Steve Lazarides

Steve Lazarides (Greek: Στηβ Λαζαρίδης; born c. 1969)[1] is a British-Greek Cypriot[2][3] publisher, photographer, collector and curator. He is noted as one of the first figures to help popularise street art, and as an authority on the latest trends in underground art.[4]

Steve Lazarides
Born1969 (age 52–53)
Bristol, United Kingdom
OccupationGallerist and Art Promoter
Known forOne time associate of Banksy and promoter of street art
Websitelazemporium.com
Steve Lazarides in his West Country studio

Early life

Steve Lazarides grew up in Bristol, England and studied photography at Newcastle Polytechnic.[5] He discovered street subculture and graffiti art as a teenager, hanging out at Bristol's Barton Hill neighbourhood youth club, organised by John Nation and referenced in 2020 documentary Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art ,where Bristol artists 3D (Robert del Naja), Inkie and Banksy honed their craft.

Art career

In the 1980s, he started out with a Nikon F-Type camera documenting his surrounding environments as a rebellious yet determined photography student. He subsequently worked as a photographer for definitive style bibles and cultural trailblazing magazines such as Sleaze Nation, where he was employed as photography director from 1996 till 2001, and The Face. Pursuing his passion for creating a visual narrative, Lazarides delved deep into British sub-cultures and portrayed the youth of his generation partaking in underground movements such as the UK Rave scene in the early 90s; skate culture and the rise of outsider street art.

Commissioned by Sleaze Nation to photograph Banksy's portrait in 1997, he continued to work with the artist in many capacities, including as the anonymous artist's driver and photographer, before eventually becoming his gallerist.

Lazarides and Banksy also launched the 'Pictures on Walls' website in 2001 to promote graffiti art, and widened their scope to work with a larger roster of street artists.[6] He continued this tradition by creating an in-house print studio, Lazarides Editions, and working closely with the artists to create high quality prints to share with the Art community. The market in street art took off in 2007 only shortly before the 2008 Recession, with Banksy's work, "Laugh Now", selling for £228,000 at auction in early 2008.[6] According to the Financial Times, "If there had been one individual responsible for whipping up and sustaining the fever around urban art, and who stood to lose most from its demise, it was Steve Lazarides.".[6]

Lazarides opened up his first gallery in London in 2006, and brought many unknown artists in the UK to light including holding Invader's first UK exhibition, Space Invader's Invasion London and Rubik Bad Men II.[7] Lazarides now represents artists including the renowned portrait painter Jonathan Yeo, the Parisian artist JR, the contemporary English painter Antony Micallef and Portuguese graffiti/street artist Vhils.[8]

In 2009 he moved headquarters from Charing Cross Road into a five-story Georgian townhouse on Rathbone Place, near Oxford Street, with the first exhibition at the new Lazarides Rathbone being of the Portuguese graffiti artist Vhils, this was also the artists debut UK show.[9] Lazarides Rathbone formed the flagship Lazarides space with Lazarides Editions creating prints in a separate site (situated in Greenwich). In 2016 Lazarides opened Banksy Print Gallery[10] in South bank's Mondrian Hotel. The space centered around Steve's time with Banksy and also offers the chance to buy secondary-market Banksy prints. In early 2018 Lazarides moved the space to Mayfair: "When you consider the precipitous prices at which Lazarides manages to flog art, the vast, two-storey, 4,000-square-foot space in a cluster of townhouses on Sackville street makes more sense," wrote Vanity Fair.[11]

Lazarides left the business in September 2019. "It’s got to the stage where [the gallery world] is about nothing other than monetary value and I just can’t work on those terms any more", he told The Art Newspaper, "It is tough in the middle market too… I maintain that 75% of galleries will be gone within five years. It’s too expensive. The only way for them to keep going is from secondary market sales and there’s only a finite number of people who can be flipping Warhols and Basquiats".[12]

Post-Banksy

Lazarides and Banksy parted ways in 2008[13] in unexplained circumstances.[6] In a 2021 Vanity Fair interview Lazarides said, "It’s like when you’re in a relationship and people don’t define you as an individual; they define you as a couple. And it annoys him far more than it annoys me. [Laughs] A decade is long time, especially when you’re both as driven as we are. It gave me much more capacity to work with everyone else. It was an amazing ride and I wouldn’t be here without it, but I don’t necessarily miss it."[14]

Lazarides began to broaden his scope to organise shows that "would not look out of place on a Turner Prize shortlist".[6] He pioneered the contemporary 'immersive art' trend with a several ambitious 'pop-up' shows, including Hell's Half Acre in October 2010, co-curated with actor Kevin Spacey and held in The Old Vic Tunnels beneath Waterloo station, London.[6][15] He returned to the tunnels in 2011 and 2012, with shows titled Minotaur and Bedlam. The most recent Lazarides off-site venture was in collaboration with The Vinyl Factory in October 2013, titled BRUTAL and taking place at London's 180 The Strand. These pop-up shows have included work by, among others, Doug Foster, Conor Harrington, Lucy McLauchlan, Antony Micallef, Karim Zeriahen, Stanley Donwood, Vhils, Todd James and Ian Francis.[16]

Banksy Captured Volumes One and Two

In 2016, Lazarides began exploring his personal photography archive and has spent the last four years carefully sifting through a collection of 100,000 images containing roughly 12,000 photographs[17] he took whilst documenting the birth of a legend. The result is a candid photographic overview of the 11 years Lazarides spent as agent, photographer and right-hand man to one of today's most famous artist in the form of the books, Banksy Captured Volume I & Volume II.

