Create & Annoy

Create & Annoy placed Shepard Fairey inside a wide-ranging account of the exchange between skateboarding and art. Co-curated by Steve “Salba” Alba and D*Face, the exhibition ran at StolenSpace Gallery in London from August 13 to October 4, 2026. Original art, installations, photographs and skate-related ephemera supplied several ways into that relationship. The gallery announced a maintenance closure from September 5 to 11 within the overall run.

The curators approached the subject from different but overlapping positions. Alba’s history as a pool rider and D*Face’s background in skating situated the project within a lived culture rather than treating the skateboard simply as an unusual support for painting. Participants included C. R. Stecyk III, Chaz Bojorquez, Haroshi, Lance Mountain, Steve Caballero, Thomas Campbell, Todd Francis and Kai & Sunny, alongside Fairey and many others.

Fairey’s presence can be anchored to a specific object. StolenSpace’s listing on Artsy identifies Prevent Police Boredom V6, dated 2026, as part of Create & Annoy. The gallery describes it as silkscreen and mixed-media collage on paper and lists it as a unique work. That documentation helps distinguish an exhibited artwork from the separately offered Fairey exhibition T-shirts. The shared exhibition branding does not make the clothing and the paper work interchangeable records.

The wider checklist gives the show’s argument material form. D*Face contributed giant skate decks, while Thomas Campbell’s titles identify recycled swallow-tail boards. Add Fuel’s SCARS works and Andy Howell’s Weapon of Choice appear in the same selection. Together, these entries suggest an exhibition interested in what a board can carry: an image, a personal affiliation, the history of use, or an artwork’s deliberately altered surface.

That makes the phrase Create & Annoy useful as more than an energetic slogan. Making an image for a moving, handled and potentially damaged object poses different questions from making one for a protected wall. In this context, Fairey’s work on paper offers a point of comparison with the modified boards. The viewer can consider how an attitude travels between materials, and whether the social force of an image depends on where it circulates. The exhibition’s strongest frame is this exchange between practice and presentation, rather than a claim that every participant follows one style.