Beyond the Streets will launch a London edition of its hit street art exhibition as part of a Saatchi Gallery takeover
Street art will take center stage in the UK with the February opening of “Beyond the Streets London”, a major survey at the Saatchi Gallery. The exhibition will explore the impact of over 150 artists and the movements they have been associated with, including hip-hop and punk rock.
The sprawling exhibition will fill the gallery’s entire 70,000 square foot space for the first time in eight years, with displays of original artworks and site-specific installations alongside new special commissions. . Archival materials such as photographs, fashion objects and rare ephemera will also be presented to explain the history of the works.
The curator of the exhibition is Roger Gastman, a great graffiti specialist who has curated several museum-wide exhibitions across the United States over the years since co-curating the highly acclaimed “Art in the Streets” exhibition at LA MoCA in 2011.
Co-curated with Jeffrey Deitch, then director of the LA museum, the groundbreaking exhibition elevated an art form that had been mostly marginalized by the mainstream art world and examined its complex history. With over 200,000 visitors, it broke the California institution’s attendance records and subsequent blockbusters followed, including one housed in an office building in New York in 2019.
A dedicated permanent gallery called beyond the streets opened in Los Angeles last September. “Our collector base, our audience just kept asking for more,” Gastman told Artnet News at the time.
Striving to honor the present as well as the past, his inaugural show linked the work of established legends like Eric HAZE and Lady Pink with a new generation of artists like Othelo Gervacio and POSE.
“I don’t want to say I’m the grumpy old man who only cares about historical things, but I want to keep digging up the stories of graffiti and street art culture before they’re gone,” Gastman said. .
“The history of graffiti and street art cannot be told without highlighting the important role played by London and the UK in general,” Gastman said of his latest project at Saatchi Gallery.
The London exhibition will show the far-reaching influence of street art, from underground social movements to many aspects of mainstream contemporary culture, including what we wear and what we listen to.
“Beyond the Streets London” is presented at Saatchi GalleryLondon, February 17 to May 9, 2023. Tickets can be purchased in advance here.
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