Oi You! street art contest attracts potential Banksys

The opportunity to have work on show alongside the elusive Banksy is dragging in entrants from around New Zealand to Oi You! a street art exhibition timed to coincide with the Nelson Arts Festival and the Rugby World Cup in October.

Organiser George Shaw says with two weeks to go he’s overwhelmed with the level of interest and the number of hits on the StreetArt website. He says the 200 people already registered are mainly in the open section and he’s expecting a huge response still to come from schools before May 16. And he says he’s not really surprised at the level of interest.

“This is the age of citizen journalism, it’s the age of the YouTube video and art is the last bastion to fall to DIY,” he says. “Art is not about being able to paint a landscape or someone’s portrait, it’s about expressing your ideas - that’s what gets people excited about urban art.”

George and his wife Shannon have been collecting urban art for eight years and made a lifestyle move to Nelson from the UK in 2009, bringing along their 23 Banksy limited edition prints and originals that will make up the core of the Oi You! exhibition, plus work by other exponents of Urban Art including Faile, Antony Micallef, David Choe, Adam Neate and Os Gemeos. Alongside these will be the best of Kiwi urban art including work by Auckland’s Cut Collective, and the top works from the Oi You! Urban Art Competition.

The 2011 Oi You! exhibition will be staged in the cavernous interior of an old gasworks that’s part of Nelson’s Founders Heritage Park. An easy walk from the city centre, the Energy Centre is a 650 sq metre 10-sided building with an industrial feel that ideally lends itself to a show of urban art.

George has gained funding from Nelson City Council as well as Toyota and Resene and is currently seeking sponsorship for other aspects of the exhibition, which he is banking will attract thousands of visitors and plenty of international media attention to Nelson come the spring.

“Staging Oi You! will show the huge media contingent here for the rugby that New Zealand is about more than just rugby and scenery,” he said. “It’s also at the cutting edge of global pop culture.”

Oi You! is at the Energy Centre, Founders Heritage Park Nelson, September 23 - October 24 2011. Full details on the exhibition and the competition at www.StreetArt.co.nz >

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Oi You! Fact File

When:
Competition entries to be in by 16 May 2011
Exhibition dates - September 23 to October 24th 2011

What:
The exhibition’s three major components are:
Over 70 works by the world’s most famous Urban Artists
The 40 finalists (20 from both the youth and open sections) of the Oi You! Art Competition
The best of New Zealand Urban Art featuring The Cut Collective.

Where:
The Energy Centre, Nelson. The middle of this building is a pentagon with five huge, eight metre high vintage steel posts. At the very centre is a hook on a pulley capable of supporting a four ton weight. Using partitions, we plan to subdivide the building into four areas: A large central plaza leading to the three exhibition areas each home to one of the major components listed above.

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