Win­ston Smith and Grant’s Tomb Gallery present

“First Impres­sions”

a small show of prints by Gee Vaucher.  With addi­tional art­work by Win­ston Smith.

Fri­day, March 15  7pm-10pm

Free

Grant’s Tomb

50-A Ban­nam Place, North Beach, San Francisco

About Gee Vaucher

East Lon­don born Gee Vaucher started gain­ing recog­ni­tion pro­duc­ing polit­i­cally out­spo­ken record cov­ers for anarcho-punk band Crass in the late 1970s. Her work became a strong influ­ence for protest art as well as the punk and anar­chist aes­thetic of her time. Using her diverse inter­est in all forms of art, she pro­duced paint­ings and col­lages that exposed the absur­dity and hypocrisy of ‘civilised’ soci­ety with frank and often dis­turb­ing imagery.

After Crass dis­banded Vaucher moved away from overt world pol­i­tics and started pro­duc­ing work of a more per­sonal nature, explor­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal diver­sity and delema of social inter-relationships. Vaucher’s work is hard-hitting with a grip­ping aes­thetic and has been exhib­ited inter­na­tion­ally as well as being included in a num­ber of books and publications.

Gee’s Full Bay Area Itinerary:

Fri­day, March 15 — “First Impres­sions” at Grant’s Tomb at 7pm

Sat­ur­day, March 16 & Sun­day March 17 — Anar­chist Book Fair at the Armory Com­mu­nity Cen­ter from 10am-6pm

Tues­day, March 19th — With Penny Rem­baud at City Lights Book­shop at 7pm

FEBRUARY 2 — FEBRUARY 23, 2013

Open­ing Recep­tion: Sat­ur­day Feb­ru­ary 2, 6-9pm

Var­nish Fine Art

16 Jessie Street, #C120
San Fran­cisco, CA 94105
(415)433‑4400

Now serv­ing… Gigan­tic Brew­ing Company’s The Time Trav­eler Porter!   Label by Win­ston.       Arrive early to be sure to get some!

The sedi­tious edi­tions in the show are works of “rebel­lious dis­or­der” that act as an intel­lec­tual call to arms to the pub­lic at large to stand against com­pla­cency. Each artist repur­poses the pop cul­tural zeit­geist of the 50’s post­war era with punk rock bones to cre­ate some­times com­plex some­times bone chill­ingly sim­ple mes­sages chal­leng­ing us to look harder at the pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ments we take for granted are work­ing in our best inter­ests. On exhibit will be orig­i­nal works and lim­ited editions.

Kozik and Smith share the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing lived in post­war Europe in the early to mid 70’s, a period of intense upheaval. Kozik’s child­hood in Franco Era Spain was full of visu­ally influ­en­tial author­i­tar­ian acts and imagery, evi­denced by his use of the pro­pa­ganda poster for­mat. By con­trast Win­ston Smith’s time in Italy as a teenager was full of class strug­gle and socio-political tur­moil turned to vio­lence that one writer claims “amounted to anar­chy.” This state of chaos mixed with a 50’s child­hood in a “fly­over” state comes into stark relief in his polit­i­cally tinged collage-montages.

Using imagery of the 50’s and beyond as his start­ing point, Smith “kid­naps” them from their orig­i­nal con­texts, re-purposing them into polit­i­cally charged tableaus that con­front the viewer with the para­doxes and incon­gruities occur­ring in front of our eyes. With a sub­lime humor, Smith talks to us of deep and trou­bling issues with friendly imagery. Kozik uses the tem­plate of the pro­pa­ganda poster preva­lent dur­ing and post WWII in the US and Europe to cre­ate art print and music poster edi­tions full of visu­ally grip­ping and supremely graphic sce­nar­ios rife with cul­tural mes­sages of chal­lenge. He has recently turned his graph­i­cally keen eye to the world of sculp­ture, cre­at­ing lim­ited edi­tion works of some of his most well known images.

About Frank Kozik:

Frank Kozik is an entirely self-taught artist whose artis­tic career rose largely out of his enthu­si­asm for Austin’s grow­ing unde­ground punk rock scene in the early 80’s. He tran­si­tioned to silkscreen­ing large col­or­ful con­cert posters, cre­at­ing art­work for a diverse array of musi­cians such as Pearl Jam, The White Stripes, The Beastie Boys, Green Day, Neil Young and Nir­vana. He moved to San Fran­cisco in the 1990’s where he started his own music label. In 2001 he tran­si­tioned full time to cre­at­ing fine art, design and art toys. He cur­rently lives and works in San Fran­cisco with his wife, Sharon, and their four cats.

About Win­ston Smith:

Smith first became known (and later beloved) for his col­lab­o­ra­tions with punk leg­ends Dead Kennedys and his numer­ous album cov­ers, inserts and fly­ers for the band in their for­ma­tive years. His tech­nique of cut­ting out by hand and glu­ing each indi­vid­ual ele­ment has inspired a gen­er­a­tion of artists. He is clas­si­cally trained in Renais­sance art, hav­ing left the U.S. in 1969 to study at the Acad­emy of Fine Arts in Flo­rence, where he lived for sev­eral years before mov­ing to Rome. Over the last 35 years, Win­ston has had numer­ous one-man shows in San Fran­cisco, Los Ange­les, New York City, Lon­don, Berlin, Antwerp, Rome and Tokyo, as well as group shows through out the United States and Europe. He lives and works in San Francisco.

Exhi­bi­tion Pre­view Com­ing Soon!

Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2013!!!

Art:  “Time’s Up”  ©  Win­ston Smith 2004

The Helium Safari:

The Aston­ish­ing Col­lage Art of Sean Mackaoui

With addi­tional mon­tage art by Win­ston Smith

Fri­day, Octo­ber 19^th  7pm-10pm

Grant’s Tomb

50-A Ban­nam Alley,  North Beach,  San Francisco

Click here for direc­tions to the gallery.

About the Artist:

Sean Mackaoui likes to cut and paste in his much-loved adopted home town of Madrid, Spain. His work has adorned news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines (El Mundo, The Her­ald Tri­bune, Cour­rier Inter­na­tional, The Sun­day Times Mag­a­zine, El Canto de la Trip­u­la­cion, La Folha de Sao Paulo), dripped off posters (Cen­tro Dra­matico Nacional, Spain or Bien­nale du Cinéma Espag­nol de Annecy, France), graced wine labels, adorned book cov­ers, dressed up T-shirts, sold shoes, ani­mated TV spots.… basi­cally any­where they let him put a collage!

He has exhib­ited his per­sonal work in gal­leries around Europe, and occa­sion­ally pieces have been known to cross the Atlantic to the shores of the Amer­i­can con­ti­nent. His proud­est recent achieve­ment was to be awarded an Hon­orary Director’s roll on the board of the San Fran­cisco Col­lage Cen­tre. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit mackaoui.com. Thank you and Gracias.

[Show as slideshow]

Artists will be in attendance.

Food • Bev­er­age • Art

Free Admis­sion