Author Archives: Shoreditch Street Art Tours

Banksy "Cut and Run" poster image stencil of running mouse with stanley knife

Banksy Exhibition Cut and Run

The ground floor of the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow was been taken over by a huge retrospective of some of Banksy’s greatest hits, more than 75 pieces in total.  Unfortunately health reasons meant I could not make the exhibition until the last week but here for the benefit of all who haven’t had the chance to go, the exhibition closed 28th August, here are some reflections on a characteristically sensational Banksy exhibition.

Banksy Cut and Run exhibition Gallery Of Modern Art Glasgow

Gallery Of Modern Art, Glasgow

Banksy sprung the exhibition on the unsuspecting public with zero notice, a modus operandi he employed for his 2009 “Banksy v. Bristol Museum and gallery” show.    His shows always achieve capacity attendance with long waiting lines so no advance notice is required and the marketing budget must be next to zero.

Banksy stencil of two boys installing a cone at Cut and Run exhibition Gallery Of Modern Art Glasgow

Cone placement

A few years ago Banksy’s former manager Steve Lazarides put on a show of Banksy prints at Sotheby’s in London and since then a huge industry of un-authorised mediocre travelling shows of Banksy’s art have sprung up.  I mean – re-imagined 3D sculptures derived from a Banksy image on paper what kind of uninspired diminished art trinket is that?  This has pissed Banksy off, as evidenced by his Q&As which were basically a warning not to go to those shows.  Cut and Run is Banksy’s official retrospective based on his street art rather than his indoor commercial stuff and it wipes the wall with those rip off copycats.

Banksy Website Product Recall screengrab

Fake exhibitions – Banksy.co.uk website 2019 onwards

The majority of the art pieces comprise battle scarred stencils imaginatively staged to recreate familiar Banksy images going right back to his earliest stencil pieces.  Converting stencils into viable exhibition worthy pieces of art has required some augmentation.  Stencils of the black layer of images have had a light coat of white or grey to define the black and outline the rest of the image.  Check the dual aura of white and black around the edge of the stencil image illustrating the cover of the show book, a good example.

Banksy "Cut and Run" book cover with early stencil of running policemen

Cut and Run Banksy book cover

There are also stencilled artworks as opposed to stencils turned into artworks and almost every installation or piece of art is accompanied by pithy text in the classic Banksy vein.

If you are find that this review is a bit light on photos of art from the exhibition you are right.   Photography was not allowed in the exhibition.  A motley crew of gallery attendants were on hand to take polaroid snaps using a weak built-in camera flash, consequently we have here a selection of dim photos, dull photos and some photos from the distant past.  Cheers Banksy.

Banksy Cut and Run visitor pose for polaroid in Banksy phone booth with GCHQ spies listening

Spy Booth v innocent member of the public

The exhibition layout is essentially two meandering passages connected by a larger hall in the middle and at the end you exit through the gift shop (of course) which then spits you out in a passage of thousands of multi coloured audience generated tags.   The show starts with a reconstruction of part of Banksy’s studio, seemingly a stencil cutting station.  The final installation is a reconstruction of Banksy’s bedroom.

Banksy explanation of why he still does street art at Cut and Run exhibition Gallery Of Modern Art Glasgow August 2023

Why I Still Do This

Banksy bedroom mock up at Cut and Run exhibition Gallery Of Modern Art Glasgow August 2023

Wherever he lays his hat

Main Hall view at Banksy Cut and Run exhibition Gallery Of Modern Art Glasgow

Large Hall (repo’d crayon house to left) – viewed from bedroom window

If you expect vandal paraphernalia and anarchist regalia then the actual bedroom may surprise you with its conventionality.  Lots of militaria, budget toiletries and the Prodigy’s Jilted Generation double LP displaying its inner sleeve kill-the-bill rave fantasy illustration by Les Edwards.  As that album was released in 1994 this would suggest either Banksy is younger than we imagined, 1974 is often cited as a possible year of birth, or the bedroom is that of someone on the cusp of their 20s whose décor hadn’t kept step with their emergence into young adulthood.

Banksy Bedroom mock up detail at Cut and Run exhibition Gallery Of Modern Art Glasgow

Prodigy LP, Castle Morton Moment

The exhibition is way more than the widely reported stencil retrospective, a couple of pieces had not been seen before in public and both have interesting stories.  One quirky installation comprises a collection of oil paintings by a painter named in the show as Pete Brown.  In February this year Banksy created a piece known as Valentine Day Mascara in the seaside town Margate.  There was an artist on hand painting the scene in oil on board and making a nice job of it.  From that hand come 5 oil paintings displayed with Banksy’s explanation that he believes the art in the street is as much about the pageant that develops around it as it is the street art he created.

