Monthly Archives: September 2017

London Design Festival Hits Shoreditch

This week, 16 – 24 September, is London Design Festival and Shoreditch is a cauldron of design houses, designer goods outlets and installations. Here are three that caught my eye and if you are quick you could experience them too.

London Design Festival, Shoreditch Triangle, Shoreditch Street Art Tours, Camille Walala, Villa Walala

Villa Walala at Bishopsgate

Camille Walala has a massive installation right at the heart of the City of London and coincidentally barely a couple of hundred metres from the Goat Statue on Brushfield St where most of our public street art tours start. “Villa Walala” features her signature toytown-esque colourful shapes which thanks to accompanying blurb I learn she describes as Tribal Pop, it looks like a bouncy castle without the bouncy bit but you can wander around it and even chill out on the deck chairs.

Villa Walala

You may call it a disruption of the intimidating financial factories surrounding it if you wish but it looks brilliantly out of place, like a bit of Disneyland transported to Bishopsgate. More information here

Camille has certainly come a long way since her early days putting up paste up harlequin jacketed fashion figures around Brick Lane in 2009 (got to slip some street art in here somewhere).

Camille Walala, Brick Lane, 2009

Last year she created another psychedelic street subversion with a painted pedestrian crossing on Southwark St near Tate Modern.

Camilla Walala Zebra crossing on acid

If eyeball bleeding tribal stylings are your thing then on a similar bent deeper in the heart of Shoreditch is “Estate Playground” by Yinka Ilori at the entrance to CitizenM on Holywell Lane opposite Eine’s Grenfell Tower tribute mural.

Yinka Ilori –

Almost opposite Cargo Nightclub where our street art tours almost always end is an austere looking pop up cabin at 74 Rivington St where Universal Design Studio and The Office Group have come together to create a pavilion of repetition (their description). A very open cabin houses a long table, some chairs and overhead some hanging plastic tubes.

On Repeat

Sitting in that cabin was actually a very calming and serene experience, each pair of tubes is hung independently and wind blowing through the structure created waves of surges which gently rippled through the canopy, beautiful to watch. Think “Chinese lantern garden styled by Ikea” but do think it in a good way!

On Repeat

I got to make a pair of the tubes, an experience which taught me I don’t have my kids’ knack of getting things right first time without reading the instructions. Participation in the assembly of those hanging tubes was due to end today as the canopy was virtually complete but the canopy remains in place and there is a program of further activities scheduled, check the website for details.

Bodge job

Also on Rivington St is a wonderful mind frazzling trick of the eye installation in the Lee Broom studios at 95 Rivington St. You enter “On Reflection” through a darkened drape and find yourself in a dark but cosy room furnished to a charcoal grey minimalist design aesthetic; candles flicker on a mantelpiece, low slung chairs and tables invite you to sit, an sleek modern fire flickers in the wall and a large mirror reflects the scene back at you. But wait a minute, in the reflection the room is empty, where have I gone??? Your mind spins, it looks implausible; eventually realisation dawns and the wow sensation is off the scale. No spoilers here, you will have to hasten along to figure it out for yourself, closes Wednesday. Sorry for the ropey photo, it was very dark in there.

London Design Festival, Shoreditch Triangle, Shoreditch Street Art Tours,Lee Broom, On Reflection

Lee Broom: On Reflection (Looking at the mirror)

Two years ago Lee Broom staged Opticality, another stunning installation on his premises which also revolved around an reflection, that also blew my socks off.

Lee Bloom: Opticality

City wide are some 266 installations and venues participating in the London Design Festival of which over 30 are in the Shoreditch area, most within the so called Shoreditch Triangle. Many of them have events programs, check out the festival website for further details.

There’s always something new going on in Shoreditch!

All photographs: Dave Stuart

Manyoly At Large

Last weekend I found some lovely new street art in Shoreditch, that is always an exciting thing and of course I want to share it with you. This isn’t about a couple of Banksys appearing nearby in the City Of London, this is about the beautiful colourful portraiture of French street artist Manyoly.

Street art, Shoreditch, London, Manyoly, paste ups, portrait, colours

Manyoly Sep 2017

Manyoly’s paste ups first appeared in London just before Christmas last year and charmed all who came across them.

Manyoly Dec 2016

Such was the positive reception Manyoly has already been back several times and on her most recent trip Manyoly beautified Shoreditch with several more very large pieces.

Manyoly Sep 2017

Manyoly told Shoreditch Street Art Tours that she has been passionate about Women’s issues since her early teens and her bright colourful female portraits are a way of capturing a woman’s energy.

Manyoly Dec 2016

Manyoly eschews famous people, “we have enough people on earth to never need to paint them” she said and her paintings are fusions of various women she has seen on the street, often mixing features from different races and ethnic backgrounds in the one portrait.

Manyoly stickers can be seen on surfaces in Shoreditch if you look hard enough.

Manyoly April 2017

Guests on the Shoreditch Street Art Tour hear about the challenge Manyoly faces pasting up irregular shaped paste ups with fronds of paper protruding around the edges, certainly its a bit tricker than pasting up A4 rectangles of paper. This high speed timelapse from Manyoly showing her pasting up a very large portrait on Great Eastern Street is a fascinating insight into how a street artist breaks the task down into a sequence of steps.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Manyoly (@manyoly)

For more about Manyoly’s art on the streets and hanging indoors check out her website

All photos Dave Stuart except the timelapse via Manyoly’s instagram page

Street Art Where’s Wally?

Shoreditch Street Art Tours returned from a short break in foreign climes to find a street art “Where’s Wally?” challenge on the streets of Shoreditch, courtesy of French street artist STRA.

This was a Wally hunt with a difference with three of the World’s top street artists being portrayed as the elusive Wally. A word of warning, this blog post turned into an excuse to dig through lots of old images of some of my favourite street artists so prepare for some gratuitous street art history!

No mistaking the World’s top street artist being spoofed with this monkey Where’s Wally,

Stra, Banksy Where’s Wally

“Laugh Now” is a classic Banksy monkey image and from the photo of the silk screen print version below, photographed at Steve Lazarides’ “Banksy Unauthorised Retrospective” exhibition in 2014, you can see exactly which Banksy image Stra has drawn from.

Laugh Now, Banksy, “Banksy UnAuthorised” exhibition, 2014

The only genuine Banksy monkey I have photographed on the street is this monkey detonating a bunch of bananas photographed in 2006 but even Banksy has spoofed himself as a monkey as seen in 2010 in the film poster for his street art documentary “Exit Through The Gift Shop”.

Banksy Monkey Detonator, 2006

Banksy, Exit Though The Gift Shop Poster, 2010

Shephard Fairey, popular around the world, most famously for his Obama “HOPE” poster, itself subject of more parody copy versions than you might imagine, is also a street art Where’s Wally.

Stra, Shepard Fairey Where’s Wally (also feat Spraychild)

This Where’s Wally is based on the Obey Giant image, one of the most reproduced images in modern art history (no evidence for that statement but it sounds impressive and perhaps might even be true!)

Shepard Fairey Obey Giant, 2012

Obey Giant, Shepard Fairey, 2012

Shep Fairey, D*Face, 2006

Alongside the Obey Giant paste ups on the back of the road sign by Shep Fairey in the photo above is a D*Face paste up, D*Face has also been Wallified!