Futura : The Bowery Wall

A few months ago, Leonard McGurr, formerly Futura 2000 and now Futura, took to the streets once again, painting the Bowery wall in his signature style. The wall is essentially a right of passage for an international street artist. I only found out recently that he dropped the 2000 from his name in the year 2000. I guess that makes sense but it’s pretty cool for a kid growing up in the 60’s to be that aware of time and specifically the future so intrisically. I can’t say I’d have created a moniker in my teens and thrown 2050 on the end of it. A. Pretty pessimistically, I mightn’t make it that far and B. It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Futura, like many of the artists I like to follow has a practice that toes the line between inside and outside, playing with ideas around what can be classified as street art and fine art. The piece documented in the film here by Jason Goldwatch and Futura’s son, 13th Witness is no different. The artist’s fervent energy is as present here as one of his large canvas pieces, manipulating his spray cans, make shift brushes and cherry picker to create his desired expression of abstracted movement and rhythm. This particular piece interestingly is more monochrome than I’ve seen his canvas work go.

The video is really nicely shot, the score by Alexander Spit is a great accompaniment as we see photography spliced with some live action filming from the weekend. You might recognise a few familiar faces among the footage. Nigel Sylvester pops a few bunny hops and bar spins over the artist after rolling up in the beemer. You might recognise Martha Cooper in there as well, famed for documenting the graffiti culture of the 70’s and 80’s that Futura was growing up in. All that’s left to do is press play and enjoy. Peep an image of the final piece below courtesy of SDJ at The Hundreds. Cheers for reading!