Ektopia

I really love C100’s last book, The Art Of Rebellion, I think that came through in my review a while back. Although I was aware that the book had been out for a while it was with total surprise that I read that The Art Of Rebellion 2 (published by Stylefile) was about to hit the shelves (I must have had my head buried in the sand for since the last book). However, when I saw that it was being published in a larger, hard cover form it was clear that it was the only way to take this project to higher places…and it has.

So, what can I tell you about this book. Well this book feels like the original…on steroids! I’m not just talking about size and weight (although it is a much grander book than the original) but more about how much better and more cohesive than the first. The first book kind of played as a catalogue of artists’ profiles with individual pages dedicated to artists and completed Q&A cards. The absence of these Q&A cards makes the book much more more enjoyable on a different level; you feel more welcome to peruse the book from cover to cover or randomly selected pages.

The book cracks open with a selection of chapters dedicated to some of the great street art cities. These include the usual suspects such as Amsterdam, London, NYC, Milan, Stockholm, Rio De Janeiro. Each spread hosts a collection of artistic highlights from each region before a small chapters related to a few specific projects. These include the amazing Backjumps project in Berlin and some incredible invisible graffiti created with UV paint and much more.

This leads on to the artists profiles. This time we’re treated to a whole lot more of each artist’s work over 120 pages. If you follow the whole street art scene there’ll be lots of artists that you’ll know about with loads of great photos of their recent projects. Many of the most popular artists are included, such as D*Face, Matt Sewell, Adam Neate, Dan Witz, Miss Van, Thundercut, Faile, Jon Bergerman, C100, Nuria, El Tono, Kid Acne etc. etc. However, these books are always about discovery for me and there are some cracking artists that I either hadn’t heard of or who I hadn’t seem much work from. There’s a French artist that goes by the name G*. Heard of him? I hadn’t. His double page spread is taken up by a huge pasted up photo of a parked van. The van has then been tagged all over as has the wall behind it. The actual image in the book shows a woman looking at the van as she walks past. I don’t know if it’s the placement on the page or the viewpoint that the photo was taken from but it took me ages to work out what was going on. I thought the tagged van was for real…even though it was a black and white paste up! Very dynamic and cleverly executed. Another artist that deserves the extra mention is Elpussycat. His work is all light based as he paints with a torch with long exposure photographs. Whether it’s a snail crossing the road or a skater on a night time quarter-pipe it’s all pretty amazing. Klisterpete’s camouflaged birdhouses are also pretty amazing. Although I had seen a couple of his pieces on the internet before it was extra special to see a whole collection of them all in one place. Anyways, there are too many artists to mention and doing so would only ruin the fun for you if/when you get the book yourself.

The last section deals with some of the great exhibitions that have taken place since the last book. These include the Outside Institutes’s excellent A Few Of Our Favourite Fiends, Finders Keepers, Vinyl Killers, last years Secret Santa Swap, WK’s DPMHI show and many more. It’s a great way to catch up on what amazing stuff you’ve missed out on…grrrr! So, in summery: Like the first but bigger, better and classier. If you’ve got the first and like it you’ll love this and if you haven’t then you should get them both! Stylefile are hosting a PDF preview of the book to so it you want to get a real taste for the quality you can try before you buy. The Art Of Rebellion 2 weighs in at 208 pages and is 280cm x 240cm hard cover edition. Got your copy direct from Stylefile of from all the usual places including AmazonUK.