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Shepard Fairey NineteeneightyfouriaGALLERY SHOW Obey (Shepard Fairey) has his first solo exhibition in London at stolenspace (Old Truman Brewery, 91 Brick Lane) from the 2nd to the 18th November 2007. STREET WORK Paste ups from across London in advance of the show opening. INTERVIEW Shepard interviewed before the opening of the show All photographs copyright artofthestate 2007 |
SHEPARD FAIREY - Interviewed prior to the NineteenEightyfouria show in London, November 2007 contd. Shepard has worked with a load of different bands, it’s a key theme in his work and the show but how has this happened? “Sometimes they approach me but sometimes I approach them like the stuff I did with Interpol – I really liked them, I met them and said if you ever want to do something I’d love to. I just did the Smashing Pumpkins album package after they contacted me, Rollins contacted me and Black Sabbath’s seen that I was a fan and had done a portrait of Ozzy Osbourne. Sometimes I’m creating work that references the bands and they are like "‘so you’re already a fan – lets so stuff together". The flyer for this show (Nineteeneightyfouria) has a zeppelin and I just did Led Zeppelin's greatest hits album package and the image that I used for the show was actually a version of the Led Zeppelin cover that they didn’t choose – I decided I wanted to use it for an art piece. I do that a lot – I work on projects for clients in the same style that I work on my own fine art and then something that doesn’t get used that I feel is appropriate for my work I’ll use. Like I did an art piece in 1997 that was a zeppelin over New York City so I knew it was appropriate subject matter. I know that they were from Birmingham and that its an industrial city and they’ve risen above this dreary circumstance in a sense. They told me they wanted the zeppelin to be majestic. Having the rubble of the city below its kinda like “celebrate that the war is over" but its bittersweet because everything's already fucked. To me it’s a little bit of a comment on all the people that at first were totally scared and jumped on the war bandwagon and then changed their mind to say ’its great the war is over but the last several years have been a total disaster”. Even the fairly conservative outlets are saying that 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed – that’s crazy – a tremendous loss of life of people who had nothing to do with the whole thing. They had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein and nothing to do with 9/11 – they’re just victims and I don’t think there’s any justification for that. "There were some rally big protests in place like New York. People like Rosario Dawson were arrested but the thing that really bummed me out about her being arrested was that she was there for the protest, she’s against the war but her PR company tried to say she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Get a fucking spine. She was there intentionally to protest but the PR were worried that it might hurt her popularity. Fuck that, its like you’re pretty, you’re entertaining, you’ll still get movie roles, just fucking buck up, you know! That’s what's wrong with people - they talk the shit on the Internet and then when its like in person they don’t stand up for their beliefs. War Is Over - Shepard Fairey The prices Shepard charges for his work vary depending on the medium from under 50 pounds to tens of thousands of pounds. “The reason I make prints that are inexpensive is because the audience that put me on the map isn’t people that have a lot of money. I don’t want to be saying “Thank you for helping me get to where I am, I will now see you later. You can no longer access my work except for looking at it on the internet or stumbling across it on the street”. I think that ownership is a big part of human nature. People like to be able to own something that connects them to something they like so even if only owning one of my prints makes someone feel like they have a connection to the entire body of work I think that’s important emotionally. The things that got me into art were posters, skateboard graphics, t-shirts, stickers, stencils, album covers – all things that I think are very accessible parts of pop culture. That’s always going to be a facet of what I’m doing so if it means I can’t command the absolute highest price per fine art piece that I could if I didn’t have those pieces out there I don’t care. I’m selling my prints below market value knowing that some people are going to buy them and Ebay them but I try to track them and ban them. You can only buy one print because I really want people who want a piece to hang on their wall to be able to get a print at a good price. Every Tuesday I put a new print up and they now sell out in 15 or 20 minutes. A few of them end up on Ebay but hopefully the other ones have found good homes. Trying to make a lot of money is not my goal. Trying to do things in a way I feel good about them is much more my goal. I see myself at an earlier stage when I had less means in so many other people out there that I would just feel terrible if I felt like I’d abandoned them. This is something I really believe. I don’t know what people think about that – maybe they think it’s like Joe Strummer saying, “I’m poor” when he was a diplomat’s son. Maybe I should get off the soapbox now but a lot of people from the fine art world start off with these lofty ambitions but as they become successful maybe they make some postcards or trinkets they can sell at a museum and create a licensing empire trickling down. I went completely the opposite way. I made all the posters, t-shirts and the stickers at the start and then people started asking for some more developed pieces so I’ve trickled up! I’m trying to engage as many different income tiers and fans of art as I can.
Peace Goddess - Shepard Fairey.
Article Continues> ( pages 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 )
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