Zombies and Psychos

For the last two months I’ve been reading ‘American Psycho‘ by Brett Easton Ellis. It doesn’t usually take me this long to get through a book but I tend to have to stop for a while every time the character takes another girl home, slices up her sexual organs, chainsaws her in half and has sex with her entrails. I’m a bit of a wuss that way. In between those scenes, the book is fantastic – the character of Bateman is hugely compelling and the world Ellis has created is both alien and familiar, attractive and repulsive. In the morally ambiguous, superficial and self-centred society Bateman inhabits, it’s no wonder he acts the way he does.

But, when I started reading it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it all felt very familiar; as if I had read it before even though I knew I hadn’t. It wasn’t until maybe 60 pages in that I realised that Paul Howard had lifted the style of the book and applied it to Ross O’Carroll-Kelly. It made perfect sense: both worlds share that shallow, label-obsessed materialism. But for the next 50 pages, I couldn’t shake the image of Bateman just being Ross in a suit and living in late-80’s New York. Very distracting.

HWCH #3 – Dublin

I just know I’m going to come off as a wide-eyed culchie from the shticks to all you jaded Dublin-types when I write this piece, but it doesn’t matter.

Haven’t You Heard, Kids? Vandalism Is Cool!

For most people, when they’re in a new city, they wander around staring at the buildings, the people, the shops and the scenery. I do that too. But I’m also scanning the walls and lamposts and bins for any sign of street art. Walking around a city with me can be a slow experience as I insist on stopping every couple of feet to photograph a stencil or sticker I find cool/quirky/aesthetically pleasing. I’m pretty sure it can be annoying, but I don’t take any notice because I get pretty absorbed in it.

Luckily, I’m not alone in this. One of my best friends, LeftMyName , shares this love of street art with me. Now, LeftMyName claims he told me a while back that he had set up a blog of his photos of street art which I don’t remember at all. But he showed it to me last week and I have to say I love it. Now, there may be an element of bias in there, I’ll admit, but I love the stuff he’s put up. Some of them are actually photos I’ve taken and I’ll be sending more on to him soon, but I think it shows some really nice pieces of street art from Cork and beyond.

So go, have a look, be impressed.

leftmyname.blgospot.com

“Well…the tourists are gonna get an eye-full!”

(WARNING - This is a rather long post. But it needs to be, so toughen up!)

(That’s me there. No, to the left of her. Bit further. Yeah, there I am!)

Well…that was certainly the most bizarre experience of my life. Though quite which part of the whole experience was the most bizarre is something I haven’t figured out yet. Being naked in a field with 1100 other naked people – everyone bent over double, desperately not wanting to look up for fear of what we might see in front of us – was definitely weird. Seeing it talked about all day today in the media, aware that I am one of those naked people they’re showing on the news bulletins is also very very strange. Seeing Ray D’Arcy naked – a man who played such an important role in my television viewing youth – is also immensely odd.

I arrived at Blarney Castle with my bravest friends – Mike, Jamie and Niamh – at 3am. There were protesters at the gates. But when we got closer, we realised they were a bunch of lads, dressed as priests. Their placards bore the immortal words: “Down with that sort of thing!” and “Careful now!” That’s when it began to dawn on me how crazy this whole thing was going to be.

Nude – An Absence of Clothes

Rick O’Shea has already mentioned it, but I heard about this on the radio during the week and for some reason, I really want to do it. In fact, I’ve already signed up for it! Don’t know if it’s because there’s some unawakened exhibitionist in me or whether it’s because I want to be part of something big like this. It might be both.

It did cross my mind for a moment that my less than perfect body (only just less though, by a very small margin) would not be something I’d be willing to show off to others, but then I realised that it is a sad fact of life that those who are most willing to get their kit off for this kind of thing are older people. People whose bodies have felt the effects of gravity and whose inhibitions have gone out the door. Compared to them, my young sprightly body will look fantastic, so it could end up being a great ego boost!

Anyway, for those not in the know –

Rice Boy

I’ve been keeping up with a great comic lately, recommended to me by my friend and co-conspirator, Jamie. It’s actually quite fantastic.

Conor Harrington

It’s plainly obvious that graffiti and street art are growing trends in this country (as well as everywhere else, for that matter) and I’ve spoken before about the annoying dearth of quality among most of what covers the walls. While Ireland may have a growing graffiti scene, there are few artists who stand out from the crowd and take the art-form to a greater level. One artist who did that, and indeed still does, was from Cork but has – since 2004 – been living and working in London. His name is Conor Harrington.

Conor started graffiti-ing when he was 14 on the streets of Cork. He did a BA in Painting in Limerick and in 2004 moved to London. His stuff still springs up every so often here at home though. One of his paintings was used for the cover of Prime Time’s SouthernFried 2 album and he has done the last few incarnations of Prime Time’s facade on Washington Street as well as a little secret gem around the back. Here’s some of his latest stuff:

Conor’s photorealistic style is something I’ve hugely admired for years now and it sets him distinctly apart from other graffiti artists in this city and this country. The gap between him and the rest in terms of talent and creativity is obvious. He has taken his photo realistic and graffiti sensibilities and has been applying them to canvases over the last few years and has begun to make a considerable name for himself in the graffiti and art worlds. Graphotism, one of the most important and widely known graffiti magazines in the world even put him on their cover a while back and he was the main feature of that issue.

This guy is a testament to how good graffiti and street art can be and how it is just as valid an art form as any of the others. I just wish there were more like him around. I am jealous beyond belief.

Some links:

His website.

Wooster article. And another.

Ektopia.

Jon Ching.

Itsa Me! Maaaario!

In a city that seems to be filling up, more and more with bad tagging (of the graffiti kind), StereoTyping wishes the aspiring street artists of Cork would come up with something better to cover our public surfaces with. To get an idea of the kind of thing we might like to see, we present to you the work of The Funky Horror from Oslo in Norway:

More here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25053518@N00/

This is not to say that ST is against tagging, per se! We’re just against most of it, because it’s crap. We’ll talk about good tagging some other time children.

Afro