text by Roadsworth and Bethany Gibson
lancement ° 8 sept 19h00 | Sept 8 ~ 7:00PM
drawnandquarterly.com
Ten years after Roadsworth’s images first began appearing on the streets of Montreal, grabbing our attention, capturing our imagination, and leading to his eventual arrest, notoriety and fame: ROADSWORTH, the book, has arrived. In this playful and sometimes subversive book, featuring more than 450 reproductions of his unmistakable art, Roadsworth takes the urban landscape and turns its constituent elements on their heads; both indicting our culture’s excesses and celebrating what makes us human (lest we forget).
Although still relatively nascent, street art is driving tastes and growing in influence. It’s the underground going mainstream on Main Street. Street art wields an anonymous, rebellious element — a running sociopolitical commentary that by its nature is accessible to all. Urban environments provide an endless source of available medium — walls, streets, trains, tunnels, and bridges — all of which present an inherently public platform. This is where the brilliantly subversive artist Roadsworth comes in.
Inspired by a desire for adventure and a loathing of car culture, advertising and consumerism and enraged by the tragedy of 9/11, Roadsworth got down with an idea that had been forming in his mind for some time. The time had come to articulate his artistic vision, to challenge the notion of “public” space and whose right it was to use it.
One night in October 2001, he spilled paint onto the streets of Montreal. A stark, primitive bike, suspiciously similar to the city’s own bike path symbol, suddenly appeared; a giant zipper was pulled open down the centre line of a busy street, the footprint of a giant emerged, stomping through the city while people slept.
By 2004, Roadsworth had pulled off close to 300 pieces of urban art. In the fall, he was charged with 51 counts of public mischief, seeming to signal the end of his career. Instead, the citizens of Montreal and lovers of his work from around the world rallied around him with their support. A year later he was let off with a slap on the wrist.
Since then, Roadsworth has developed as an artist, continuing to intervene in public spaces and traveling the world, executing commissioned work for organizations such as Cirque de Soleil, The Lost O (cycled over in le tour de France), and for municipalities, exhibitions, and arts festivals.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roadsworth began painting the streets of Montreal in the fall of 2001, developing a language around street markings and other elements of the urban landscape using a primarily stencil based technique. Since his arrest in the fall of 2004, Roadsworth has gone on to receive various commissions for his work and to intervene in public spaces in unconventional ways. His co-author, Bethany Gibson, is the fiction editor at Goose Lane Editions.
CONTACT INFO
For review copies, author interviews, or publication excerpts, contact Corey Redekop at [email protected] or call (888) 926.8377. High-res book cover and author image files are available at www.gooselane.com.
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