Jack Arts Sponsors Artist Mustafa Hulusi’s Flyposting Exhibition

Creative out-of-home agency, Jack Arts has sponsored Mustafa Hulusi’s Flyposting exhibition to be held at The Cass Bank Gallery on the 28th of September until the 30th October 2015. In conjunction with the exhibition, Jack Arts has also partnered with Hulusi and the London Metropolitan University to launch the inaugural Jack Arts Outdoor Poster Competition.

The exhibition will be the first time, that a selection of Hulusi’s work, since 1998, have been brought together in a gallery setting. Flyposting has been a consistent and integral part of Hulusi’s practice since 1998. Well known for his viral flyposting campaigns, Hulusi’s work moves within the physical realm of advertising to display his art, making use of customised visuals and geometric patterns as well as large scale images of flowers and fruit. The exhibition, hosted at The Cass Bank Gallery, offers the audience an opportunity to experience a range of these works outside their original context. Chance encounters on the street are replaced by a purposeful gaze within the gallery setting. The confinements of the gallery walls do not attempt to claim an ‘elevated’ status for the work; his images stay true to their conceived state, being flyposted across the gallery walls.The crude pasting of the posters leaves smeared traces after application, ensuring that the mode of display is very much apparent, acting as a foil to the aesthetic qualities of the images. 

The rough physicality of flyposting emphasises its analogue qualities, whilst its vulnerable, perishable status asserts its ephemeral, transitory nature.The works reference aspects of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, ranging from historical art and kitsch iconography to graphic design styles. This tactic of visual appropriation seeks to remind the audience of their role within a collective social memory. Images and references become dislocated from their status or hierarchy and are presented as democratic and open.The eclecticism of Hulusi’s imagery is testimony to the fact that notions of beauty are in the eye of the beholder. Some of the works included in the exhibition are Pomegranates No.1 (2014), Expander (2006), newBuild  1999) Checkered (1998), and Cypriot Olive Tree (2011).

Throughout Hulusi’s career, Jack Arts has provided an integral platform through which the artist has been able to showcase much of his work. Jack Arts’ heritage lies within the outdoor poster space, having been the first and only agency to run authorized flyposting schemes in the UK. The agency is proud of its sensitivity and understanding of the importance of street space as an area in which visual exchange takes place and where shared social possibilities can occur.

The inaugural Jack Arts Outdoor Poster Competition is the first of its kind and has been designed to encourage creative and innovative approaches for outdoor poster art, as well as nurture new talent. It is open to all fine art students at the London Metropolitan University, and challenges them to produce a creative design to be displayed as a street poster. Students will get the opportunity to present their work to an esteemed panel of judges including, artists Mustafa Hulusi, Patrick Brill, aka Bob and Roberta Smith, (MA Course Leader for Fine Art, London Metropolitan University), as well as Tim Horrox (Managing Director, Jack Arts). The winner will see their work exhibited across a number of Jack Arts outdoor poster sites later this year.

“We are delighted to be sponsoring Mustafa’s exhibition and to be launching the inaugural Jack Arts Outdoor Poster Competition. We have always believed in the importance of critical engagement through art in the medium of the outdoor poster, and will continue to support such initiatives” - Tim Horrox, Managing Director, Jack Arts