A group of stickers seen on a pole on Queen Street East recently
has an image from Catchoo combined with a perplexed Sailor dude from Ty Pro in the top place – what a cute balloon! At the bottom are three heads that you might recognize from previous posts. In pink is T-bonez from urban ninja squadron and the chosen few; on the right is a luchadore mask from bruho.
Here catchoo collaborates with c_priority (a k a Christopher Piccinich ) Even within the blacks of his suit there are little catchoo symbols and characters. I was hoping that there were secret messages written on the pieces of paper on the desk but there are just squiggly lines.
Last, feelings boi joins the fun. Is it a sword? or an umbrella? Whatever it is, there are smiles all round.
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.
Some of the animals:
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.
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.
My body, my choice.
Next, Brazilian artist antype (aka Luciano Costa) and Stephen Conner (from London England) share space on a building at John and Main.
below: A sample of antype’s black and white distorted portrait-like images.
Circles…..
… floppy circles, planetary circles, and planetary hats.
Stephen Conner’s images are also portrait-like but they are darker.
Installed in May 2023, gone by September 2023….. Urban Ninja Squadron’s T-bonez character livened up a stretch of blank wall at James and Wilson.
Last, but definitely not least, a series of images, or firegrams, by Danielle Goshay pasted onto the facade of the old Colonial Hotel building.
As mentioned above, all works were produced, printed, and pasted by jumblefacefoto
below: 1. The woman with a heart for an eye (got her eye on love?) looks like the work of Italian street artist c_ska. It also looks like she’s taking her temperature. Another c_ska sticker is a naked backside (or is it?) on top of an urban ninja squadron. Yes, you can make jokes about being on top. 2. Talking about jokes, playing on words is daught calm’s ‘be a tuber’ YouTube dig. I guess that’s better than being a potato. 3. The little orange guy, pizza guy? pizza face? is by sketch nate.
below: Morbid, Icey, etc. along with the bearded face of No love; Alone boy in black and white by ozokoh. And of course, don’t worry. It took a while… but see that grey face and its mysterious signature? It’s a lino print by Brian (aka bodh.io)
below: Tbonez with a new face
below: Urban Ninja Squadron as a climbing frame for a whole slew of little sketch nate characters.
This post is a selection of stickers and paste ups (wheatpaste) that I saw in Montreal in the past few days.
below: A @dysastrophy bunny with a gas mask and a painted hand grenade.
below: Paste ups at number 4. That hand is reaching past the butterfly and flowers towards the door handle.
below: That’s supposed to be a green and purple Frida Kahlo and she’s saying something: “Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.“
below: “No man camps” says the sign. This is a protest sticker, as the yellow words on his jacket, Wetsuweten strong, suggest. It references their complaints and protests against the Coastal GasLink pipeline.
below: Little white ghost pretending to be something he’s not while he collects lost claws. Actually, lost claws is the name of the artist.
below: An elephant with a few cans of beer already consumed so he says “I won’t remember you”. This is another lost claws creation.
below: Waxhead sticker
below: An encounter with a couple of cowboys, a poster by someone with a signature that I haven’t been able to decipher.
below: A selection of paper wheatpaste in varying conditions. The blue ice cream in melting. The bottom left is another waxhead paste up….. And then there are some from TCF (the chosen few) including squiggles from forge fury, Tbonez (urban ninja squadron) is on his phone, and lastly a roc roc birdie by ROC(514) is starting to peel off.
