street art

Still Here, A Decade of Lazarides

STILL HERE, A DECADE OF LAZARIDES 12th February to 24th March (Lazarides gallery, Rathbone Place, London)

Amazed to see that it’s a full ten years since Steve Lazarides set up his first gallery in London’s Soho. It’s fair to say that things have moved on a great deal in the meantime. From the early days of print release queue scrapping his empire now stretches to a four storey gallery in nearby Rathbone Place, print studios on Greenwich Peninsula and a Lazarides Editions fine art outlet on the South Bank. Following a recently a reported seven figure injection of cash from a Qatari investor moves are now afoot to shift his gallery westwards to upmarket Mayfair. Interviewed on this subject Lazarides recently told Blouartinfo.com “We’ve spent years working from a position of isolation, and now it’s time to challenge the status quo from the inside. I can hear the shouts of ‘Sell-out!’ on the Internet from here. But find out what we have planned before you dish out any hate.” To be fair it’s a bit late for anyone to level an accusation of sell-out. That was maybe something that could have been levelled ten years ago and even then was pretty irrelevant – anyone actually waiting for the revolution to come through a gallerist selling art with five and six figure price tags would be hard to find.  No, I think that black clad anarchists will not be rioting in the streets over this, street art is about as street as Pall Mall these days and Lazarides has moved on. In fact he always had an eye for any artist who was doing something different and in a non-conventional manner and that’s what is on show to great effect in this retrospective look at the last ten years. Some amazing art … well worth a visit, here’s a few peaks. Runs until 24th March.

‘Redmouse’ by Robert Del Naja aka 3D (acrylic on canvas). If I had £6500 spare I’d be after this.

Banksy canvas

‘Sid Vicious – Target’ by Banksy  (spray paint and emulsion on canvas) Everything by Banksy POA

Invader table at Lazarides

Invader table at Lazarides

JR on the stairs at Lazarides

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