crkshnk | Eyes on the Streets

Take a few abandoned downtown Hamilton buildings and add large size artworks by a diverse group of artists and you have the makings of the Wheat Paste Anti Gallery. No artist’s statements, no words on the wall. This is the project has been brought to life by jumblefacefoto, aka Jeremy Lynch (including the producing, printing, and pasting of all the images in the installation).

In this blog post I want to show you the artists whose work now on display “in” Hamilton’s first Anti Gallery (in no particular order). First, Invasive Animal has taken over the front of the Oakwood Place building at 1067 Barton Street East where a sign says “Hop Canadian”. Once upon a time it said, “Save our jobs, shop Canadian”. Also once upon a time, this was a restaurant/bar. Now the animals have taken over.

front of an empty and boarded up grey two storey building in downtown Hamilton that now has many wheat paste images of animals

Some of the animals:

wheatpaste images of animals printed on paper, on exterior of grey abandoned building, a parrot, a beaver, and a bear

Next door to the Oakwood was a Shoe King store. The “king” is gone and plywood covers its windows and doors; now it is a gallery wall for crkshnk (pronounced crookshank), an artist from New York City. All the images across the storefront are his work.

exterior of old shoe king store in Hamilton, large sign is broken, store front covered with plywood, now many wheat paste paper street art artworks on the exterior walls

Another artist on display here is 33wallflower33. Her (and I am assuming that!) women and children evoke a previous age and often have a message to deliver.