Outdoor en plein air painter Pete Brown paints Banksy Valentines Day Mascara at Margate 2023

“Valentine’s Day Mascara” scene feat Pete Brown, Margate, Valentine’s Day 2023

If Pete Brown had turned out to be an untraceable pseudonym that would have been bog standard Banksy subterfuge but Peter Brown aka “Pete The Street” is a proper proper artist with an impressive cv and a website that makes no reference to Banksy, a sure fire indicator of someone who has worked for Banksy! https://www.peterbrownneac.com/biography/

Main hall view at Banksy Cut and Run exhibition Gallery Of Modern Art Glasgow

Margate paintings viewed through one-way window from Banksy bedroom

Another new work, or at least one being seen in “real life” for the first time, depicts a rat and a couple of spray cans which previously appeared on the film set in Bristol for the TV series The Outlaws.  The press had a field day at the time with the “controversial” buff by Christopher Walken but this was no disturbed actor tantrum, its painting over was scripted and Banksy contributed the image in celebration of a programme made in his sometime home town.  Curiously this painting is not reproduced in the book “Cut and Run” that goes with the show.

Banksy Cut and Run visitors pose for polaroid in front of Banksy arcade game grab

Arcade game grab

On the subject of books, Banksy has been writing books since early in his career, “Banging Your Head Against A Brick Wall” was published in 2001 and the text notes accompanying the art in Cut and Run are as important as part of the art as the stencil and imagery.  In some instances the imagery seems to be there just to support the delivery of a well written, witty, pithy and often self-deprecating story.   The display of the storyboard, a painting and an animation cell from Banksy’s couch sequence opening to The Simpsons in 2010 is a perfect example, setting up to his brilliant “racist hat crime” punchline.

Banksy animation storyboard from Simpsons couch sequence 2011

SImpsons Storyboard, Banksy website, 2011

Banksy animation frame from Simpsons couch sequence 2011

Simpsons animator sweatshop

It seems obligatory to describe this show as Banksy’s first solo exhibition for 14 years.   This is a bit puzzling as it required that we forget the 2019 “Gross Domestic Product” show in Croydon.

The stencil used to create “Basquiat Stop and Search”, one of a pair of tributes put up below London’s Barbican Centre on the eve of the opening of the 2017 Basquiat retrospective had a spectacular amount of additional painting to recreate the whole of the original image.  The image on the street is possibly the most painterly illegal Banksy street art of them all and merited this colourful exhibition treatment.

Banksy painted tribute to Basquiat at Barbican 2017 called Basquiat stop and search

“Basquiat Stop and Search”, Barbican, 2017

Content wise this show contains a lot of Banksy humour, huge amounts of the trademark anti authoritarian humour, lots of great anecdotes told with typical Banksy impish wit and as you would expect, plenty of politics.   Banksy the thrower of light onto political murk highlights so many issues and causes including Arab-Israeli tensions, the environment, anti-war protest, racism, child exploitation, the refugee crisis, Ukraine, consumerism, Brexit and gentrification.

Banksy Cut and Run visitor pose for polaroid in front of Banksy No Ball Games stencil

No Ball Games

Banksy’s mystery is in no way diminished by this show, the exhibition is personality not persona, after the show no one is any none the wiser about Banksy’s identity and you already knew Banksy is the coolest artist in town

Exit Through The Gift Shop painting by Banksy Cut and Run exhibition Gallery Of Modern Art Glasgow

Exit Through The Gift Shop

In revealing a bit more of how the magician does his tricks Cut and Run has echoes of what Banksy achieved with the 2008 Cans Festival group show which had a public spray area where anyone and everyone turn up with a stencil and release their inner outdoor artist.  This exhibition shows the comparative simplicity of Banksy’s craft, we see the tools, the stencils and the end results.  The real genius however lies in the inspiration and the execution and both on the streets and in delivering this show Banksy has no peers.

Banksy stencil saying Designated Graffiti Area on a tagged wall at Cut and Run exhibition Gallery Of Modern Art Glasgow

Designated Graffiti Area

Banksy Cut and Run visitors pose for polaroid in front of Banksy meat truck

Lambs

For a comprehensive listing of the items exhibited in “Cut and Run” check out my other blog post here.

Banksy “Cut and Run”

Gallery Of Modern Art, Glasgow

18th June – 28th August 2023

All Photos: Dave Stuart except where otherwise credited


Opening caption of Video interview with street artist Brickflats

Street artist Brickflats Interview

“Foreigners own £55bm of London homes as buying spree set to climb” was the somewhat xenophobic headline in last night’s Evening Standard.  The real issue is that demand continues to exceed supply, politicians setting newbuild target but fail to walk the walk and for every homeless person in the UK there are multiple empty residential properties.  These circumstances spark the explosive property rental market which sees the lifeblood of the metropolis living in stupidly expensive boxes with long commutes to work and ridiculous proportions of disposal income sinking into accommodation costs.  So what’s this to do with Brickflats?

