The Andipa Gallery - Faile - Artist Biography

Faile

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
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The pioneering street-artist collective Faile formed in Brooklyn, New York in late 1998. Two of the group's founding members, Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, first met at school and had long been sharing ideas for artistic projects. When McNeil met Japanese artist Aiko Nakagawa at an exhibition in the Meatpacking District, all three artists began to collaborate under the name A Life. Following the Shepard Fairey's example, the group began wheat-pasting images and graphics from popular culture, like comic books and pulp fiction novels. When they realised the name A Life already belonged to a Brookly-based store connected to the street art scene, they changed their name to Faile: an anagram of their original name meant to drawn on their personal history while allowing for artistic regeneration. Faile also began to change their technique, and moved from the relatively quick process of wheat-pasting to methodically using underpaint and stencil. While many street artists' work is political or socially aggressive in nature, Faile aspires to create work that is non-confrontational. In 2006, Nakagawa left the group to pursue a career in the fine arts. Miller and McNeil have since moved onto other projects such a murals, fashion design, music video, and photography.

In 2008, Faile were one of a selection of five artists chosen to paint the facade of the Tate Modern for the gallery's Street Art exhibition. They concurrently held a successful solo exhibition in South London.