Monthly Archives: February 2016

Trash Sculpture Wants To Break Free

This morning one of our favourite trash sculpture street artists Sell Out created a hugely amusing street art sculpture paying homage to rock legend Freddie Mercury, the late lead singer of Queen. In a classic rock video Freddie and fellow Queen band members appear in drag living in domestic drudgery with Freddie swanning around scandalously dressed in a tight pink top, short leather mini skirt and suspenders proclaiming “I want to break free” as she vacuums and dusts around their congested living room.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, Street artist, Freddie Mercury, Queen

Freddie Mercury: Screen Grab from official Queen video

Sell Out has recreated Freddie at his provocative cross dressing best complete with upright hoover. A swarm of his trademark cut out paper butterflies swarm around Freddie’s head.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, Street artist, Freddie Mercury, Queen, Trash sculpture, Alex Arnell, Sell Out

I Want To Break Free

This video scandalized America’s bible belt, radio stations deleted Queen from their playlists, MTV banned the video and it put Queen’s US commercial career on ice. Europe LOVED it.

The song appeared on Queen’s album The Works which Wikipedia says was released on 27 February 1984, 22 years ago almost to the day. Damn tune was going through my head for the rest of this morning’s tour.

This isn’t Sell Out’s only rock star tribute, a few weeks ago while the world made a shrine of a pointilist portrait in Brixton by Jimmy C, David Bowie appeared immortalised in trash by Sell Out in Shoreditch.

Photo: Alex Arnell

Links: Alex Arnell (Sell Out) Facebook: Alex’s photo shows the trash sculpture without the …errr..trash

ALex has featured many times on previous Shoreditch Street Art Tours blog updates, click here

Photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland except where noted

Heavens Rejects Free Art Not Rejected

Finding Free Art is a frequent occurrence on the Shoreditch Street Art Tour and today we came across a lovely plate by Heavens Rejects with a hand painted demonic worm asking the open ended question “Why Not?”.

Street Art, London, Shoreditch, Shoreditch Street Art Tour, Free Art, Found Art, Heavenly Rejects, Dee One

Heavens Rejects Free Art, 27 Feb 2016

Why not indeed thought birthday girl Ellie as she pounced on Heavens Reject’s gift to the fans of street art.

Ellie does not reject the Free Art

Ellie was celebrating a very very special event, it is her 21^st birthday today, congratulations Ellie. Her celebration with family and friends included a tour with the Shoreditch Street Art Tour and is if that wasn’t enough excitement, a special day became truly great when she became the proud and lucky owner of Heavens Reject’s Free Art gift.

In case you weren’t aware, Free Art is art left on the streets by street artists which they intend some lucky person to take home with them.

“Enjoy Heavens Rejects”

Heavens Reject had evidently been busy, we located several stickers and at least two kinetic spring mounted pieces of art all added to the streets since yesterday afternoon.

Street Art, London, Shoreditch, Shoreditch Street Art Tour, Heavenly Rejects, Dee One

Feb 2106 (aka last night!)

Heavenly rejects has been placing interesting one of pieces of art around Shoreditch for quite a while, although I couldn’t photograph all of them (I was guiding guests on a street art tour after all!), here is a small selection of art pieces with his trademark devil character created in the past by Heavens Rejects.

Street Art, London, Shoreditch, Shoreditch Street Art Tour, Heavenly Rejects, Dee One

Heavens Rejects/D7606 Collaboration

Street Art, London, Shoreditch, Shoreditch Street Art Tour, Heavenly Rejects, Dee One

Just over two years ago a Heavens Rejects Free Art piece was found on the tour the tour by Jonathon:

Jonathan with Heavens Rejects Free Art, August 2014

Facebook: Heavens Rejects

All photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland

Free Art by Sean Worrall #43 Project

Artist and gallerist Sean Worrall devoted a huge amount of energy in 2015 to a project he called #365ArtDrops, leaving painted art on found materials on the streets for people to find, keep and treasure. Quite a number of guests over the year had the good fortune to finish the tour clutching a chance find piece of Sean’s art. Today we had an echo of that joy.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, Guests, art, artist, free art, found art, #43

#43 No 1/43 by Sean Worrall

Sean has a new project #43. Sean’s information page says: “#43 will be a new piece from Sean Worrall consisting of 43 parts and revealed somewhere in London on the 43rd day of 2016.”. The 43^rd day of 2016 was last Friday, Ingrid and Raja spotted this free art on Brick Lane today, they knew a good thing when they saw it and claimed it immediately.

Ingrid and her #43

How nice that their piece is number 1 of the 43.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, Guests, art, artist, free art, found art, #43

Please Take!

We hoped that Sean would share something of the impact that last year’s #365ArtDrops and in the middle of January Sean wrote the beautiful, moving tale of #365ArtDrops piece 348/365. In his writing Sean speaks of the stories that came back to him of the fate of the artworks, the connections established through email and social media. This taps into a particularly awesome power of street art and is well worth reading

The Moving Tale of The 365ArtDrops Piece Left At Moor Street Railway Station Birmingham

As guests on the Shoreditch Street Art Tour collected Sean’s free art over the passage of the year Sean’s project featured quite often here on the blog, you can share in our reminiscences on those older stories HERE.

all photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland

Constant Changes

The enormous panoply of street art in Shoreditch changes daily and it is a constant thrill to be guiding the tour and to come across brand new art which we didn’t know existed. The tour this afternoon was no exception, we came across a lovely piece by Alice Pasquini which hadn’t been seen on any previous tour. The colourful female character is in typical Alice Pasquini style and its placement outside a shop across lettering proclaiming various beauty treatments available within just “works”, even the drippy tag underneath Alice’s character contributes beautifully to the colour scheme.

Alice Pasquini

Alice Pasquini was in London late last week in connection of the opening of XX: A Moment In Time, an exhibition of new works by female street artists in the Saatchi Gallery so this new piece dates back to last weekend. In another location there was a new piece of art which was so fresh we could still smell paint! Frankie Strand and ThisOne have created a green hued female character threatened in some way by a skeletal gypsy figure. This is the first time I have ever seen Frankie Strand paint a human (like) character.

London, Shoreditch, street art, tours, guide, Frankie Strand, This One, This1

Frankie Strand v. This One

Earlier this week on a different route the tour came across a couple of other fresh Alice Pasquini paintings.

Alice Pasquini

Alice pasquini

Frankie Strand has been quite prolific in the past 12 months and earlier this year painted an interesting piece with Crey One on the boundary of the old Shoreditch Tube Station which fuses the core disciplines of graffiti and street art. Notice This One also appearing in the margins on that piece.

London, Shoreditch, street art, tours, guide, Frankie Strand,, Crey One

Frankie Strand v. Crey One: street art & graffiti

Links:

Saatchi Gallery 3 Feb 2016 – 6 March 20216

all photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland