Yesterday evening I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the preview of the debut solo exhibition by Static, a duo of talented artists who produce some wonderfully succinct satirical works in mixed media.

The exhibition runs from today until 19th June and the artists have COMPLETELY overtaken the artrepublic Soho gallery, even covering the walls with some extremely cool screen-printed aerosol can "wallpaper".

According to artist Tom:

We printed 200 standard 70 by 50 sheets to cover all of the walls.... gallery walls are always just plain white and we wanted to change this...

They only managed to finish papering the walls at 16:30 yesterday - two hours before the opening party started! It looked great. I want some of that wallpaper!

The gallery was buzzing, with people overflowing onto the road outside clutching bottles of beer or cans of Red Bull. Not only were the walls decorated, but the floors and stairs were splattered with multi-coloured drops and splashes paint and the stairwell walls were sprayed with logo themes from Static's 'The Luxury Vandals' collection - a thoroughly ironic theme if ever there was one...

Many pieces, particularly the unique 'Fight for the Right' series mixed media originals and the "Luxury Vandals" silkscreen on aluminium "Kate", already carried ominous little red dots stuck next to their descriptions. They're gone. These guys are going to be very successful and we'll be seeing a lot more of them!

For more information about the exhibition or Static themselves, and to see or buy any of their works, go to artrepublic.com or even pop down to the gallery at 42 New Compton Street in London (yes, that's NEW Compton Street, not old. Don't let the cabbie argue with you about the address.). This is not an affiliate link...

Thanks to artrepublic for the invitation and for the poster image casually stolen from their site

Here's another nice little piece of physical art... Instead of simply photoshopping an image of a MacBook to make it look like the corner had been cut off, IDEO Labs actually had somebody saw off the corner and then set up the shot for real. Nice to see that people still can do things by hand

For photos of the whole process and the story behind the shot, visit the IDEO Labs...

Yes, it could happen - but only if you are prepared to brave the early-morning temperatures of a November morning in London AND are able to identify his work cleverly enough when faced with an array of anonymous postcard submissions.

Want to know how?

Here's how:

But don't tell everybody - it's a secret!

PS: Last year I arrived an hour and a half before opening and queued for 4.5 hours. Be warned. I also can't guarantee that Damien Hirst has submitted any works this year - the entries will be on their site tomorrow...

I happened across some photos from "the Decapitator" on Flickr today and also found a link to this video there. Awesome stuff and a great example of a "guerrilla" street artist at work.

Watch the video and see how he (?) carried out a hijack of the London Paper (alas, but a memory now) back in 2008:

Take a look at some of his other work, including a headless Shakira on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in New York's Barnes & Noble (Union Square) in Flickr here

Anybody have a copy of that London Paper or the very limited edition Rolling Stone mag?

While many of us are exploring the possibilities of FLARToolkit and FLARManager with Flash or Flex, Julian Oliver has already seen his fabulous Augmented Reality game, Levelhead, travel around numerous venues and galleries as a fully self-contained Augmented Reality Art Project.

Here's a little taste of what the game is all about:

levelHead v1.0, 3 cube speed-run (spoiler!) from Julian Oliver on Vimeo.

Note that this video was recorded a year ago and that the Levelhead project was touring in 2008!

Note also that this is NOT a Flash/Flex project and seems to contain no actionscript - it's running on a Linux box and was built with the original ARToolKit and not the actionscript port, FLARToolKit.

Time to get my sleeves rolled up and get back to work on yet another, more ambitious version of my AR business card project

More about Julian Oliver and Levelhead on his website...