First look: Phil Lumbang's New Arrival at Unit 44
The West Coast bear painter's first British solo show opens in an industrial yard in the East End of Newcastle.
Unit 44 in Newcastle has released a set of preview photographs from its next show, and they make a good case for the trip north. New Arrival is a solo exhibition by Phil Lumbang, the Los Angeles artist, and it is his first solo show in the UK. The preview is on Friday 3 February, with the show open to the public from Monday 6 February.
The bears
Lumbang is best known on the American West Coast for his bears: simple, round-eared characters painted in clean flat colour, designed to be read in a second and to make whoever passes them smile. He has put them up along the coast for several years, and they have become a cult favourite with people who follow street art in California. The approach is a deliberate contrast with the aggressive register that a lot of street work adopts. Lumbang has said in interviews that he wants his characters to change what people expect to find on a wall, and he paints in daylight, which keeps things simple with the authorities and fits the friendly tone of the work.
His background explains the discipline of the imagery. He came into the scene through design, interning at Obey Giant while still studying and later working at Studio Number One alongside Shepard Fairey. Fairey’s lesson, that a simple image repeated with enough persistence becomes something the public recognises and remembers, is visible all through Lumbang’s work. He has also been closely involved with The Hundreds, the Los Angeles streetwear label, producing artwork and clothing that has found its own following.
What is in the show
For New Arrival Lumbang has produced a new body of work that draws on his childhood interest in cartoons, pop art and logo design. The show works across several media: found objects painted and reworked, tiled pieces, hand-painted characters and a run of limited-edition screenprints. The preview images suggest the bears carry through all of them, which gives the show a strong sense of identity even as the materials change from piece to piece.
He is also the first American artist to hold a show at Unit 44, which is a small milestone for a gallery that has only been open since 2010.
The gallery
Unit 44 sits in Hoults Yard on Walker Road, in the East End of Newcastle, a former industrial estate that has been turned over to creative businesses. The gallery has leaned into that setting. Its space is rougher and more workmanlike than a conventional white room, and it has made a habit of bringing artists in for short stays to work on site, so that a show often comes together in the building instead of arriving in crates. Alongside its exhibitions, the gallery has been coordinating an outdoor mural programme across the Hoults Yard estate, which puts work by visiting painters on the walls around the building.
For a city that does not always get the touring street art shows that London takes for granted, a gallery with that sort of reach is a real asset. Details of the programme are on the gallery’s site (unit-44.com).