that the Miss, in MB, has a show coming up in Brighton opening on October 21st. So if you happen to be in the jolly ol' UK around then, go out of your way and swing by the show it aims to be a great body of work.
Works on Paper by Missum opens at Ink_d Gallery, Brighton on Friday 21st October – www.ink-d.co.uk


Me Alone

If I Was A Cat

In anticipation of the show, I sent Ms Missum a few questions about her work and the new direction it's taking. Enjoy.

Where did the name Missum come from?
Nickname really – I get called a lot of thing by Bugs; Miss, Missy, Missum and some I won’t repeat!

You seem to focus a lot on cats, did dogs do something to offend you?
Cats were last year, its dogs for me at the moment! I love all animals, cats and dogs. In the work I look at the emotions we give animals and what we take from them.

When a lot of other street artists are coming out from behind their curtains to work under their real names, why do you choose to stay anonymous?
It allows both of us to work on other projects under different names, or for that matter, our real names and one doesn’t then cloud the other. There is a connection between Missum and Miss Bugs and when I started this body of work we could see that certain elements were coming from the same thought process. However other work that Bugs has done under his real name comes from a very different place and as such and exists separately.

In short, I suppose staying anonymous gives us more freedom to explore different things.

Are the artists and culture icons you appropriate from in your work influences or enemies and why?
I wouldn’t say I use cultural icons in my solo Missum work… In the Miss Bugs pieces we are constantly stealing from other artists. But it’s not down to ‘influences or enemies’. The reasoning behind it is to explore ownership of ideas, working styles and the relationship and knock-on effect that artists have with one another.

You sometimes have to look harder for the artistic references in our work while others can be staring you in the face. Even then they can sometimes still go unnoticed as they are being seen out of context. We are playing with ideas of how we view art and how much of the thought process behind it we understand.

We look at links between the artists and their working methods throughout history. Artists that would not normally be considered to sit alongside each other are then remixed together, showing, for example, how the working style of Keith Haring can gel together with Picasso. And how artists from very different periods in time and culture are using very similar approaches, often where you wouldn't expect to see it.

When did you first start doing graffiti?
I wouldn’t say I was a graffiti chick, B-girl or any think like that. I didn’t take much notice of street art until I worked as part of Miss Bugs and then it felt right for the work to be part of our environment. My solo work as Missum wouldn’t ever appear on the street, it’s not really about that, it’s born out of me staying at home with my sketch book.

Have you ever been arrested doing graffiti and if so, were the cops surprised that you were a girl?
Yeah, we have been stopped pasting up in the middle of the day. I’m not sure if they were surprised that I was a girl, they seemed to be more surprised that we hadn’t get our story straight between ourselves before opening our mouths!

How long have you been working on this new body of solo work? Any good stories of challenges you overcame in its production?
I’ve been working on it on and off, in-between the Miss Bugs work, for a while now. There is no dramatic story really, etching is a very slow quiet process. Working on my own, the highlight of the day can be when Ian the sandwich guy pops in with his array of treats!

Why Ink_D gallery?
It a lovely intimate gallery, right by the sea, and perfect for this body of work.

In a past interview you said that Bugs was “the creative force behind the work”, is this solo show your way of proving you’ve come into your own and are a creative force of your own now?
Ha, did I say that? I was probably trying to get on his good side! I can get him to do anything I want with those sort of compliments … I don’t really want to be a ‘force’ with Missum, it’s more about creating an artistic space where I can play with new ideas and work with new processes.

Whose work are you loving right now?
Peter Doig

Do you want to give a shout out to an artist you think needs more respect or deserves more attention?
Bugs recently sent me a link of Matt Stuart’s photography, it’s definitely worth spending some time checking him out.

Did you send Kate and William a painting for their wedding?
No, I’m afraid not!

Works on Paper by Missum opens at Ink_d Gallery, Brighton on Friday 21st October – www.ink-d.co.uk

Anna Garforth

The world of hobby typographers and weekend typophiles is starting to get a little overcrowded these days. That doesn't mean there's any dilution of talent out there though. Anna is an English artist and designer that takes type play to many places it's never been before. Most recently noted for her baked Edible Poster, she also works in moss, tape and trash creating type delights that cross borders.

Check it out here.

Susan Jane Belton

Susan is a Boston area artist who focused on landscapes for most of her career, but on and off painted the coffee cups she had at the studio as an exercise. Then after 9/11 she started thinking about our United Gluttony and saw these cups as a symbol of our ability to imbibe without worry. Since then it's turned into a seriously large body of work.

Check it out here.

Pam et Jenny

Pam et Jenny is French for Pam and Jenny. That's all the French I know. They list themselves as designers, but one of their series caught my eye as a real work of art. Their Scam* project looks so freakin' cool. I remember playing with this technique in school, but they've taken it to a whole new level. Dragging copies over a scanner as it scans deconstructs the images and causes an RGB noise that plays really well off the grainy black and white images. Most of their source material are images from text books of old paintings, but they also toss in some 60s looking images of people dressed like Warhol and what looks like Lou Reed, though they are somewhat abstracted. The format is cool too, long and narrow so they hang to the floor and roll out into the path of the viewer.

Check them out here.

Christopher Gideon

Christopher Gideon was born in middle America and his work takes influences of his surroundings. Crosses, billboards and baseball are all themes that show up in his art. His most recent series "America's Pastime" is created entirely out of vintage baseball cards. Not the amazing ones from cigarette packs from the 30s, but mid 70s and 80s afros and burnt sienna uniforms. He butchers the cards and then pastes them back together in patterns or weaves them together to reform the original image. They are harmonious and disjointed at the same time. They actually communicate a great deal of action in many of them. If nothing else, they are a super original medium to work in and he's done a great job with them.

Check them out here.