Friday, November 26, 2021

British Hip Hop Championships 1985


Flyer for first 'National Hip Hop Championships' at the Rok Rok Club at Brixton Recreation Centre, 'the freshest most awesome place to be'.  Two heats and a final in July/August 1985 with rapping, scratching, breaking and popping. Organised by British Hip Hop Alliance (184 Brixton Road) for ‘people interested in scratch DJing, Breaking, Graffiti, Rapping and related performance arts’. 

Flyer comes from 'Mirror Reflecting Darkly: the Rita Keegan Archive', book published  to accompany interesting exhibition at South London Gallery and available from their great bookshop.



Some video footage of the event, with some great moves to tracks including Doug E Fresh & Slick Rick 'The Show':



Wednesday, November 24, 2021

William Scott at Studio Voltaire (En Vogue in Clapham)

William Scott is an Oakland, California based artist with an exhibition of his work at Studio Voltaire gallery in Clapham, South London. Outside the gallery on the corner of Clapham High Street there's Scott's billboard sized picture of 1990s R&B group En Vogue, who also started out in Oakland.



Scott's paintings have an afrofuturist and spiritual dimension with spaceships  ('Citizen Ships') of his imagined Skyline Friendly Organization bringing peace and indeed bringing the dead back to life.


As well En Vogue, other musical reference points include Janet Jackson (in painting above), Diana Ross and Prince who we are told 'will be coming back to life soon'.


For an interview with the artists see 'THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF AUTISTIC ARCHITECTURAL ARTIST WILLIAM SCOTT' at Pin-Up.