I started out collecting originals before I got interested in urban art. I then collected prints for a while, but now prefer collecting originals again. Tends to mean that I collect work from less well known artists. Source images may well be from the Internet. I have no problem with that, assuming the artist has put their own mark on the image. I would always prefer an original to a print, even if by a less well known artist. For example, there are 44 pieces of art in my sitting room right now (excluding sculptures). Only 12 are prints.

Arguments aside about where they were painted (which I find slightly sensational tbh) - but all I will say is I've seen a few of these in the flesh and they look the absolute tits. In my humble opinion of course!

If I write press release that’s about not wanting to write a press release is that still a press release?

I don’t want to write a press release because I’m suspicious of them. I think we should all be suspicious of the language that galleries and artists use to justify their work.

So…in an effort to be simple: I made 100 paintings of badges. The paintings took years to make. I painted my own collection of badges, then I used badges belonging to friends, then I began to buy them online and at markets and when I began to get bored of that, I made a bunch and then painted them. When I got to 100 I stopped. I had to stop somewhere.

I stopped because I thought 100 was a good place to stop. I started because I wanted to find something I could paint as a series, and something that contained words. I thought about book covers, then I thought about record covers. I thought about just words on a canvas. And then I remembered I’d made a set of paintings of badges in 2009 for a show I did at Black Rat Projects.

Those first paintings ended up being thrown away. I got tired of moving them from studio to studio. They took up space. They wouldn’t pay their own rent. Let no one live in your head rent free.

But I guess I made them as a reminder to my future self, and they weren’t meant to be sold.

Anyway, that was why I started painting badges again. Because I wanted to have a one liner. A simple way to say the short and sweet.

And I love badges. I’ve always had them around. Ska badges, Def Jam badges, anti Nazi badges, pro feminist badges, sexist badges. There was a badge that my dad had which was stuck to the notice board in the kitchen when I was growing up. It was a ska badge, which read “Fuck me, beat me, kiss me, whip me”. It made a big impression on my seven year old mind.

They’re about community and belonging and tribes and they’re round and when housed in a square become part of a perfect geometrical system…in the same way that the Japanese flag is the most effective sign. In the same way that Kasimir Malevich’s Black Circle is not going anywhere, in the sense that it’s hard to fuck with something so simple.

That’s it.


Lucas Price, London, February 2016.

Info@tenderbuttons.co

I think the context here is completely different. Most of the great masters used apprentices, not labour from a Chinese sweatshop. I have no problem with artists having work manufactured to spec, it's part of conceptual arts process and philosophy. But if your work is hyperrealist painting, then you need to be able to paint that. If your work is "based" on hyperrealist painting and you're commenting on this by using overseas labour,  developed as a commentary on production/consumption models within Capitalism, then great, powerful work that makes the viewer think. Good art. If you're just knocking out Chinese copies of an original photo and passing them off as your own oil paintings by not mentioning they're manufactured by Dafenvillage.com, then I'd say this is closer to fraud than art. 

Juxtapoz released some preview shots of the works - www.juxtapoz.com/news/painting/lucas-price-tender-buttons-paintings/

Love his work - wish I could go!

Would be cool if they released a book or something like that with all the badges.

A few artists farm out the actual painting and sculpting to real artists and craftsmen and women. Mark Quinn, Koons, Hirst, Br******h (my fingers refuse to type it). Thats fine as long as they admit it publicly. If people want to buy that type of art for the name etc I guess it's an OK business model.

I am amazed by the number of artists and also galleries who post photos of art and who say nothing about the technique to produce the finished art. No, oil on canvas for example painted by the artist if it's a gallery. It's all very vague with artists posting oil paintings and stencils and other stuff without saying how they produced them. If they paint or make the art themselves by their own hand they should say so and if they farm out the painting as in produced by assistants or a distant assistant insistant in China cos it's cheaper than paying a Shoreditch hipster. They should at least let the potential buyers know. A lot of online galleries have very slick looking art inc stencil art and people viewing think wow this is great believing it's all hand done when a lot is done by photo shop and other art is farmed out.

It all seems to be about quantity these days. Instead of an artist making fewer artworks themselves the galleries build them up and hit a demand ceiling with the artist producing as much as they can sell.

Van Gogh had no assistants and his art compared with Koons Hirst etc. I know which I prefer.

The great masters had assistants when they reached the status of having rich clients and orders to fullfill. The assistants schooled by the master artist taught the style and technique and painted the drapery and stuff while the master painted the face and hands. Under the supervision of the master artist.

Today it's a lot of gimmicks.

Tomorrow art will be painted and made by robots owned by galleries and dealers.

 

 Would people be so keen to buy if they knew who actually made the art or the technique used to make the finished item, such as screen print etc?

    Henry Moore made his own maquettes small statues which were scaled up by either a foundry or craftsmen.

 Hockney is great. His paintings and art has personality. He uses an ipad but he still does the actual freehand drawing on the pad.

 I meant that in the future autonamous robots owned by dealers and galleries will be so sophisticated that they will make the art with no input from any person or people.

 Some of todays art is as Warhol said, "factory" art. Where some just pay others to make art they could not make themselves as they lack the skill.

Wish I could go, however, appreciate the online chance!

Should be popping along to this. Like Lucas Price's and kinda fed up with all the unfounded rumours regarding his work. The man has real talent.

Nice indeed, though maybe it should have been a show with 50 canvases instead of 100. Personally, I only liked about 30 of them, and they were all sold by the time I checked it out.

Yes, please do damo.

Amazing turnout, was packed, hope he did well.

Thanks very much for the Photos Feral Things. (All of your photos, really)

Looks to have been a great show, and a treat to see them all together like that. Nice idea, imo.