Gallery – Part 2
Born Keith Hopewell and raised in York, UK, Part 2 was one of his home city’s original hardcore graffiti crew. Initially as much interested in the danger and illegality of graf’ culture, he sooned earned his stripes with a unique figurative style that drew attention and eventually saw him exhibiting beside Futura 2000 and Goldie. In recent years his attention has been more focused on music production for Part 2’s studio work is at the leading edge of UK hip hop (Roots Manuva, Ty, etc). His own group New Flesh are one of the funkiest, most innovative acts around as their new album ‘Universally Dirty’ demonstrates beyond doubt. On the visual side of things, Part 2 has his SerialType show from the 12th to the 22nd September at the This Way Up Gallery at the Dragon Bar in London’s Leonard Street.
1.”Part2ism Vs London Underground 1.01 Jubilee Line
“I wanted to do something utilising the London underground and thought about what would be predictable. For instance, installing this on the outside panel of a tube train would look too similar to how graffiti on trains already looks, so I remembered when I put a little part2ism up on the inside window of a tube & was taking a photo, a train on the other line went past. I accidentally caught the movement behind it & then I thought about the glass safety feature on the Jubilee line. I had a couple of associates with me that day and we had the big ‘Hijack’ install with us all taped together in bin liners. We headed down the escalator down towards the trains and found maybe six or more CCTV cameras, so we unpacked quickly and attached lots of pieces of doubled over gaffer tape on the backs of each letter. Sometimes I build the letters in sets of two or three to enable the piece to be placed quicker and this was in three bits, we waited until the display board indicated that the train was coming in 1 minute & stuck it up on the glass safety panel. We took as many pictures possible while the train whizzed in and then out again but no security came so we waited for the next one, then the next one and half an hour later we took it down an left with heaps of footage.”
2. ‘IGod @ Marble Arch’
“I was playing around one day in photoshop, looking at how some religious images looked when they were pixelated. I wanted to see what the Christ image looked like as a silhouette and then everything just clicked. I just couldn’t get away from the i-Pod ad images with the silhouettes; there I had two very strong iconic images from past and present. A big part of what I do with Part2ism is to try and put new spins on branding and the impact branding has on society in general. It’s by no means a dis to Apple or Christianity in any way. I think the art of branding lies in finding out peoples needs and providing a service to cater for those needs so the worst part of branding lies in how people latch on to things. I think there are a lot of good brands that are really creative, that allow people to hijack the brand and drive its evolution. What I really tried to do with the i-God piece is to trigger reaction by juxtaposing two forms of religion adapted to my futurist impression of them. I don’t try to push the connotations too hard with this piece of work, I just think that some unknown force directed that lady in the picture to this venue and knew exactly what’s going on and we just got away with this one.”
4. ‘Supermarket Trolleys’
“This was another play on modern branding and also the hardest to do. Due to the security at those places, if you want to photograph this concept you have to move the trolleys to a clear bit of car park or you get the big iron railings they have to keep them all in line, easier said than done. As soon as you start collecting them together the security are on you. I think shopping trolleys have a very modern/urban image with slight punk overtones, a great vehicle to put in a different context. I had this crazy fantasy that they represented a subway train with all the carriages and wheels in some kinda abstract way.
To a lot of people barcodes represent the future and everything has serial numbers or some kind of numbers anyway. The word ‘pending’ I got from MySpace.com where they have the friend requests bit and just thought it went with the unknown elements of today, like ‘what next’. So I was just playing with the modern environment and subway graffiti to see where I can push the envelope. I remember showing this to a friend and he said, ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing this on my way to Tesco’s to buy a pack of cigs’.”
3. Brandalism
“People seem to like this one; it’s a word I don’t use any more to tell the truth. I’ve been coming across it for a few years now in advertising and marketing books and it seems to be used pretty commonly to describe the overkill of brands and advertisement. I thought I’d hijack it and use it to define my new work, firstly branding heavily influences my work and secondly my work is eco-friendly and since it’s disposable, causing no damage, it couldn’t be classed as vandalism. I loved the way that the word took vandalism to another level – nice bit of wordplay. This piece was aimed to seed my new disposable concept so I thought it’s got to be readable and go somewhere really prominent to gain the best impact. It was actually a pain in the arse doing this cos it was so windy, we couldn’t get the letters to stick and we had to wait half an hour for police boats to leave the area before we could do anything. It took about an hour to install this and normally it should have been up in five or ten minutes. The reason I don’t use the word now is, a friend of mine was going on all the time about patenting the word so I said OK, I’m not really into this intellectual property shit but I’ll google it anyway and see if anybody already has it. Next thing I know Banksy came up on the search and had been using it for a while, I couldn’t understand why nobody had told me, lol. He had been using it to condemn the bombardment of advertising and I was using it in a different context but nonetheless I decided to drop it. Funny enough the word has stuck with me and nobody brings up anyone else using it but I’m happy with Disposable Graffiti & Part2ism.”
5. ‘Target, Joyriding, Northern Line’
“This was a play on the paranoia left after last years terrorist attacks on the London Underground when they shot the Brazilian guy for running. Originally I was gonna do some text saying, ‘Walk, Don’t Run’ with guns running through the letters but it wouldn’t have fitted in there so I settled for the gas masked figure. Its just so unsettling right now that everybody’s got a war to fight. I was talking to a photographer the other day in Newcastle who is always involved in some kind of protest and she was saying she thinks America being one of the newest continents is going through it’s toddler tantrum phase, stamping its feet to get its own way. How true is that? We’ve gotta stop messing up other peoples land and causing all this bloodshed. We put Target up there and I remember a family of Asian men (nothing to do with the dazed man in the photo) got on the train and just sat looking at Target horrified and then got off at the next stop. I felt really bad about that, one of my crew said it’s only cardboard but maybe Target was a bit strong.”
Part 2 will be showing brand new work at The Dragon Bar soon…
Part 2, SerialType show
12 September – 22 September
@ This Way Up Gallery
Dragon Bar, 5 Leonard Street,
London EC2
Nearest tube Old Street
Launch night on Tuesday 12th September 7.00pm – 10.00pm
I am getting so many compliments on my looks now! I am going to buy more asap!
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