The Art of DMC
Hang Up Gallery
Stoke Newington
June 11th-25th, 2017
Way, way, way back when most people reading this weren't yet born, and maybe some of their parents weren't born, I had a great musical night out, one of my best ever, in Brighton with a fantastic double bill of The Beastie Boys and Run DMC. It was the great giant erecting penis era and chucking beers around frat boy Beastie Boys and the world shaking Run DMC global hit with Aerosmith, Walk This Way. Let's just say it was all fucking brilliant.
A lot's changed since then. I sit and writing this just after discovering that to retain power, Theresa May has formed an alliance with a virulently anti gay faction, who'll probably be canny enough to wag the dog since Theresa May seems to be about as inept as any high profile politician has been. And so I suppose, it's been a long way down from the freedom and joie de vivre embodied in that giant penis and that huge rap rush of Run DMD and the Beastie Boys that night, to where we are tonight, with desperate people desperately doing anything to cling to power.
I guess I am always looking for solace, for something, for a buffer from how crap the world can seem after the long putative end to the working class ascendancy. So today, color. A splash of it, a dash of it. The color of music on the canvas, or paper and ink and a little note about the Art of DMC. The Art of DMC is first UK exhibition of the work of Darryl McDaniels, the DMC from... Run DMC at the Hang Up Gallery in Stoke Newington.
Hip Hop culture has been brow-beaten, borrowed, bastardized, outrightly stolen from (even as recently as last week some boring indie band in a stunningly audacious move labelled their new album a mixtape... - alright I am having a bad day. That's nitpicking and carping. White people would never knowingly steal from black culture...) oh and Hip Hop has been influential beyond incredible in the past 40 years or so and Darryl McDaniels has been right there the whole time. Up there with the greats. He is one of the greats. I mean, he was an early untier of his adidas shoelaces.
At the Hang Up Gallery, the Darryl Makes Comics exhibition is a vibrant, exciting, way cool, urban superhero comic art popart experience. Darryl McDaniels has been influenced by comic books and comic art all of his life and its great that his work is adorning a corner of the UK. It's here for a short time and not to be missed unless you're a complete asshole bore.
Essential Info
The Art of DMC
Hang Up Gallery
81 Stoke Newington Road
Stoke Newington
London N16 8AD
hanguppictures.com
