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Skating The Dragon

MAX HAMILTON EXPLORES THE INTIMATE WORLD OF CHINESE SKATEBOARDING.

With a camera slung over his shoulder and unable to speak a word of Chinese, Max journeyed through Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen in search of signs - any sign - of skateboarding. Slowly, a scene emerged; a small one, yes, but a proud and tight-knit community of committed skaters, obscured to all but the most discerning eyes by the smog, bustle and scale of these three sprawling cities.

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Categories Culture Sport Tags Beijing China Skating

By on 30/7/08

A New Take On Skate

A few minutes of film can capture the imaginations of people from all walks of life. If you skate, you’ll know about this already. If you don’t, then fall in love with the intro to Lakai’s new film, Fully Flared. The risks they took to shoot it were pretty substantial - using napalm to blow things up will always incur some kind of risk - but the results speak for themselves. It's beautiful.

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Categories Sport Film Tags Film Skating

By on 15/4/08

An Eclectic Rose

Aaron Rose has an interesting take on street art. It’s like Blues or Jazz, he says: initially frowned upon but increasingly understood. It’s a neat comparison, and right now, with the emergence of urban art auctions and the great celebrity of Banksy, it seems we’re in the midst of that mainstream acceptance. But Rose has been involved since the very beginning, since he was 19, when he found himself alone in New York having recently moved there from the San Fernando Valley in LA. A woman he met there offered him a rundown store space:

“It was very cheap in a bad area of town. The neighborhood was just heroin and crime etc. We opened this art gallery not knowing what we wanted to do. I never wanted to be an art dealer. I didn’t have any art world experience. I just had a space and so we started putting up shows and we called the gallery Alleged after these (alleged) good luck candles that they sold in the Puerto Rican grocery stores. It was an Alleged gallery, not a real gallery.”

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Categories Art Culture Tags Aaron Rose Art Skating Street Art

By on 31/3/08

Beautiful Losers

Beautiful Losers is a new feature documentary film, just premiered in the States, that celebrates the independent and DIY spirit that unified a loose-knit group of American artists who emerged from the underground youth subcultures of skateboarding, graffiti, punk rock and hip hop - the likes of Ed Templeton (above), Shepard Fairey (whose art was recently shown in London - see below), Harmony Korine and Mike Mills.

Directed by Joshua Leonard, it explores the remarkable impact that this group of influential outcasts have had on contemporary culture. How, for instance, does a young guy learning to skate become an internationally renowned photographer?

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Categories Art Film Photography Tags Art Photography Skating

By on 13/3/08