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review featuring Brickflats

Brickflats

In 2021 I stumbled literally on the art of Brickflats embedded in a Shoreditch pavement.  It was original, unique and as I discovered it was expressing social concern regarding London’s housing situation.  Brickflats talks in this interview about his background as a creative, the concept behind his wall interventions and a fascinating insight into his process and installation techniques.

Film by Dave Stuart

Brickflats instagram (includes locations map)


Big Issue Street Art special edition cover

My Dog Sighs vs The Big Issue Street Art Special

Street artist My Dogs Sighs from Portsmouth has been handed the monumental privilege of guest editing a special street art edition of the Big Issue magazine.  The magazine goes on sale from Monday 10th July – seek out your local vendor for a copy

My Dog Sighs founded the “Free Art Friday” movement with his painted cans and has a 20 years pedigree of street art ranging from paste ups to epic murals.  For his curation of this street art edition of the Big Issue, My Dog Sighs features artists, projects and creatives that fit under the umbrella of his theme ‘Reclaiming the lost”.

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Jealous Gallery in Shoreditch has stepped to support and celebrate this special edition of the Big Issue hosting a 10 day exhibition of new paintings and a limited edition fundraising print by My Dog Sighs.  All profits from the print are going to Big Issue along with a percentage of all sales at the art show.  There is a private view this coming Thursday 13th July 1900 –  2030 though sadly the limited number of spaces have all been snapped up.  Plenty of time to pop in to the exhibition though.

My Dog Sighs in Studio ahead of “Reclaim The Lost”, photo courtesy Jealous Gallery

Other artists in the show and the magazine include Snik, Rone, Junker Jane and Rust Bucket Workshop.  Anyone lucky enough to have made it to MDS’s “Inside” project in 2021 will immediately see how the art of the latter two resonates with My Dog Sighs object rich installations.

Global Street Art have just finished a phenomenal spray painted trompe L’oeil mural on the Village Underground wall, conveniently close to Jealous Gallery.  Look very closely at this stunning mural!

Big Issue mural – photo Subdude

A little dickybird tells me there may also be some new My Dog Sighs street art somewhere in Shoreditch, sometime soon… stay tuned!

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Big Issue mural – Photo Subdude

Shoreditch Street Art Tours is proud to support the My Dog Sighs Big Issue Street Art Special

All Photos Dave Stuart except Subdude and courtesy Jealous Gallery where stated


Beyond The Streets Revisited

“Repeat visits are recommended” we urged in our review of the “Beyond The Streets” Exhibition at Saatchi Gallery in London. The show has been consistently busy even on weekdays but on Easter Sunday I found myself lasat in in the afternoon and wandering through a completely deserted gallery.   This was very much a “quick pop in” visit after an afternoon matinee film finished earlier than had expected, I didn’t have my camera with me so I grabbed a bunch of phone pano shots.

Faile

The real magic of the exhibition is in the historic detail, most of that resides in the vitrines and the photo and poster displays.  These pano shots of the empty gallery halls really give a better idea of the scale of the exhibition and nature of the contemporary art the graffiti OGs are now creating, I hope you enjoy these as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Futura2000 & Malcolm McLaren

Duncan Weston

Felipe Pantone

Escif

Vhils

Mode2, Vhils

Craig Costello (Krink), Tin Conlon, Delta, Katsu

Tish Murtha, Steve Powers, Conor Harrington

Steve Powers

Paul INsect

Shepard Fairy  Todd James (Reas), Kenny Scharf

Kaws, Todd James (Reas), Kenny Scharf, Eric Haze

Jenny Holzer

Crash

Chris Daze, Shoe

C. R. Steyck III, Maripol, Dash Snow, Brassai,

Cey Adams, Eric Haze, Beastie Boys, C. R. Steyck III,

Duncan Weston

Beyond The Streets Saatchi Gallery, Kings Road 17th Feb – 9th May 2023 All photos: Dave Stuart

Manchester Street Art

A couple of weeks ago I made a trip to Manchester to explore that city’s street art.  Manchester has great architecture, a distinct exciting personality adn plenty of locations where stencils, stickers, paste ups and graffiti flourishes.  There are also some impressive murals.

This next gallery is a sample of the roughly 800 photographs taken over a 2 day exploration.

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Space Invader aficionados will doubtless be aware of the Manchester invasion that took place in 2004, 47 street mosaics were left lurking and without too much effort 31 of them were located and dutifully “flashed”.

