The Cans Festival, stencil art fest

Great article and gallery @ NOTCOT from the Cans Festival featuring BANKSY and 600 other artists…

The space itself opened with powder blue billboard with “GENTRIFY THIS” painted aggressively in black, which a mother explained to her young daughter behind me in line was “delightfully ironic”, a phrase that applied just as well to the work within and its interaction with the crowd. The audience was incredibly diverse and indeed, I think it was the crowd that I found the most interesting. We had the entire age range, there more than a few grandmothers admiring the walls and strollers and children marveling. And of course there were more than our fair share of hipster types. The range of cameras was equally impressive. I lost count of the number of cellphone cameras (and yes, iphones were disproportionately represented), but there were lots of semi and professional photographers on the scene, and even a good number of videocams and tripods. And an equally diverse range of camera styles, flybys, the sit and wait type, etc. The need to document and capture the art seemed as pressing as the need to get in to see it! And of course, there were stencils of photographers that needed photographing…

More:

• Stencil art fest, The Cans Festival.
• Scanned program.
• Additional gallery @ NOTCOT.