Monthly Archives: June 2017

Street art, Shoreditch, London, stencil, paste up, spraypaint, My Dog Sighs, photorealism, eye

Change – The Only Constant

It has been a while since we had time to report with the latest news on the ever changing street art scene in Shoreditch so to make amends, here are some gorgeous pieces of art that appeared over the past week (or so).

Last weekend a beautiful hand pasted by paste up by Brooklyn’s frequent emissary to Shoreditch Pyramid Oracle appeared.

Street art, Shoreditch, London, stencil, paste up, spraypaint, Pyramid oracle

Pyramid Oracle

This set the tone for some international collaborations, this paste up featuring City Kitty of New York, DRSC0 of Portland and North Of England’s D7606 arrived on Shoreditch’s walls at the start of the weekend.

Street art, Shoreditch, London, stencil, paste up, spraypaint, City Kitty, DRSC0, D7606

City Kitty/DRSC0/D7606 collab

On the theme of international artists last week we came across Thiago from Brazil painting this people crushing device.

Street art, Shoreditch, London, stencil, paste up, spraypaint, Thiago

Los Primus by Thiago

D7606 also dropped a few of his own pop art infused female icons including this new piece featuring Debbie Harry who famously has a heart of glass!

Street art, Shoreditch, London, stencil, paste up, spraypaint, D7606

Debbie Harry by D7606

Uberfubs has been on a roll recently with beautiful sequinned vanitas imagery featuring assorted accompanying stars and butterflies and political statements which seem to harbour hope that the political writhings and adjustments have not yet run their course – we can but hope!

Street art, Shoreditch, London, stencil, paste up, spraypaint, Uberfubs, Political street art

Uberfubs “Bonkers Brexit”

Last weekend Otto Schade’s comparatively short-lived “The Believers” was tagged so late last week Otto returned to reprise the David vs Goliath work which has previously appeared on Brick Lane, Fashion Street and Old Street though never to my recollection at the same time.

Street art, Shoreditch, London, stencil, paste up, spraypaint, Otto Schade

Otto Schade “David vs Goliath”

The artist ThisOne has been prolific around London for several years and HNRX from Austria has been remarkably busy in the area for more than a month, they hooked up just off brick lane to combine ThisOne’s monochromatic puffin with HNRX’s surreal sushi on a bed of sausage; well puffins eat fish and sushi is made from fish yeah?  A theory which collapses if the bird is a parrot!

Street art, Shoreditch, London, stencil, paste up, spraypaint, HNRX, ThisOne

HNRX/ThisOne collab

Someone who has avoided Shoreditch’s walls for far too long is My Dog Sighs.   On Friday a slew of photorealist eyes, waterdroplets and colourful stick characters appeared widely around the Brick Lane area.  My favourite for the way My Dog Sighs has colour coordinated with the door frame is in the featured image at the top of this post.

Street art, Shoreditch, London, stencil, paste up, spraypaint, My Dog Sighs

My Dog Sighs

Street art, Shoreditch, London, stencil, paste up, spraypaint, My Dog Sighs, stick man

My Dog Sighs

Finally, Artist Unknown.  The Brick Lane area may not be widely admired for its natural beauty but this multi coloured stencilled kingfisher is truly a thing of beauty.

[Update: MyDogSighs has been in touch and confirmed the artist is M-One]

Street art, Shoreditch, London, stencil, paste up, spraypaint, artist unknown

Kingfisher, Artist Unknown

This is just a small sample of the new street art that appeared in Shoreditch over the past week or so, it’s wonderful that the art in the area never stops changing.

Links:

Pyramid Oracle

DRSC0

D7606

City Kitty

HNRX

My Dog Sighs

Uberfubs

ThisOne

Otto Schade

M-One

All photos: Dave Stuart aka nolionsinengland


General Election 2017 Street Art

Today Britain goes to the election, we express political preferences through a mark on a ballot paper.   Walls are also great surfaces to express political opinions and here are a few highlights from the 2017 General Election, a period that began back in the third week of April.

One of the first out of the blocks was Banksy with his stunning comment on Brexit at the port of Dover.

Banksy, Street art, mural, Dover, Brexit, EU Flag, painter, ladder, stencil

Banksy

The election has witnessed a rare mis-calculation by Mr Banksy (or maybe he does a great job of just not screwing up in public!).  He offered a limited edition “archive quality” girl with balloon print to anyone from six tory controlled wards in Bristol that sent in a photograph of their polling paper showing a tick in the box for the labour candidate.   The initial response on Saturday from the Electoral Commission professed that the law was complex in this area but by Monday Banksy had announced a “Product Recall” on the basis of a legal opinion from the Electoral Commission that those polls would be invalidated.  Tweets purporting to be from local constabulary also declared the action illegal.

source: www.banksy.co.uk

Well known British contemporary artist Jeremy Deller provided a plain rebuttal to Theresa May’s campaign slogan, this work put up widely across London by the Fly Leaps organisation.

Jeremy Deller

The blind as a bat Theresa May poster next to Deller’s is by Kennard Phillips who produced the now legendary image of Tony Blair taking a selfie in front of a burning oilfield which was displayed in the window of Banksy’s Santa’s Ghetto on Oxford St, London in 2006.

The punchiest exponent of using other people’s walls to deliver punchy political messages for many years is one of my favourite artists Dr d.  For this general election Dr d has gone back to  spoof Standrd (note the spelling at the end) headlines, as can be seen here above Unify’s adaptation of Shepard Fairey’s famous Obama HOPE poster.

 

Dr d. above; Unify below

 

CodeFC put up a couple of strong stencilled compositions.  Sadly the one in Leake Street asking “Theresa who?” had burned bright but briefly as art and graffiti is wont at that location but with the grace of CodeFC we have used his photo as the featured imagae at the top of this post.  Brexit Through The Chip Shop simultaneously references a great British culinary institution, the title of Banksy’s 2010 street art documentary and the greatest political fraud of our lifetime.

CodeFC Brexit Through The Chip Shop

I am not sure who did this one but the idea of giving Putin a Pussy Riot style balaclava whist simultaneously referencing the conspiracy of Russian intervention in the US elections is clever. [Update 22 June: Heath Kane, hat tip to Subdude for letting us know]

Who Would Putin Vote For – Artist Unknown

Probably from the same “artist unknown” [update 22 Jun: seems unlikely], the rather wishy washy tory slogan “Strong and stable” is appropriated in condemnation of the UK arms industry.

artist unknown

A political wishlist expressed in the form of sequined skulls has been put up by Uberfubs, it would be great if they could all come true but this one in particular would be on my list.

Uberfubs

Many artists such as Subdude never stop expressing political views.   Paste up digs at Trump and Putin have given way over the past few weeks to a plethora of comments at the general political state of the country and specifically against Teresa May.

Subdude

Subdude seems to have gone a bit off message with this image (or maybe I am just missing the point) which has been modified in a Basquiat kind of style though as you scan down a polling slip looking for Jeremy’s name to put your tick against, try to get the surname spelt right.

Please vote wisely and safely

All photos Dave Stuart except “Theresa Who?” featured image by CodeFC