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Art Show Review

Sweet Toof Mid Nite Crisis Exhibition

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Mid Nite Crisis
14 – 22nd December 2018

Rocket Barber Shop
118 Stoke Newington High St, London N16 7NY

Sweet Toof, East London’s legendary dental illustrator is back for a show in the unlikely surroundings of a North London barber shop cellar. The unorthodox location heaves with canvasses, prints and bizarre objects. Knick knacks with lurid buck toofed characters abound while disembodied gnashers chomp in mouthless isolation.

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Cool, trendy upstairs

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Shady basement downstairs, shady geezers, shady gals

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Cellar. Sweet Toof.

Many acquainted with the breadth of Sweet Toof’s outdoor endeavours will recognise Mid Nite crisis as a corruption of Mid Life Crisis, which Sweet Toof and friends often put up on walls.

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Mid Nite Crisis

Sweet Toof MLC collab with Rolf Carl Werner, Dalston 2017
Sweet Toof MLC collab with Rolf Carl Werner, Dalston 2017

Centre stage is hogged by a train set with the looping period piece rail service hit hard with whole car Sweet Toof graffiti. This straight up not-for-sale Sweet Toof toy provided what the vast majority of arty art shows lack, something to have fun with!

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Battered Choo Choo

It is only 12 months since Sweet Toof last exhibited in Dalston, a joint show with Swedish artist Rolf Carl Werner (review here) and the good news to take away from that is that artists abandoning London aren’t actually lost to London.

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Stag Night

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Knick Knacks

Moments of darkness transformed the cellar into a graveyard of glowing ghoulish gnashers.

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A print launched at the show featured Sweet Toof collaborating with Aida on a gentrification lament. The print celebrates 10 years that Aida and Sweet Toof have worked together on prints and other  collaborative artistic misdemeanors.

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GentriFUCKation – Aida Wild/Sweet Toof Collaboration

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Completely anonymous artist in disguise.

There is an irony in the concept of two street artists coming together in a trendy barbershop in Dalston to protest against gentrification.

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GentriFUCKation – Aida Wild/Sweet Toof Collaboration

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That’s not to knock the location of the show in a hairdressers. It is crucially important that this scene is outside the gallery system and not dependent upon museums or art world support, Sweet Toof by convention is unconventional.

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Aida and Sweet Toof also collaborated on a lush variant on Aida’s ever popular “EAST END SUCKS” print.

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East End Sucks, Aida Wilde/Sweet Toof Collab, 

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Cleaned your teef?

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Red Handed (Above), Roller Gang (Below)

Links:
Sweet Toof instagram
Aida Wilde instagram, website
All photos and video by Dave Stuart: instagram

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