Photos of illegal billboards in London subverted by French street artist Thom Thon who cuts into the layers creating adbusting

Thom Thom Club Adbusting

As well as being a street art capital, Shoreditch hosts a lot of advertising.  It comes in many varieties, billboards, flyposters, spraypainted mural adverts, and more.   Adbusting has been the street artists traditional response to adverts. Street Art has always held an anti advertising stance close to its heart, we prefer art on the streets to adverts.  This aversion to adverts can be seen in street artists placing art into adverts, replacing whole adverts, tearing down adverts or occasionally cutting or tearing into adverts to reveal layers of colour.   One artist engaging in the later practice is French street artist Thom Thom who visited Shoreditch this week.  The full story is contained in a blog post on our sister blog Graffoto, here is a sequence of photographs showing Thom Thom’s intervention on one illegal billboard in Wheler Street:
Photos of illegal billboards in London subverted by French street artist Thom Thon who cuts into the layers

14th November, underlying advert, note the railings

Photos of illegal billboards in London subverted by French street artist Thom Thon who cuts into the layers
Photos of illegal billboards in London subverted by French street artist Thom Thon who cuts into the layers

23rd November, first Thom Thom Intervention

Photos of illegal billboards in London subverted by French street artist Thom Thon who cuts into the layers

24th November – second Thom Thom anti advert action

Links Thom_Thom_2000 instagram Zimballatree instagram All photos: Dave Stuart except Zimballatree where stated