Monthly Archives: May 2016

Free Art – Finding Sean Worrall

An unprecedented event occurred on the Shoreditch Street Art Tour at the end of last week, we found a piece of free art which no one in the group wanted to take home with them.   We will spare the blushes of the artist and not put up an image of the artwork.

Free Art is art left out on the streets by artists, usually street artists, which is intended to be found by a lucky person who is allowed to take the art home.  This morning normality was restored when the tour came across a beautiful piece of free art left as a gift  by the artist Sean Worrall.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tours, Free Art, Found Art, Sean Worrall, Louisa, #ArtDrop

With the number of people in the tour group there always a dilemma as to who should take home the piece of free art, so it was very sweet that the group agreed this morning that the youngest person on the tour should take home the free art, which is how the delightful and very excited Louisa became the proud owner of one of the finest works I have seen Sean drop on the streets.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tours, Free Art, Found Art, Sean Worrall, Louisa, #ArtDrop

Louisa said that she couldn’t wait to hang it on her bedroom door, so it will be her own personal original piece of art.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tours, Free Art, Found Art, Sean Worrall, Louisa, #ArtDrop

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tours, Free Art, Found Art, Sean Worrall, Louisa, #ArtDrop

“Please Take” #ArtDrop

Sean has left many items of Free Street art on the streets, he famously ran a project last year called #365artdrops, a piece of free art for every day of the year and several guests on the Shoreditch Street Art Tour went home as delighted owners of a piece of Sean’s work.  You can  read more about those in the link below but the best story about the purpose of Sean’s project and how it touched on people’s lives is in this beautiful and moving story Sean published in January this year.

Links:

Sean’s blog post about this piece

Sean Worrall’s Website

Free Art on Shoreditch Street Art Tours

All photos: Dave Stuart


London, Urban Art, Stik, NHS, Auction, Christies, Baby

Stik Auction At Christies Today

A few fortunate tour guests will know Stik as the very friendly gentleman with the paint splattered trousers who has joined us in the tour for a brief moment.  Here is some news from Stik:

British street artist STIK’s iconic ‘Sleeping Baby’ print proofs will go on auction today at Christie’s South Kensington, London. The edition last year raised £50,000 for Homerton Hospital in London and this week the full set of four artists proofs will give an extra boost to the hospital with 100% of funds going to their charitable trust.

London, Urban Art, Stik, NHS, Auction, Christies, Baby

Image via Stik

The ‘Sleeping Baby’ image represents the vulnerability of the NHS and has been adopted by the junior Doctor’s as the mascot of their industrial strike action. This is a unique opportunity to own a piece of social history in the making.

Lot Description:
STIK
Sleeping Baby

London, Urban Art, Stik, NHS, Auction, Christies, Baby

Image from Sik

The complete set of four screenprints in colours, 2015, on cream wove paper, each signed in pencil, inscribed AP 1/4, artist’s proof impressions aside from the edition of 25 in each colour, the full sheets, apparently in very good condition, unexamined out of the frames.

Image 590 x 1080 mm., Sheet 650 x 1120 mm. (each) (4)

Donated by the artist in aid of the Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Art Charitable Fund.

This lot is offered with a Certificate of Authenticity from the artist.

London, Urban Art, Stik, NHS, Auction, Christies, Baby

Image via Stik

Links:

Bid at Christies: STIK Lot 263

Find out more about the project on theguardian.com

Print Release

Doctor’s Rally (feat Stik cameo)


London Space Invaders Resurrected

Guests on a tour a couple of weeks ago will recall the excitement of spotting a curious new Space Invader sticker.

London, Shoreditch, Ladbroke Grove, Kings Cross, Street art, Space Invader, mosaics, reactivation, ressurectin, stickers

Over a classic Union flag invader was the legend “Reactivation Team UK” and the motto #protect_them.  A little bit of digging resulted in finding 5 Space Invaders which have been “reborn”, in other words they are old classics which had disappeared from their locations due to the ravages of time, authority, disgruntled property owners or plain old sticky fingered fans.

London, Shoreditch, Ladbroke Grove, Kings Cross, Street art, Space Invader, mosaics, reactivation, ressurectin, stickers

Space Invader LDN_01 – the first!

London, Shoreditch, Ladbroke Grove, Kings Cross, Street art, Space Invader, mosaics, reactivation, ressurectin, stickers

Space Invader LDN_27

London, Shoreditch, Ladbroke Grove, Kings Cross, Street art, Space Invader, mosaics, reactivation, ressurectin, stickers

Space Invader LDN_28

London, Shoreditch, Ladbroke Grove, Kings Cross, Street art, Space Invader, mosaics, reactivation, ressurectin, stickers

Space Ivvader LDN-45

London, Shoreditch, Ladbroke Grove, Kings Cross, Street art, Space Invader, mosaics, reactivation, ressurectin, stickers

Space Invader LDN_88

More information and photographs is on the Graffoto blog

London, Shoreditch, Ladbroke Grove, Kings Cross, Street art, Space Invader, mosaics, reactivation, ressurectin, stickers London, Shoreditch, Ladbroke Grove, Kings Cross, Street art, Space Invader, mosaics, reactivation, ressurectin, stickers

All photos: Dave Stuart

 

UPDATE   (Dec 2016) – despite the presence of a reactivation sticker, LDN_027 at Bayfield Road is not a reactivated Invader, also LDN_028 was activated by the French team.  Also, the Union Flag Invader was not reactivated by the UK Reactivation Team.


London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, Jonesy, environmental art, awareness, CO2, methane, Skeleton Cardboard, 616, Artista, Fanakapan, Voyder, Airborne Mark, Vibes RT

Bank Holiday Street Art

Some may quibble about this but…..wasn’t the cloud cover lovely on Bank Holiday Monday?  Since finishing a tour in snow last Thursday, tours have been run in sunshine and sunshine, frankly, casts a shadow on street art photography, much rather a bright day with a bit of cloud cover.

Temperatures rising (we are forecast to hit 20 by the end of the week) and no rain also help.  Not that that really mattered in the case of this find of a lovely clutch of Jonesy paintings, as they were under cover.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, Jonesy, environmental art, awareness, CO2, methane

Jonesy – Fossil Fuel Genocide

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, Jonesy, environmental art, awareness, CO2, methane

Jonesy – methane, it’s a pain

We also came across a lovely work-in-progress by Skeleton Cardboard.  Although normally one would be inclined to pass by a set piece “mural on a board for an audience” style  of painting, we love Skeleton Cardboard’s expressionism and bizarre twisted thoughts so paused to dwell on this latest masterpiece.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour,Skeleton Cardboard,

Skeleton Cardboard, Box Park

Being a bank holiday for some reason the Seven Stars Car Park was pretty much devoid of cars which meant better views of 616’s multi-layered buttress bombing.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, 616

616, feat Vibes RT

And clear shots of this, featuring Artista, artist unknown, Airborne Mark, Voyder/fanakapan collaboration and Vibes

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, Jonesy, environmental art, awareness, CO2, methane, Skeleton Cardboard, 616, Artista, Fanakapan, Voyder, Airborne Mark, Vibes RT