It’s a pleasure to have seen VNA magazine move from small time project to pro magazine. Although not the typical ‘glossy’, I find VNA to be inviting and a source of great inspiration. I’ve witnessed VNA move from black and white to colour and more recently, saddleback to perfect bound spine. VNA Issue 7 is a step above the rest. I sang VNA 6’s praises and yet Issue 7 has surprised me somewhat again.

Very Nearly Almost Magazine Issue 7 had a fair amount of hype surrounding it. Concrete Hermit even hosted a launch party, deservedly so. Issue 7 has moved outward and away from London. London’s street art scene is still well documented but VNA looks to capture a global audience as it crosses the pond to New York City.

The new issue is better organised than the previous outings. We find dedicated separate sections for each form of street art: graffiti, stickers, tags, stencils. Even the addition of a contents page is welcomed to helpfully navigate the growing number of pages, issue 7 contains a total of 82 pages (over double that of issue 6).

Issue 6 covered the original Cans festival and Issue 7 looks at Cans Festival Part 2. My previous comments in the Issue 6 review, criticising the vast documentation of the mainstream pieces at Cans, have to be taken back at this point (as well as a little bit of my pride) because what VNA have provided for both these events is an awesome, handy reminder of the great pieces which blessed Leake Street. However, I won’t take back that I’d like to see more of the smaller pieces :P.

Interviews with Cept, C215 and the One Trick Pony collective all come together to improve the quality of content in VNA. Artist C215 has probably had the most recognition recently of all three interviewees, and so it’s great to have his opinion and thoughts available to those who are interested (we’d love to get an interview with him in the future on Concrete Canvas). I personally love finding new artists ready and raring to express their artistic thoughts and opinions and the interview with OTP Collective gave this to me. Along with the interviews, VNA provides extensive examples of the artists’ work and style.

This A5 little wonder has developed into an essential piece of any street art lovers kit. I can only imagine how Issue 8 will turn out. Should the VNA boys decide to keep the setup of this issue for future issues, they’ll be onto a definite winner.

Links:
www.verynearlyalmost.com

We’ve seen Very Nearly Almost (VNA) magazine move a long way from the black and white issues of 2006. The photo street artzine is now considerably smarter with its colour pages. Issue six brings with it a new style: the introduction of a spine and loss of the staples, together makes it look like a ‘proper’ magazine.  What hasn’t been lost fortunately, is the huge range of street art documented within its pages.

Issue 6 covers the stencil art of the great Cans Festival. Unfortunately, only the big names are shown such as Eelus, Banksy, Vexta etc. Whilst this will cover what the majority of people will want to see when looking for pictures of Cans Festival,  I think that Cans Festival is well documented and you don’t have to go far on Flickr to find information on the big artists. That said, the quality of the photos show the artwork in their true form beautifully and if you are unable to get to Leake Street (the Cans Festival Location) youself  or want a reminder of the event, this is a great way to view the artwork.

A highlight of the magazine is the interview with street artist Ace. One thing I personally really enjoy discovering about artists is how they were introduced to street art and I feel that the interview covers this very well. Ace comes across as a very bubbly guy and seems to be open minded where UK street art is headed. When reading the interview however, it felt as if someone had started to tell a joke but forgot the punchline - the ending felt abrupt and I would have loved the interview to have carried on for a couple more pages. With the introduction of the interview to VNA it seems its moving closer to a magazine rather than a photozine (just displaying pictures) which I believe to be a fantastic step in the right direction.

If your looking at getting a street art zine to have something interesting to sit on your coffee table then this is definately a must buy. The pictures in here are great and cover a huge range of artists and styles. If your looking at getting a street art zine to get inspiration from then again, this is definately a must buy. If your looking at getting a street art zine to have something to read whilst your on holiday then you may think again about getting this one. Even though the interview with Ace, is well… ace, its fairly short and will leave you wanting more. The addition of the interview in Issue 6 is brilliant and I hope that Issue 7 will feature more text content. At only £3 you’ll find it hard to complain about anything in this mag and I would recommend getting it to anyone, unless your only buying it to read on holiday :P. As a photozine it is superb and any artists that finds his/her work in here should be very proud.

Links:
Very Nearly Almost Website

As some of you may be aware, the graffiti artist Kron has recently bought out the first issue of the graffiti fanzine, No Comment.
Limited to just 100 copies, I was lucky enough to get my hands on one.  The zine features a great amount of walls, trains, and sketchbook pieces, and is a great document of a selection of artists that I admire.  It is A4 in size, and features 44 pages of black and white photocopied pages.  Each front cover is individual, and some randomly selected, lucky people (not including me), got hand painted covers from a selection of artists.
At just £3.50, this is a bargain, and I look forward to issue 2!

AURORA Collective is Sebastian Gondek’s baby. He created AURORA early in 2008 as a small shirt label but began to spread his wings and has since produced a massive range of new t-shirts, stickers and buttons. This was not enough however. Following his love for street art, Sebastian decided to produce a small and independent artzine featuring artists that he’s followed over the last few years. Coupled with his friends in the street art scene and his entrepreneurship, AURORA collective spawned.

The AURORA artzine is centered around street art and creative artists. It’s a glossy landscape A5 magazine which has ZERO adverts. Issue 1 features art from artists such as riot68, i.am.doom and Florian Bayer. It has two interviews with Heiko Muller (an illustrator from Hamburg) and Bytedust (a designer from Netherlands). I found the interview with Heiko to be very informing and a pleasant surprise. It was packed with his incredible illustrations/paintings - one of which is titled ‘Giant Bear’. His artwork looks like it had been dragged out of a children’s book and takes me back to my own childhood. Unfortunately Bytedust’s interview wasn’t as entertaining but still conveyed Bytedust’s interesting personality. The layout and look of the magazine is superb, a real credit to Sebastian. The cover is jet black and has the logo on the front and the website address on the back, both in white. Inside the magazine, there is a picture on every page except one (which we can forgive :P).

The ‘Street Art Gallery’ section of the zine features work from Japan, Philadelphia and New York City. Unfortunately however, all the street art featured is of stickers with only one exception being of a pasteup. I found this disappointing as I was expecting a large variety of street art documented and I noticed some of the stickers even to be repeated. On a better note, this is the only fault of this zine and, as it’s still in its early days I expect this to be a temporary blip in AURORA collective’s life. The biggest strength of AURORA artzine has to be the amount of text through out. I am tired of receiving a street art zine to find it has limited or next to no text or information about the artists, locations or where to find more info.

I extremely recommend this AURORA artzine to anyone who wants a little more than just pictures. With interviews and articles about art projects this zine is well worth a read.

Links:
AURORA Collective