Urban Art Association

You guys are just completely taking the piss, so for £150 I can get a bit of paper with that crap on it and it will be worth amazing amounts of money later just because he did a few rounds of pasteups in shoreditch, a couple sporadic missions since December and now (he doesn't even do it when it's hard and gets seen by everyone when pasting that shit up), and that makes him worth £150? And why the name change from eefos to shuby? I think I know why, but I would like ro hear your version.

Oh yeah and your comment about photobucket is complete bullshit, there is no "extra compression" on those images. First of all it makes no business sense for them to do that since refactoring of an image will not save them that much bandwidth (and cost them time + software on their product), if they wanted to do that they would have a lower resolution limit or resize the image themselves. A jpeg has a colour index and each pixel points to a colour within that index, so considering that is a high resolution image with about 10 unique colours you are saying they made the colour index smaller, but if that is the case, where are the blocky bits from where they would group similar colours? It would however make perfect business sense for you to come on here and lie about something like that in order to give people the perception that there is some untold magic that can't be expressed over the internet with a high res image, which ultimately tells us all that before making this thread, you had an idea of how shit the artwork was and started thinking of excuses. Tell you what, send the uncompressed image to me and I will host it for you free of charge so people can see what they are getting before laying down £150.

You are talking shit, but more than that, you are lying to people, you are attempting to trick people out of money and that is not cool especially when you are trying to imply that these guys are some sort of feature in Shoreditch to people outside of London, because you know as well as I do (since those are my stomping grounds) that their shit is getting laughed at and torn down. The only art you seem to deal in is the art of bullshitting and you are about as shit at that as bortusk is at taking the piss. Go back to selling used cars and tell your boy I don't want to see him out there.

If anybody wants bortusk leer work and thinks £150 is a bit steep, I'll be happy to produce you a bootleg version of any of the characters for free, that way we can all enjoy the wonders of street art and bring a smile to our faces without shelling out £150 and feeling like mugs.

You know what, there's a line, a line between selling art and exploiting people. It's getting out of hand, I have never seen a bortusk below shoreditch high street and above old street, he just hit that area a couple times in a few months in order to establish himself for the exact purpose of getting signed to a gallery to push this stuff. Then you come here and paint this rosy picture of two artists who are completely insignificant in the area and producing crap that makes me think you think that myself and everyone else here is stupid and going to buy this shit on the back of the original street artists that bless our various cities with their wit. People are tearing down his newspaper to take them home? Are you high? You do realize he wheatpastes newspaper to boarding right? There is no way you are getting that thin, porous paper off of a wall for the purpose to take it home. Stop trying to mislead people. Bortusk is a kid who was trying it for a bit, people in this area think his stuff is bad, he has no credibility, does it bring a smile to your face? if so, good, I have nothing against you enjoying it, but don't paint this rosy image for people that insinuates that this shit you are putting above is in the same category as the stuff people are here to talk about and in some cases purchase. Guerilla advertising is not art.

Might I ask how you arrive at the figure of £150? Does that include postage?

And blaming the quality on photobucket and then turn around saying you don't understand the "dark art of photography" is pitiful, but you wanna play the spin game, fine. You do realize the dark art of photography has more to do with things like composition and such right? So you took a head on shot of a picture but there is some magical quality missing? I think you are chatting waffle, I have seen these in real life, and what you have there looks exactly like his street stuff looks in real life except he actually went out and bought himself paper this time, so please do explain what magical quality is not being expressed through the jpeg? Your eyes can recognize 10 million colours at once (well 10 mil variations of the 3 primary ones obviously) and a 32bit jpeg can show up to 65535 variations of colour at once, that image has 10 main colours meaning the rest of that 65535 colour swatch is taken up but minute variations of those 10 colours, so please, tell me what magical quality that might make this worth £150 is missing from those images.

There is not a great conspiracy going on to defraud people of £150. I wish I was that clever. Bortusk Leer painted these around Shoreditch not with a commercial masterplan, but with a view to putting something on the streets that would make people smile. After finding out who he was, I suggested doing some on nice paper. To be honest we were both a bit sceptical about whether they'd sell at all, and I took a big financial punt to be willing to find out. They all sold out in an hour, and i had in addition a long waiting list of people begging to buy them. As a result we put the price up a little for this set... they're the last ones that will be produced on paper.

I don't see how they can arouse such anger in you. Personally I find much of the stencil art discussed here to be far more lacking in originality, charm or skill - and many of the artists don't bother hitting the streets at all. I could sell stuff like that, and people would buy it. But I don't believe in it.

If you think you can do better, then go & do it. But I believe in Bortusk Leer's work, and I believe in Shuby's work.... and I believe in them as great pieces of artwork that I personally would put on my wall without hesitation. I'm certainly not having a laugh at anyone's expense.

Not for me either but have bought another artist's print from PA and got to say he's a sound guy to deal with. The print that arrived looked much better in the flesh than it did on the net as well. Each to their own I guess.

hopelessquest,

For what it's worth, I have met PrescriptionArt on a number of occasions. He is a very sound chap with a genuine passion for art.

I am certainly no fan of Bortusk Leer, but I do feel your posts to PrescriptionArt have been unnecessarily aggressive. You may not like the art he sells, but he is one of the good guys. Far more integrity than many bigger players on the scene who treat art mainly as a commodity and only have short-term profits in mind.

That being said, I have very much enjoyed reading your posts, especially the ones to Cartrain. Excellent advice for anyone tempted to refer to themselves in the third person.

I'll certainly be checking out your future posts, and look forward to hearing your views on Hush, Hutch and possibly that 'Diana' image by Blek Le Rat.

hopelessquest, completely agree with what your saying, the art is crap and the hype is b**lsh*t! IMO! Might chuck some art out this Bankhols and put them in Shoreditch see if I can get a gallery deal!! Don't mean to be rude but prescription how are you making a living with this tripe? Surely as a business man you deal with what the customer wants to buy not what you like ? Come on there's so much better stuff out there for a fraction of the price. BUT good luck if this is a winning formula!! Just checked your website and how can you show these pieces with the like of B, AM, MS Neate, D etc, I realise these are secondary market but there good!! Are you just jumping on what you think is the NEW thing to make a profit or do you really like Bortusk Leer's work??
Thats just my personal opinion of course but £150 for that print if it sells good luck to ya :-)

third time's the charm they say... PrescriptionArt, if it is not too intrusive of a question, how does one arrive at the figure of £150 for Bortusk Leer's work? Just curious as in the art world it would seem people usually factor the resell price, supply vs demand as well as the amount of time an artist has been in the scene.