Grant DeJonge Wins the 2010 Art Republic StreetSmart Street Art Competition
The Art Republic announced the winner of their 2010 street art competition at an event in London in January, and World Graffiti was there to see Brighton based artist Grant DeJonge take the crown with his piece ‘Lost’.
Grant DeJonge, winner of the Art Republic street art competition – with INKIE
He gets to have a limited edition print sold by Art Republic, with a proportion from each sale going to homeless charities like StreetSmart.
Preparations have begun to transform a 2 storey-wall into an original work of art. The wall kindly donated by myhotels has been prepped, and the winning image will serve as a reminder of the UK homeless situation when it is unveiled on Brighton’s Jubilee Street on Friday 5th February.
The next location is in Covent Garden, London where the image will be painstakingly reproduced onto a 4-storey building.
Check out the winning image…
Grant DeJonge – Art Republic winning piece "Lost"
The image will be available to view in Brighton and London from February until end of March 2010.
DeJonge is a self-taught artist from London, but for the past 14 years has lived and worked around Brighton.
Grant ran his own gallery “The Sugar Glider” on Brighton sea front in the artist quarter from 1995 to 2001.His surrealist room in the Hotel Pelirocco Brighton’s first theme hotel bought together his love of both sculpture and painting.
In 2004 he was joint curator of “body of work” exhibition at the Argus basement gallery which highlighted local talent such as Darvish and Sara Abbott. He spent a year in the south of France in 2005 and returned in 2006 to put on the locally acclaimed “body of work exhibition again in collaboration with Sara Abbott.
Grant DeJonge, winner of the Art Republic street art competition – with Jim
He has exhibited in France, London and Dublin in solo shows but is now concentrating on a new collection of work to be exhibited later this year.
World Graffiti got to have a chat with Grant at the Art Republic event, interesting guy!
WG -How old were you when you first started painting?
Grant – I’m a 42 year old man now, I started when I was 15.
WG -How did you start, on the street or painting or what?
Grant – I used to paint backdrops for nightclubs, back in the days of acid house, about 1988. I spent a lot of years working out how you get by, and at the end of the day, I gave up, I tried to be a painter and decorator. Then I thought fuck that, I had children, why am I wasting my time doing fuck all. So I tried again, pulled myself out. Never ever stop trying.
This competition was for a street artist, I ain’t a graffiti artist, I’ve never painted on a wall in my life but I also believe that it don’t matter where you paint your pictures. You’re an artist. If you’re a graffiti artist then you paint, it doesn’t matter if it’s in a garage or a wall or paper, never ever give up.
WG – What inspired your winning entry?
Grant – That girl who’s lying in the picture, that’s my daughter, she’s 17 months old. When I was entering the competition (to highlight homelessness) I tried to think how would you feel, what would you do, and does anyone care.
That’s why I never gave her any shadow, the bench does but she doesn’t because people don’t care about that. I’ve lost friends and it’s hurtful, and when you live that life with the drugs it’s easy to be nothing. But you’re never nothing, you’re always something and that’s what matters.
That’s what I tried to get across with my picture, wherever you are, whoever you are, you’re always something.
Cheers to Grant for chatting to us, and good luck to him in the future. We’ll be keeping an eye out on what he’s up to…
Got an interview with London street artist EINE at the event, only on World Graffiti…
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Ever heard of vanity publishing? It's just about the saddest thing you can do if you're a writer, self-publish and then try and sell a few of the thousands of copies you've paid a small fortune to be printed to your parents, friends, and any poor unsuspecting stranger you might manage to accost. Well the same thing goes for vanity galleries, essentially you pay a few grand to have your work hung at a prestigious address in some cosmopolitan city or other and fingers crossed someone somewhere might accidentally stumble across your work and spill their credit card. Of course they even offer promotional add-ons, marketing in the local papers which if they were any good would be free, it's called PR, but no one who's into scamming the creative community would understand that. Not unless it's self-promotional, vis-a-vis selling their own crap to poor unsuspecting artists.
