Monthly Archives: January 2016

Banksy vs French Embassy In London

After a long long wait (since mid 2012 actually) Banksy has sent us scrambling with a new piece of street art in London.

It is a stunning piece, combining political content, perfect placement and the big “wow – how did he pull that off?” factor.

The piece references the gassing of refugees in the Calais Jungle by French Police earlier this month. It is placed right opposite the French Embassy, under the watchful gaze of their armed security guards and CCTV cameras.

Sadly this morning developers refurbishing the premises the art is place on were implementing a plan to preserve the work and solve health and safety issues arising from its placement, i.e., they were going to have it. The removal attempt was temporarily aborted and they have resorted to covering it up with plywood. so relieved to have got there in time.

There is a more detailed assessment I have written on Graffoto

all photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsinEngland

Street Art Lights Up

London has gone light crazy so it’s appropriate to show what a little light can do for street art. Here are some photos taken by guests on a recent Night Street Art Photography Tour showing how a little light makes a night photo sizzle.

Airy and Octavia, two guests on the tour captured some fantastic night street art photos where we employed light painting techniques. It is quite illuminating (sorry!) to look at how two different eyes produce quite varied interpretations of the same situation.

The spray painting genius of Shok1 really stands out in daytime with this X-Ray hand, a doctor on the street art tours once commented that the anatomical accuracy was remarkable.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Night, Night Street Art Photography Tour, Light, Light painting, Shok1

Shok1. photo: Dave Stuart

At night, add a bit of light and the piece is transformed, our featured image above is Shok1’s devil hands transformed by Alex Faulkener’s photography while below is what Octavia Romero Nuñez saw.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Night, Night Street Art Photography Tour, Light, Light painting

Shok1. Photo: Octavia Romero Nuñez

In my look-back over the street art highlights of 2015 I described Mr Fan’s chrome balloon “STAR” as “One of the most exquisite pieces of spray painting “, throw a little light on the situation and the balloons almost burst off the wall.

Mr Fan Photo: Octavia Romero Nuñez

Mr Fan. Photo: Alex Faulkener

And this is what STAR by Mr Fan/Fanakapan looks like in daylight

STAR by Mr Fan. Photo: Dave Stuart

Austrian artist HNRX put up a luscious pair of lips whose pearly dental perfection soon decayed. Illuminating the border makes the piece look like a neon sign.

HNRX (modified) Photo: Octavia Romero Nuñez

HNRX (modified) Photo: Alex Faulkener

HNRX’s lips look like this in daylight – pre and post modification by hand unknown:

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Night, Night Street Art Photography Tour, Light, Light painting. Lips. Teeth, HNRX

HNRX before and after. Photo Dave Stuart

If you are interested in taking fantastic photos such as these by Octavia and Alex, the Night Street Art Photography Tour runs until the evenings get too bright so around about the end of March and resume again when the go back in the Autumn, more details HERE.

Featured image: AlexFaulkener

Many thanks to Octavia and Alex for their permission to use their photographs.

Other photos: Dave Stuart/NoLionsInEngland

The Light Fantastic

It’s not street art as we would normally look at but it is art on the streets. And in parks, and in Trafalgar Square, and it is fun. Lumiere London launched this evening and runs for the next 3 nights to Sunday night.

Les Limineoles by Porte par le vent

“Les Lumineoles” by Porte par le vent literally did dance in the breeze weaving a dreamy tapestry of colour.

Les Limineoles by Porte par le vent

I got around just over a half of the installations and loved them all. Crowdstopper and road blocker of the lot is on the façade of 218 – 222 Regents street where Keyframes, a matrix of animated light stick figures by Groupe LAPS dance and cavort over the building to a bleeping symphony of computer game musical sound effects, quite mesmerising and the conclusion of the cycle drew a deserved round of applause from the 100s gathered to watch.

“Plastic Islands” by Luzinterruptus brought to mind the thought “this represents exactly what Gorillaz were signing about in “Plastic Beach”

Plastic Islands, Luz Interruptus

Garden Of Lights, Leicester Sq by TILT

You can’t go wrong with goldfish.

Aquarium by Benedetto Bufalino & Benoit Deseille

Lightbench by Bernd Spiecker for LBO LichtBankObjekte

Sanctuary by Sarah Blood

The lights which have illuminated to top of the landmark office block Centre Point towering over Tottenham Court Rd tube station have been relocated to Trafalgar Square, a far more appropriate location since this is historically where all distances from London have been measured.

Centre Point at the National Portrait Gallery

Brothers and Sisters by Ron Haselden

Trafalgar Sq

Lightbench by Bernd Spiecker for LBO LichtBankObjekte

I have a soft spot for Julian Opie’s Shaida Walking as an edition version of Suzanne Walking adorns our wall at home, his “RUth Walking In Jeans” has been illuminating Regents Place in Euston for years but sadly is often static or malfunctioning.

Shaida Walking by Julian Opie

Elephantastic by Top’la Design/Catherine Garrett

“Light Graffiti” by Floating Pictures at Kings Cross is described as technology which converts a moving source of light into lights projected onto a building, I will reserve judgement on the appropriate use of the word graffiti until it proven that it is possible to paint comedy male anatomy. Await updates.

For more information, check the event website at http://www.lumiere-festival.com/ or http://www.visitlondon.com/lumiere/programme#ref=nav

All photos: Dave Stuart/NoLionsInEngland

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)

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.

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

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:

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:

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:

D7606 (UK), KafkaIsFamous

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

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.

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.

mosaic – artist unknown, Endless, Himbad, Noriaki

Featured image: Mazatl and Fusca from Mexico collaborate in Shoreditch

All photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland

New Years Day New Free Art by Sean Worrall

Last night I was picking photos and writing words to go in a review of 2015 street art that had caught my eye when I saw on Sean Worrall’s facebook page that he had been out hanging a few pieces of free street art, also known as found art or art that the artist does intend you take home and treasure in Shoreditch. I am going to have to re-write what I wrote last night because on the Shoreditch Street Art Tour today we found several pieces of Sean’s #365artdrops project.

London, Shoreditch, street art, tours, walks, found art, free art, #365artdrops, Sean Worrall

#365artdrops number 239

#365artdrops is a project that Sean has run throughout 2015 and a number of the free pieces of street art he has left on the street have gone home with guests of Shoreditch Street Art Tours.

#365artdrops 258

The two pieces above are both going to a new home in Sydney, Australia. This next piece was destined to decorate family premises in Spain.

#365artdrops 357

An interesting aspect of Sean’s project is that he has no control over what happens to his #365artdrops once he steps away from it. Some of it may end up in skips, one piece I know of found a home hanging in the toilet of a Shoreditch café and a number have actually ended up travelling the world, a long way from their original liberation from skips and bins on the streets of London.

#365artdrops 357

Sean has just published a blog post about the completion of his #365artdrops project and promises a more comprehensive review of the project soon, it will be fascinating to get his insight into what impacts the project has had on him as a person and an artist. Well done Sean Worrall for keeping up that project throughout 2015, we will miss the excitement of these chance discoveries.

Sean updates his Facebook page and a photo album with the latest news on his #365artdrops project here: https://www.facebook.com/sean.worrall1

For previous works of art from Sean’s project which were found, photographed and written about on blog posts, click here

All photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland