Looking at Jeff Gillette’s post-apocalyptic paintings of shanty towns and garbage strewn slums juxtaposed with a ruined and decrepit Disneyland kinda makes you think he must have been mighty pissed off he never got to Mickey Mouse’s cartoon theme park when he was a kid. But that ain’t quite how it goes. In fact, it was almost the other way around. Gillette was a college dropout when he volunteered for the Peace Corps and traveled to Nepal in India, where he witnessed great beauty and wonder, alongside a grim world of poverty, exploitation, and slums as far as the eye could see. “No pictures,” one guide told him, but Gillette sneaked off a few snaps.

As a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal for two years, every couple of months I would travel to India and immerse myself in the urban chaos of all the major cities. There I would engage in self-guided tours of the slums, either by taxi, train or foot. I was overwhelmed by those experiences, so much so that I still try to make it there every year. Back then, when you asked a taxi driver to take you to the slums, they would look at you funny. Now there is an industry of slum-tourism.

He eventually returned to the States and set up home in Orange County, home of Disneyland. Looking back at his photographs and rerunning his memories, the two worlds kinda merged. But still, Gillette does freely admit that maybe not getting to Disneyland as a kid threw him off or maybe:

...my own crappy childhood makes me want to tarnish the feigned joy of a pre-pubescent wonderland for others, or tap into the suspect view of others that see the whole system askance, with the Disney corporation being emblematic of society’s attempt to mask over the overwhelming ills. Maybe me seeing so much of the real world of polluted, overpopulated, impoverished cities has made me feel that a place that proclaims itself to be the ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’ is painfully absurd.

When he was in Nepal, Gillette read Schopenhauer which chimed with a belief that world was a miserable wreck ‘cuz it was ruled by irrationality. Tying this in with own thoughts on Buddhism—we’re here to suffer—gave Gillette a small epiphany.

He started painting pictures of landfill landscapes, “Slumscapes,” or what he terms as “Too-Realism”—images of the what the world is really like for millions of people while the rest of us are caught up in our own little private Disneylands.

Born in Michigan in 1959, Gillette has been painting his Slumscapes featuring Disney characters since 1990. His work was the main inspiration for Banksy’s own theme park exhibition Dismaland in 2015. Gillette’s first Slumscape painting featured Calcutta slums with an image of Mickey Mouse screenpainted upside down on top of the canvas. His work is part satire, part comment:

“I iconocolise stuff. I take stuff, pick at it and f**k with it. When I start messing with something, I see it as an homage. The worst dig at someone is to ignore them. If I bring something up — Disney or Dismaland — it’s a form of flattery in some way, otherwise I wouldn’t bother with it.”

See more of Gillette’s work here.
 

 

 
More Disneyland Slumscapes, after the jump…
 

 
Anti-establishment artist Banksy has been taking a beating on the Interwebz this week after the launch of his latest installation, Dismaland.

Some of the most scathing (and hilarious) recent critiques of the artist have come from the Twitter account of writer Demi Adejuyigbe (@electrolemon). Previously responsible for what has been called “the best tweet of all time,” Adejuyigbe eviscerates Banksy’s M.O.

Banksy: Trite, predictable, obvious? This week the Internet seems to think so:

 

 

 
More Banksy critiques, after the jump…

 
You might not know the name Butcher Billy, but if you love and appreciate (as I do) the “Post/Punk New Wave Superfriends” or the “Real life villains in the Legion of Doom,” then you already know the Brazilian artist’s subversively daffy, pop sensibility.

Billy’s latest intervention takes on the most inspired street artist of them all—BANKSY. What Butcher Billy did was to take a bunch of the most iconic Banksy graffiti designs out there and replace the principals with animated characters from the worlds of Disney, Warner Bros., and Hanna Barbera.  So the maid in “Maid in London” gets replaced with Rosie from The Jetsons, while the girl in “Girl With a Balloon” gets the Donald Duck treatment. You get the idea.

Butcher Billy has slapped together a bunch of the designs, which are available as a coloring book that you can order from Behance.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
Banksy’s back, and this time he’s traveled to Gaza to get the world’s attention. Never one to shy from controversy, the artist’s website was recently updated to show 4 new pieces that he spray-painted in bomb-ruined Gaza, along with a tourism-style video purportedly shot by the man himself. The 2-minute short, aimed at making a big statement about the grim situation there, is mockingly titled Make this the year YOU discover a new destination.

Here’s a look at the new stenciled art with descriptions, if given:

 
This one is called “Bomb Damage” and appears to be inspired by Rodin’s famous bronze sculpture, “The Thinker.”

Gaza is often described as ‘the world’s largest open air prison’ because no-one is allowed to enter or leave. But that seems a bit unfair to prisons - they don’t have their electricity and drinking water cut off randomly almost every day.

A local man came up and said ‘Please - what does this mean?’ I explained I wanted to highlight the destruction in Gaza by posting photos on my website – but on the internet people only look at pictures of kittens.

If we wash our hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless we side with the powerful—we don’t remain neutral.

To give you a feel for it, here’s a couple stills from Make this the year YOU discover a new destination:

 

 
You can watch the video in its entirety here:

 
via Juxtapoz

Sick burn, New Yorker!

Recently, British guerrilla artist Banksy has taken up “residency” in New York, meaning his stencils randomly pop up, only to be immediately tagged over by local graffiti artists. And then there’s been a few performance pieces he pulled, like selling his work to unwitting buyers from a streetside stall for $60 (had serious art buyers been in the know, the pieces would have gone for about $31,000). But you know what’s kind of awesome about New York? We really don’t give a shit. Sure, there’s perpetual 24/7 Banksy media coverage, but the average Joe probably gives a Banksy stencil the same attention as he would a bodega mural mourning the death of a local drug dealer.

I’ll admit, it’s almost always nice to see public art. Whether it’s your taste or not, it’s usually better than an empty lot or a crumbling wall. But it seems like the city’s sentiment was summed up nicely in The New Yorker cartoon. There’s something extra stinging about a flippant dismiss from a New Yorker. It’s like having your white grandma inform you that your twerking is sub-par, or being told by a local beat policeman that your Captain Beefheart collection consists of only his “Tragic Band” material.

Take the latest Banksy performance piece, wherein a meat truck of stuffed animals is animated to, I don’t know, show the horrors of factory farming? There’s a presumptuousness to that piece—“Hey, did you know that factory farming is really inhumane?!?” “Why no I didn’t! At least not until I saw that really earnest and heavy-handed social commentary rolling down 8th Avenue!” Plus, I saw a drag queen do something similar (but better) two years ago.

And that shit had glitter.

When so much of your hype stems from your anonymity,  it makes perfect sense that New Yorkers would be largely unimpressed. It’s a city full of anonymous people, so that whole supposedly edgy anonymity novelty just doesn’t move us. You don’t want to be seen? Awesome, ‘cos we don’t have the time to look. There’s dog shit on the sidewalk and bike messengers and taxis to dodge. There’s so, so, so much going on. Why would we pursue a coy “anonymous celebrity,” when we have tons of artists in the minor leagues, desperate to get their real names out there? It was tourists who bought those Banksy originals in Central Park, and I have to wonder, if Banksy revealed his identity, would his fans (and the media) continue to be so enthusiastic about his work?

Perhaps we Banksy-shruggers just don’t “get it”—I never claimed to be cultured. But I really do think that his brand of “spectacle” simply doesn’t translate very well to our fair city. Below, you can see his venture into short film, wherein Syrian rebels shoot down Dumbo the elephant with a rocket launcher, shrieking “Allahu Akbar!”. It’s ironic, it’s political, it’s vague, it’s Banksy. It’s a another brand in a heavily branded city, and we have shit to do.
 

 
 
Has Banksy struck again, in honor of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations?

Sure looks like he might have been the author of this piece depicting Her Majesty as Aladdin Sane—and the painting appeared on Upper Maudlin Street, in Banksy’s hometown of Bristol—but it might actually be by an artist named Incwell.

No one seems to know just yet. Doesn’t matter, it’s amusing whoever painted it.

In case you didn’t get the joke:
 

 
Via Lost at E Minor

 
A new work by Banksy was unveiled today at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Called Cardinal Sin, the work is a bust of a priest with its face sheared-off, and replaced with a square of blank kitchen tiles, creating a pixelated effect. The statue is a response to the child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. In a statement, Banksy said:

“The statue? I guess you could call it a Christmas present. At this time of year it’s easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity - the lies, the corruption, the abuse.

“I’m never sure who deserves to be put on a pedestal or crushed under one.”

Cardinal Sin is a replica of an 18th century bust and is displayed on a pedestal in a room filled with religious artworks from the same century, and has been loaned to the gallery indefinitely.
 

 

 
Via the Juxtapoz
 

Spotted in Soho, New York

Clever. It reminds me a lot of the Tom Hank’s trash can.

(via Wooster Collective)

 
Over the past couple of years, the hyper-ascension of everyone’s favorite street artist has led to all kinds of phenomena, including the mainstreaming of the artform and, yes, its commodification.

In the case of Banksy, the adventure of anonymously creating public pieces is being matched by the similar adventure of swiping and selling them. LA Weekly photographer Ted Soqui’s report on the theft of Banksy’s Caution (after it got tagged) in East L.A. (pictured in sequence L-R above) put me in the mind of Jamaican edge-culture worker Peter Dean Rickards’s 2008 jacking of a larger piece that ol’ Mr. Anonymous tossed onto the outside wall of a Kingston pub. Rickards—who does business as Afflicted Yard—shot the video below, which also documents the amazing dynamics that can happen when a dozen Jamaican men work on the same project.
 

The Afflicted Yard: The Rock from Peter Dean Rickards on Vimeo.

 
After the jump: yes, a documentary about how to steal and sell a Banksy…

 
Finally! And such an ordinary chap.
 

 
This week, Time magazine designates the top 10 guerrilla artists deemed “hip” enough to make it into Time magazine.  Along with the usual suspects —Fairey, Banksy—they do some hat-tipping to lesser known forebears like Xavier Prou, and Simon Rodia, whose Watts Towers have been celebrated by everyone from Charles Mingus to Andy Warhol.

Time Magazine’s Top 10 Guerrilla Artists

Via The World’s Best Ever