London, Shoreditch, Street art, guided tours, guide, artists, collaboration, intervention, Mazatl, Fusca, Mexican artists

Let’s Stick Together 2015

2015 was another great year for street art in Shoreditch.   Street art was big, small, political, sexy, collaborative, disruptive, international, domestic, legal, illegal, sculptural, painted, printed, hand stitched, amusing, thought provoking but never anything less than inventive.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, guided tours, guide, artists, collaboration, intervention,

Noriaki adds a rider to Anat Ronen’s cat

Over on Graffoto there is a quite large review with many beautiful photographs of a load of street art that blew my socks off personally, so that’s covered.   Last New Year Shoreditch Street Art Tours looked back over art whose creation had been witnesses on the tour by our guests. This year, we are going to look back on collaborations. Some were legal (possibly), some illegal (perhaps); some were planned by two artists working together, some are collaboration by dint of later intervention. Do enjoy.

D7606 has adopted collaborative practices for a long time, creating art with a range of UK and international artists. Here City Kitty from New York answers one of D7606’s pop art phones.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, guided tours, guide, artists, collaboration, intervention, City Kitty, D7606

City Kitty (NY), D7606 (UK)

Two absolute legends from the world of graffiti and street art combined for the first time during London’s Art Week to produce this beguiling pair of colourful characters.

Kid Acne, Inkie (UK)

Kid Acne, Inkie (UK)

Wrdsmth creates beautiful pithy stencil and paper combinations and here he worked just before Christmas on a gorgeous collaboration with UK street artist C3 who creates seductive but dangerous heart breakers on recylded financial newspapers. Look how Wrdsth’s stencil goes over C3’s paste up, and the paste ups from both artists mutually overlap eachother, truly collaborative.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, guided tours, guide, artists, collaboration, intervention, WRDSMTH (LA), C3 (UK)

WRDSMTH (LA), C3 (UK)

Avem pasted an enormous white hand onto a wall, a couple of weeks later Frankie Strand sent her lizards in to have a play with it

London, Shoreditch, Street art, guided tours, guide, artists, collaboration, intervention,

Avem, Frankie Strand

Another Anat Ronen, this time graffiti writer DERS makes it clear that Vincent van Gogh has admiring glances for one thing only:

London, Shoreditch, Street art, guided tours, guide, artists, collaboration, intervention, Anatronen, DERS

Anat Ronen, DERS

HNRX’s pearly white teeth soon rotted, it is not clear whether this intervention was the hand of another artist or actually a witty evolution by HNRX himself:

London, Shoreditch, Street art, guided tours, guide, artists, collaboration, intervention, HNRX

HNRX

D7606 (again) collaborated with KafkaIsFamous to give the dog a pair of spectacles with Liz Taylor reflected in the lenses. He then got up very high for impressive placement over the barbed wire:

London, Shoreditch, Street art, guided tours, guide, artists, collaboration, intervention, D7606 (UK), KafkaIsFamous

D7606 (UK), KafkaIsFamous

Noriaki does like an amusing intervention, here proclaiming himself unique like all the rest on St8ment’s angry boy lineup:

London, Shoreditch, Street art, guided tours, guide, artists, collaboration, intervention, St8ment, Noriaki

St8ment, Noriaki

Masterful ink painter Alexis Diaz got a new painting on this wall which in 2014 featured his Octophant which from time to time guests on the tour still enquire about.  Working here with Elian from Argentina in May 2015.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, guided tours, guide, artists, collaboration, intervention, Elian (Arg), Alexis Diaz (Puerto Rico)

Elian (Arg), Alexis Diaz (Puerto Rico)

Finally, a tour favourite.  Let’s hope we see more witty and inventive collaborations, interactions and interventions in 2016.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, guided tours, guide, artists, collaboration, intervention,

mosaic – artist unknown, Endless, Himbad, Noriaki

Featured image: Mazatl and Fusca from Mexico collaborate in Shoreditch

All photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland