I went to the opening of the new Mode 2
show 'Reality, Fantasy and the Web' at Lazarides Newcastle when I was
back at home last week. The work was chalk and pastel drawings (mainly
erotic portraits of women) which had been drawn on-site on flattened
cardboard boxes stuck up around the downstairs walls of the gallery.
The Lazarides site says Mode was recently made artist in residence at Coco de Mer,
where he paints customers from a cubbyhole in the changing rooms (with
their permission, thankfully) and the drawings on display here had that
voyeuristic feel to them. I also liked Mode's pencil drawings upstairs,
which haven't been exhibited before.
While I was there I bumped into the guys from Prefab 77, who appear in our new book Street Artists: The Complete Guide
– had the first copy of the book back from the printers so showed them
it and they seemed pleased – they said they would order 1000 copies for
their shop Electrik Sheep! (don't worry guys won't hold you to that...)
Here is one of the Prefab spreads in the book (showing the huge screenprinted piece they pasted up on the side of The Ship Inn, Byker, Newcastle in 2008):
There is a Seb Lester show currently on at the Electrik Sheep gallery which you can see on the shop's new flickr page here.
Mode 2 had been to the opening for that the week before...who needs
Shoreditch, its all about the Toon: maybe Newcastle could be the next street art destination...
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