Rip It Up, Start Again

About

Gallerist who offered early Banksy art for £150 to host a pop-up art show in Bath.

Under the banner of ART808, a website that provides hand-picked artists with a platform to promote and sell their work, Jon will be staging a group pop-up show in Bath the weekend before Christmas. Entitled, Rip it Up, Start Again, the show will host a collection of work by 12 artists, the culmination of Jon’s year-long journey to seek out rising and internationally acclaimed UK talent. Some of the headliners include artists Dan Rawlings, Lee Eelus, My Dog Sighs and Magnus Gjoen whose work will be appearing in Bath for the first time.

Jon was an early collaborator with Pictures on Walls, the legendary collective that shook the art world and helped to launch the stellar careers of Banksy, Invader, Conor Harrington, Paul Insect, Antony Micallef and Lee Eelus, whose latest hand-finished limited-edition print will be launching on Saturday 17th at the show. Jon’s contributions to Pictures on Walls included producing the first three Banksy books, Existentialism, Cut It Out and Banging your Head Against a Brick Wall and two Banksy artworks, Tesco Petrol Bomb and Soup Cans lithographs which will be available at the show. Jon has been a leading publisher in the street art scene ever since and appears to have a keen eye for spotting talent.

“I visited some friends in Bath in the early 2000s and was carrying a number of Banksy prints in a tube. I was keen to show off this up-and-coming West Country artist who was making waves in the capital. Having shown them the artwork, I offered to get them prints like this for £150 each, but they all politely declined…”

Recently, a signed edition of one of those prints, Girl with Balloon sold at a Sotheby's for £405,000. Despite the eye-watering price tag, Jon stresses that ART808 is about making great art accessible.

“If you love and appreciate the art, save up, buy it, hang it on the wall and keep an eye on the artist’s career, you never know what may happen, but at least you won’t be staring at a blank wall.”

The Tesco Petrol Bomb featuring in the show was originally sold in 2011 at the Bristol-based Anarchist Book Fair to help raise money via The Peoples Republic of Stokes Croft for protesters’ legal feels. The work was described as a ‘souvenir poster’ commemorating the then-recent Bristol riots which Jon remembers well.

“Locals were unhappy when a new branch of Tesco set up in Stokes Croft close to a squatted property called Telepathic Height’s, an old Georgian building covered in street art. There was a lot of tension associated with the creeping gentrification and this boiled over when the police decided to raid the building on a Thursday night, just before the start of a bank holiday. As the pubs were calling last orders, the police burst into the squat wearing full riot gear. During a search, they found a lot of bottles of what they thought contained petrol. Anyone familiar with squatted buildings without running water would probably advise you that it most likely wasn't petrol. The raid drew a lot of attention, resulting in a full-scale riot that night. Businesses in the area, linked with gentrification were damaged. The next day, it was incorrectly reported in the Bristol Post newspaper that the police had found petrol bomb-making equipment in the squat and used this to justify the raid. This in turn inspired Banksy’s ‘souvenir poster’.”

Rip it Up, Start Again will mark the one-year anniversary of ART808 and follows on from the success of their recent exhibition, I Don’t Like Sundays, which presented work by British artist Ben Turnbull in a renovated 16th-century church in Bristol city centre.

“I feel privileged to have the support of such diverse and interesting artists and to be able to host the show in the beautiful city of Bath."