Your Ad Here: Shepard Fairey exhibition

(Source)

Shepard Fairey is an underground artist turned street art spokesman, actor, US presidential campaign artist, philosopher, celebrity, swimsuit model and poster-maker.

Skewville appropriated one of his well-known Obey Giant posters about two years ago, according to Vandalog.

"You ad here" was placed above the poster, satirising it's mutation from an ironic image to globally recognised brand.

Rather than fight back to regain street cred, which is now irrelevant to him because he is 'established', Fairey will host an exhibition called Your Ad Here at V1 Gallery, Copenhagen.

Is Fairey using this as a chance to monetise an embarrassment?

I would say his career development is a benchmark with which to measure street art's decline as an underground artistic force.

SYDNEY: Hipster poster advertisements **UPDATED**

(Devonshire St, Surry Hills, Sydney)

There is a poster plague propagating in Sydney and it's beginning to shit me. These posters depict shirtless hipsters with confused facial expressions.

The only other 'message' they send are phone numbers and email addresses below the images.

Traditional advertising asks consumers/cattle to do things, to try things, to believe they are 'worthless' unless they do something they otherwise wouldn't (buy a new fucking car you piece of shit).

But these posters employ brandless marketing to hold your attention through 'cognitive jamming'.

Has brandless marketing reached a new low?

Who knows/gives a $2 toss. All I know is that this sexxi hipster made me want to find out more. Maybe I 'bought into' the brand too easily since escaping the beef factory.

(Acid Midget is a street art blog made with an iPhone)

Omar, channelling the Acid Midget, sent these texts to the number listed on the poster.

He expected a swift response asking him to either visit a website selling herpes cream, or to pose another meta-narrative to him.

There was no response.

(Abercrombie and Meagher Sts, Chippendale, Sydney)

I was hurt. The lack of reply spurred me on to find another poster.

If I found another one, I thought, an answer would appear.

But all I found in a different part of Sydney was another hipster whore with a vandalised head.

Maybe the street art movement has peaked. Maybe the street art 'brand' has rebelled all it can. It has become accepted into the socio-political narrative after fighting for more than 30 years.

Perhaps the creative lefties who I call brothers and sisters have already moved to other methods of questioning social failings and I just haven't caught up.

They became criminal defence lawyers.

**UPDATE**

Acid Midget reader Mattae Cooper published these posters on our Facebook fanpage. These were defaced by Catface.

Lipton Ice Green Tea art mural

(Via Wooster Collective)

This clip depicts several 'street artists' painting a wall in Surry Hills, Sydney, to popularise the Lipton Ice Green Tea brand.

Lipton provided the paint and 'grass' for the mural with money they made from creating sugar cavities in human mouths. The mural features a lady/tranny with long tranny hair blowing green marijuana leaves across Transylvania via the Blue Mountains.

Do you feel connected to the Lipton Meth Green Weed brand after watching this?

 (Image source)

Green helmet pussy cat: "Have you tried real green tea? Like, even just the shit available in Japanese vending machines?"

You: "Er, no."

Cat: "Lipton's doesn't taste like that. It tastes like extremely sweet water infused with chemicals which remind brain receptors of green tea."

(Image source)

Liption has dubbed this 'urban arts initiative' Project Green. The word 'initiative', however, is a falsification of what this project is. Take out the PR spin. It's a marketing campaign which uses a buzz trend to reach a target market - under-35 urbanites.

Would the target market be reached more effectively with a campaign called 'Project Weed'?

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Street art themed Mazda CX-7 commercial

pabst blue ribbon beer mural

(Downtown Phoenix)

Pabst Brewing Company apparently got some dude to paint a series of murals celebrating their beer. According to Liam, who wrote to Wooster Collective, someone sprayed a checklist on this "pretty bad" mural to highlight its strengths and weaknesses.

It's got beer and boobs. But art? I guess advertising doesn't need more than beer and boobs to get the message across.

Via Wooster.

street art themed mazda cx-7 commercial

Mazda marketing executive 1: (sniffs) So in yesterday's meeting we decided to find a niche subculture to latch onto for the CX-7 ad campaign.

Mazda marketing executive 2: What did you guys come up with?

MME1: Um, nothing yet (sniffs again).

MME2: Well I've got an idea I want to pitch. You might be interested.

MME1: Yeah? Tell me about it.

MME2: (Motions hands as if reading a billboard) STREET ART; the future of the art world. Just picture alleyway galleries that drivers of our new CX-7 can see as they're out living their busy lives.

MME1: (Racks a line off an iPad) Want some? It's direct from Columbia, via Mexico.

MME2: Not yet. I gotta see my daughter for lunch. She's in town with my ex-wife. It'll look good to see her before the next custody hearing.

MME1: All good. So you were saying something about street galleries?

MME2: So I think we should align our brand with street art subculture. It proves Mazda is creative, daring and isn't afraid to express itself. Just like our customers, right?

MME1: Fuck yeah! (they slap hands in agreement, laughing).

MME2: What about this for the voice-over? 'Being fresh and original is quite an art. To see it surprises. To experience it excites'.

MME1: (Rubs nose) Then we could finish it with 'Mazda call it CX-7'. Fucking perfect! (they slap hands again, laughing).

MME2: Yeah, then heads on fly posters will turn as it drives past.

MME1: Awesome. I'll propose it in today's meeting. We could shoot it in Sydney and have it airing on the major networks by next month. Where do you come up with this shit? You're like the modern Don Draper.

MME2: I've seen posters in the streets. A few blogs might've given me some ideas too. Fucking bloggers.

a westfield advertisment

(Westfield, Penrith)

Westfield CEO: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining me in celebrating another year in Westfield's history.

We are proud of what this shopping centre chain has done for the world. It has provided a place for parents to raise their children and spend countless weekends in our airconditioned cathedrals, in holy supplication to the great spirit of consumerism.

Within these walls we learn the importance of passivity to B2C marketing, overt product placement and brand leveraging. We also come into holy commune with the great currency of our epoch: credit. Being able to spend what isn't even ours is a gift from heaven, we should all be thankful.

Our children should also be thankful. To be raised on prime commercial real estate, charged to retailers at premium rates (ching-ching), within the highest state of suburban artifice accessible to the public is something the ancients would smile upon.

These children use their time constructively here. They do not “loiter” as the media claim. They do not “vandalise” selectively placed advertisements of photoshopped female models with few career prospects or sexual hangups. These young angels spend their hours/lives inside these emotional glasshouses learning the intricacies of the retail economy, buzz marketing and product cycles. They are our future.

Join me in congratulating them.

(unanimous applause ensues).