In his true subversive style, Lazarides self-published and self-distributed the first and second editions of Banksy Captured, resulting in sales of over 25,000 copies within a month, at the end of 2019.[18] Banksy Captured Volume II, featuring a further 300-plus pages of photography and behind the scenes tales relayed in Lazarides' inimitable style, was published in March 2021. Volume Two includes reportage from Banksy's 2006 breakthrough Los Angeles exhibition Barely Legal, images of the artist's unauthorised installation inside London's Natural History Museum during 2004, plus "some sh*t I came across I’d just completely forgotten about", according to Lazarides.[19] Banksy Captured Volume I & Volume II were both self-published via Lazarides' Laz Emporium venture, but are available from select retailers including Tate bookstores.

In 2020 Lazarides appeared as a talking head in Vision Films' documentary Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art, originally broadcast on Sky Arts.

Laz Emporium

Lazarides' current venture is Laz Emporium, "a curiosity shop for the 21st Century" selling art prints and homeware using designs from artists including Jamie Hewlett, Jonathan Yeo, Mode 2, Charming Baker, Stash, Teech DDS, and Lazarides' own photography. The "esoteric bazaar" includes a webstore plus a shop across two floors in Soho, London UK, boasting a downstairs exhibition space. "I got sick and tired of the art market and all the money and haven’t missed it a bit. But I still love art, and artists want to have fun again. We’re just operating under the gallery radar", Lazarides told the Financial Times in October 2021. The items are all made at Lazarides' new dedicated art, design and craft studio in the West Country: "I am working with real craftsmen, everything is made to order."[20]

The February 2022 private view for Rave Captured, Lazarides' first ever exhibition featuring his pictures – although of the 1990s rave scene rather than of Banksy – was attended by actor Jude Law, chef Tom Kerridge, members of Faithless, the painter Antony Micallef, plus Lazarides' collaborators Jonathan Yeo and Charming Baker. "It was a privilege to be granted access [to the rave scene] because, as with most subcultures, the only pictures that really count are the ones that tend to be taken by people that are already immersed in something," Lazarides told Huck magazine.

In May 2022 Laz Emporium will host a new exhibition by photographer Ewen Spencer, featuring Spencer's late 1990s work published in Sleaze Nation, collected in his book While You Were Sleeping.

References
  1. Mikhailova, Anna (13 October 2013). "Steve Lazarides, the gallery owner who backed the street artist, is looking to profit from communist posters". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 5 November 2013.(subscription required)
  2. "Steve Lazarides: The Man Behind Banksy". Athens Insider. 10 October 2018. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
  3. "Στηβ Λαζαρίδης, o Ελληνοκύπριος έμπορος τέχνης που ανακάλυψε τον Banksy αποκαλύπτεται". CNN Greece. 13 March 2016. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
  4. Hershkovits, David (31 January 2011). "Live Nation, Tribeca Film Festival and Banksy's Ex-dealer Plan to Challenge Miami Art Basel". PaperMag. Retrieved 2 November 2013 – via The Huffington Post.
  5. Sooke, Alastair (4 August 2007). "A shop window for outsiders". The Telegraph. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
  6. Child, Andrew (28 January 2011). "Urban renewal:Steve Lazarides continues to expand his street art empire". The Financial Times. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
  7. Lazinc, Steve (5 October 2007). "Invader: Space Invader's Invasion London and Rubik Bad Men". LAZ. Retrieved 9 March 2017.
  8. "Artists". LAZ.
  9. Leitch, Luke (11 July 2008). "Steve Lazarides: Graffiti's ?ber-dealer". The Times.(subscription required)
  10. Breen, Matt (25 November 2016). "A Banksy gallery is opening on the South Bank". Time Out London.
  11. Sutherland-Hawes, Charlotte (January 2018). "Lazinc Opens London Flagship with a Head-Turning Installation". Vanity Fair.
  12. Shaw, Anny (September 2019). "Banksy's former agent quits gallery world citing snobbery and the death of subculture". The Art Newspaper.
  13. Smith, Keily (6 June 2014). "Banksy gets unofficial retrospective". BBC News.
  14. Michals, Susan (11 October 2010). "Banksy's Ex-Gallerist Talks About Their Breakup, Depictions of Hell".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  15. "Artistic Installations to be Shown in Recently Discovered Labyrinth Beneath London's Waterloo Station". ArtDaily. 11 October 2010. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
  16. Battersby, Matilda (9 October 2012). "Bedlam? You don't have to be mad to work in the arts, but it helps". Independent.co.uk. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
  17. Peplow, Gemma (2 November 2019). "Banksy – the most revealing photo yet? How his former agent documented art's biggest mystery". Sky News.
  18. Jeffries, Stuart (16 December 2019). "'We were lawless!' Banksy's photographer reveals their scams and scrapes". The Guardian.
  19. Moran, Lee (12 September 2020). "Banksy's Ex-Dealer Lifts The Lid on Iconic Blur Cover With Never-Before-Seen Photos". The Huffington Post.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  20. Gerlis, Melanie (07/10/22). "Pop-up galleries in Beijing free-trade zone and London". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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