Ever since 1970s New York, trains have been the graffiti artist’s time-honoured canvas of choice. Every spray-can clutching, sneaker wearing b-boy worth their salt will have let their creative juices flow on a carriage or two. Imagine then, the excitement that being let loose on a ruddy great WWII aircraft would instill in the little critters? Over in Tucson, Arizona – at the Pima Air and Space Museum – that’s exactly what’s gone and happened. OK, they’re not necessarily little critters who’ve been let loose – more like internationally revered street artists like Obama’s pal Shepard Fairey and Brooklyn-based wheatpasting pioneers FAILE – but you get the picture…
Following on from last summer’s Nose Job exhibition at Long Island’s Eric Firestone Gallery – where military nose cones were the canvas of choice – Firestone, and curator Carlo McCormick, have upped the ante with Return Trip; offering up five truly colossal canvases to some of the world’s top street art talents. Also featuring a selection of the original Nose Job pieces, and a dozen new interpretations too, this is perhaps one of the most ambitious projects of its kind we’ve ever witnessed. It certainly makes a mockery of international airline’s depressingly staid corporate liveries.
NUNCA
Phoenix of Metal, 2011
Spray paint on DC3 airplane 203 x 776 x 1,142”
FAILE
Naughty Angels, 2012
Acrylic on Beechcraft C45 aircraft 116 x 410 x 572”
NUNCA
Phoenix of Metal, 2011
Spray paint on DC3 airplane 203 x 776 x 1,142”
Foreground, Colin Chilag, Return Trip
SANER
Warriors of Peace, 2011
Acrylic on C 97 Cockpit
HOW & NOSM
Time Flies By, 2011
Spray Paint on DC 3 airplane 203 x 776 x 1,142”
Installation, Return Trip
DANIEL MARTIN DIAZ
Salvation, 2012
Oil and mixed medium on cluster bomb 83 x 14”
RETNA
Warning Shot, 2011
Ink & latex on DC 3 203 x 776 x 1,142”
Andrew Schoultz,
SPY TIGER, 2012,
acrylic on Lockheed V140 aircraft, 229 x 897 x 1245″
