A few years ago, there was much excitement about Straat Museum, a huge, new, innovative showcase for street art planned for Amsterdam (see the Art Junkie post about it here.) Red tape, building concerns and the pandemic set completion back but it’s up and running now and it’s exceeding all expectations.

Reviews of the museum say the exhibitions are superb. The latest is a solo show Take me Down by Mando Marie, known for meticulous devotion to hand-drawn and hand-cut stencils, below.

Housed in an imposing national monument – the 8,000 square metre Lasloods building of the NDSM wharf in Amsterdam North – STRAAT Museum’s permanent collection consists of more than 160 artworks by more than 130 international, street art and graffiti artists.

Canadian artist Michelle Hoogveld is represented there, with a work called Resonance and Canadian-born Chris Dyer painted the imaginary creature (below) in Shamanic journey, which he visualized after taking the entheogenic drink ayahuasca in Peru.

The canvases are all the size of exterior walls. The artists use the same techniques and materials as outside, including scaffolding and elevators.

Browse the Straat Museum site for more.

Underground artist Banksy has created three memorable images for the London Summer Olympics, released on his website this week and sure to cause controversy — not just because authorities have clamped down on graffiti but also because of the nature of the images, as in child labor, above. Here’s a full-on street view of that one. The javelin has upgraded to a missile and the pole vaulter is leaping over barbed wire into freedom.

Banksy’s website, here.

If you follow street art, you’re probably familiar with both ATG (Ahead’a The Game) and Silverlink, former name of the above-ground line that crosses London from east to west and helped launch this group of writers, visual artists, musicians and DJ’s rooted in London sub-culture. This post is about founding member Panik (Jack Murray), but you can go here to see more about the other artists in the exhibition.

The group show will showcase a mix of photography, illustration, painting, collage and sculpture.

Klughaus Gallery, NY here.

I saw Laura Ortiz Vega’s fibre graffiti in Toronto a few months ago and her work is captivating.  She uses thread and a natural beeswax (cera de Campeche) on board to document the street art of Mexico City where she works.

Some of her work was small street tags, but most is larger graffiti slabs that are hard to differentiate from the original.  Vega sees her role as a documentary artist, preserving the street art of her native city, especially since the graffiti is often painted over before her pieces are finished.

More images at La Estacion Gallery, here.