ELEMENTRIO Don Pendleton, Todd Francis, Matt Irving

Element – wind, water, fire, earth. What started with a “Listen to Bob Marley” t-shirt has over time become one of the most positive, responsible and influential skateboard brands. In summer 2006, Element went on a tour through Europe with their artists Don Pendleton, Todd Francis and Matt Irving, who also runs the superb San Francisco based clothing label Delphi. The first tour stop and probably also the most impressive event was the Arches in London, where the opening exhibition was hosted by Yuri from Gimme 5 on June 30th. Later stops were Streetmachine in Paris, No New Enemies in Brussels, and the Bread&butter in Berlin. Apart from showing their past artworks for companies such as Alien Workshop, Anti Hero, Spitfire, Stereo, Real Skateboards and, of course, Element, the artists worked on collaborative projects especially for the tourshows. In addition, they conjointly created a graphic which was featured on a poster announcing the exhibition, limited to 100 pieces, and on a special edition Element deck, limited to 50 pieces.
These items were then individually signed by the artists and sold at the exhibitions. During the tour, the artists documented their impressions in a diary which could be followed on Element’s website. Here’s an excerpt of the three artists’ comments from before, during and after the opening in London. [jlm]

Todd Francis:
The first Elementrio art show opens tomorrow night in a section of London called Shoreditch, which is appropriate, because DHL has sure ditched my boxes of boards. The three of us spent all day today hanging the art for the show in the gallery space, a long and strenuous task that ground our nerves to the bone. Of all people, the normally gentle Matt Irving cracked up first, maniacally picking up a hammer and dashing out into the street for a strangely soothing interpretive dance. It’s nice to see Matt has found a comforting outlet for his creativity. Tomorrow night is the London opening, and we're all excitedly anticipating huge crowds, heavy accents and awful techno music. If my decks don't turn up soon, I'm gonna stay in bed and watch British game shows. God Save the Queen.

Matt Irving:
Last night was the first Elementrio show and it was cracking! Lots of people turned out thanks to our host, Yuri from Gimme 5, who did an amazing job at pulling everything together for the space and making sure the underbelly of London was in attendance. Just as we were starting to enjoy ourselves the original illustration that Todd did for the Anti-Hero eagle managed to fly off of the wall at some point. People were bummed as the word was milling around, but one girl knew who had done it but she didn’t want to rat the dude out and get him in trouble. Yuri intervened and fifteen minutes later he was walking back in the door of the gallery with the eagle under his arm. Todd was so happy to get it back, and the Anti-Hero eagle is on its way to gaining "Mona Lisa" status. We all joked about how Jake Phelps would have been on a plane to London first thing in the morning if the eagle had not been returned.

Don Pendleton:
OK, so today was the last day of the exhibit. We broke everything down pretty quickly so that we could roll out and explore the city some more. We spent most of it hitting just about every part of central London by foot. Matt, Todd and Alex (our filmer) decided to splash around in the fountain at Trafalgar Square. I opted to stay on dry land because I could picture myself getting some crazy bacterial infection from the water (which had inadvertently turned into a teeming batch of 'people soup' thanks to high London temperatures and a gnarly sun.) We scurried through the usual tourist areas and ended up crashing at a park to chill and listen to a band that was playing. The rest was actually pretty good. My body is slowly adjusting to eating stranger (albeit healthier) meals. London has been really good to us.

www.elementskateboards.com/elementrio | www.elephont.com
www.toddfrancis.com | www.delphicollective.com