Monday, May 21, 2012

The Apprentice does street art

By Jacob K. Powell


Not content with a corporate takeover of the world, hijacking the BBC and gracing our screens as one of the ugliest celebrities on record (with the exception of Andrew Lloyd Webber of course), Alan Sugar has now turned his beady little eyes to the underground current of urban street art. This was bound to happen at some point, as Banksy became too big for Bristol and joined the world's art elite, the corporate cogs had already started creaking for the commercialisation of graff.

Now the death knell for grime culture may just have sounded with a 60 minute episode of The Apprentice airing to reveal just how much the seemingly rebellious and creative genius of street art is really dressed up and flogged to the public. Watching slick city boys and girls in suits sell paintings and canvases at well-orchestrated PR events, fighting each other for commissions from pieces they know nothing and care less about is a little disheartening.

Adam managed to compare Banksy to the Stig, before making a besuited fool of himself in a Bristol basement art bunker or three, and possibly the best quote of the episode came from Nick and Ricky battling with their own corporate image. Running it past Gabby to check if one should remove one's ties before meeting with your graff artist means you probably shouldn't be meeting with a graff artist.

Gabrielle gave it a whirl, professing to have championed a few artists in her time, and again won leadership on the pretext that no one on The Apprentice knows anything about anything cool. At least Adam didn't get promoted this time, as he actually seemed to think Banksy and the Stig might have just have been the same person at one point. Aw.

Tom did have a go at being young and cool, and messed it up marginally less than poor old Gabby, who didn't even get the business bit right. He and Team Phoenix should have won it on the pitching and delivery front, but graff artist Pure Evil chose what he must of thought of as the lesser of two evils and carried though the bumbling Gabrielle and Team Sterling. Safe to say this was by the pure force of his paintings and artistic creativity, not by the aptitude and insight of his fledgling management team. At least someone knew what they were doing.




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