October, 2023 | Shoreditch Street Art Tours London Street Art Tours

“A decaying paste up in Butte aux Caille proved worthy of almost an entire essay in itself. The subject is a young girl, looking confidently at the viewer, relaxed yet perhaps not totally welcoming our intrusion into her world. The concentration on her face seems to ask “Is this a person I can trust or not?”

The artist is Italian stencilist Federico Luvol, many thanks to Thom Thom for supplying the ID. The young girl is actually a Syrian refugee at school in Italy and the message concerns the appalling treatment dished out to refugees who have fled war, horror and ethnic cleansing in their homeland only to face a different kind of abuse in supposed countries of refuge. The paste up art is a composite of stencilled image and cut paper negative lightly overlayed with splattered spraypaint. Over time the paper has decayed and in a couple of places, down the right arm and the back of the head, the paper has torn away leaving a blank wall silhouette defined by the paint overspray, this adds a third component to the collaged image. This is the kind of street art discovery that revives tired limbs, jaded eyes and gives me the motivation to kick on and find more.”

Extract from “Paris Street Art – Part Deux” on sister blog Graffoto

photo: Dave Stuart

Space Invader last strengthened his invasion of London in 2016 and from a peak of 150 the number of Invaders stationed in London has slowly diminished. Some have been kidnapped and a number of those have been held to ransom on Planet Ebay. Some went dark, contact lost as they simply disappeared. Some deteriorated and decayed with time. The lucky few however returned to their sentry posts restored, refreshed, reinvigorated and reactivated by Space Rescue International. They prefer “Reactivation.”

Space Invader LDN_133 mosaic street art vigilant at Elephant and Castle

Space Invader LDN_133 Reactivated – see also top image

News of recent reactivations prompted a bike ride this morning to wildernesses south of the river where a number have resumed their stealthy monitoring activities.

mosaic space invader street art near waterloo London

Space Invader LDN_84, grumpy so-and-so

LDN_84, perhaps not happy being south of the river

Space Invader LDN_134 mosaic street art through the bushes close up

Space Invader LDN_134 stealthily observes London

Space Invader LDN_133 scrutinises alien craft

Space Invader LDN_131 mosaic street art near Kennington

Space Invader LDN_131 eternally lurking

Space Invader LDN_131 going nowhere

The most far flung was way out in Brixton, its remote location prompted an invader health check with one of the supreme reconnaissance group on the leader board of Invader’s smartphone game “Flash Invader”. This guru advised that LDN_42 had actually been sighted and recently cleaned by another Master of the High Score screen, Mr Steam and as a result, the signal was strong.

Space Invader LDN_42, old school Brixton resident

It’s not about the stats or the ego of soaring up the high score chart but five invader’s inspected, 100 points scored and a huge 678 place rise smashing into the top 40,000 on the leader board made this a very productive hour! It took my flashed London Invaders into treble figures, 101 of 150 mosaics flashed, this is the kind of stats fetish that satisfies the inner nerd.