Mexy Artist Pick of the Week: JEREMY SHAW

If you've had a chance to get outside and away from video games, homework and mexysexicans and gone to the Vancouver downtown core you may have noticed a series of posters filled with imagery from the 1980s including Archie comics, expo 86 and Rainbow Wars. To the untrained eye these posters can be seen as advertisements for an upcoming event, but in reality they are promotion for events that have already happened. You might say "That makes no sense, why would somebody promote something thats already happened with complete disregard for financial gain?" Well that's because you're looking at a different breed of street art produced by a local artist by the name of Jeremy Shaw, and you're an idiot. The posters are part of series called Something's Happening Here, "a year-long public poster project mounted as part of the 2009 Cultural Olympiad the memorialized and celebrates the legacies of past civic events" (ecuad).


Best Minds Part One, 2007, 2 Channel Video and Sound Installation

Shaw has produced a wide variety of artwork starting from 1998 and has held numerous exhibitions along with an upcoming solo exhibition Pop and Conceptual: 2006 - 2012 at the Or Gallery, part of the Blanket Contemporary Art Inc. which Shaw is part of. With his artwork, Shaw has "successfully utilized techniques of conceptual art, experimental film, music videos, and reality TV to rework primary and produce secondary source materials derived from his own participation in specific manifestations of rave, skateboard and other youth subcultures in the context of Vancouver in the 90s" (orgallery). Along with his fine art practices, Shaw has also been producing music for his other project Circlesquare, consisting of the albums Pre-Earthquake Anthem and his latest debut album Songs About Dancing and Drugs. As Shaw tells about his album: "I named the album in the tradition of Leonard Cohen, Talking Heads, Big Black, etc.," says Jeremy. "I always loved the directness of songs from a Room, Songs of Love and Hate, More Songs About Buildings and Food, Songs About Fucking... Dancing, drugs and science seemed to be the most prevalent themes of the album." As per-usual, Shaw makes songs about sex and drugs because thats what sells. After all, with one practice that is driven by anti-capitalist ideologies, the other has to support it financially.

RAINBOW WAR
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