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These are just a small number of the photographic highlights, this is a SHOREDITCH blog after all!!  The full write up can be found on the Graffoto blog.

All photos Dave Stuart


bronze statue erected without permission by Jonesy of See No Evil Monkey

Jonesy Sees No Evil

Earlier this week a lovely couple celebrating surviving to a particular milestone birthday booked a private tour.  We met outside their snazzy lunch restaurant and set off on a bespoke route, they had been on the tour “rule of 6” covid bounce back era and we just wanted to explore different territory.    Barely had we gone a few yards when my chin dropped as I spied sitting on top of a street pole a new statue by Jonesy.

bronze statue erected without permision by Jonesy of See No Evil Monkey

Jonesy

It had the body of a monkey and a rat like tail and it was definitely was seeing no evil.

bronze statue erected without permision by Jonesy of See No Evil Monkey

Jonesy

This forms a natural partner to a “hear no evil” compadre a couple of hundred yards away on Brick Lane.

bronze sculpture put up without permission by Jonesy of See No Evil Monkey

Jonesy 2019

It is wonderful when these totally unexpected surprises catch your eye, street art geeking yields these little magical moments even on a tour.

Links: 

Jonesy Instagram

All photos: Dave Stuart


Beyond The Streets Exhibition Review

Into the second hour of my wander through Beyond The Streets a wall label poses the question “How do we get from graffiti on Parisian streets of the 1930s that Brassai captured, to the Academy Award nominated film “Exit Through The Gift Shop” by Banksy?”   Therein lies this exhibition’s dilemma.

Faile, Shepard Fairey

Beyond The Streets is part documentary and part art exhibition; part historic artefact and part new art; part museum and part gallery.  It explores the cross links, influences and the sparks that flowed between graffiti, music, fashion, street art and gallery art.  And it is HUGE.

That small wall label is the first and seemingly only mention of Banksy. The elephant most definitely is not in the room. There is no art by Banksy in Beyond The Streets.

“I suggest you ask Banksy” was curator Roger Gastman’s enigmatic reply when I enquired why not.

Toby Mott poster/flyer archive

The label also sets up a rather curious paradox about the exhibition.  Public awareness and appreciation of “street art” has magnified enormously since and to some extent because of Banksy’s “Exit Through The Gift Shop” documentary, but this exhibition doesn’t explore recent street culture or indeed much of anything that may have benefitted from the Banksy effect, which of course means pretty much the whole of modern street art.  Beyond The Streets is not a “street art exhibition”, street art is found on the streets, not in a gallery.

80s fashion

What the exhibition does skilfully and beautifully is show us the common DNA shared by key youth cultures over three decades from the 70s to the 90s.  The origins of Philly and New York graffiti, hip hop, dance and fashion are explored and building off that comes the transfer to the UK’s club land and train yards.  Layer upon layer of detail regarding what came from where, who met who and what influenced what can be unpicked from the ephemera and collections on display.  It’s everywhere you look, that’s not just a rack simulating the display of bedroom posters that every record store had in those days, it’s a collection of contemporary film and show posters.  Next it’s a bunch of graffiti mags.   A lot of the really interesting content in this show like those posters are from the Gastman personal collection.

Ol Skool record store

Roger Gastman is the ultimate geek, uber-collector, culture historian and super-documenter, many will actually be familiar with him already, in Banksy’s “Exit Through The Gift Shop” he is the fixer parachuted in by Banksy to rescue Mr Brainwash’s manic debut LA show from chaos.  Our conversation with Gastman about the nature of the show is the feature of this short clip with scene-setting visuals.

The New York art scene of the 70s and 80s is a key jumping off point so there is a Jenny Holzer installation, Keith Haring references pop up everywhere, look particularly for a nice surviving example of one of his NY subway chalk drawings but there is no Basquiat. When the subject is so vast and the space finite perhaps there is only so much a curator can include but of all the artists from that era, particularly those who had a connection with street art and graffiti, no one has had a more significant influence on modern art history than Jean Michel Basquiat.  There is as much chance of an answer from Basquiat as from Banksy.

The highlight of the exposition of the New York – London cross pollination is a massive canvas by Futura 2000 from NY who toured Europe with The Clash in the early 80s painting backdrops live on stage.  Research reveals the one on display failed to reach reserve at a Bonhams auction in 2014!

Futura2000

As a mover and shaker and a connector between the hip-hop and graffiti movements in New York, Fab Five Freddy is a recurring presence in the historic documents and with canvasses on the walls.

Fab Five Freddy

If the U.K.’s 1980s graffiti movement had its Fab Five Freddies there is a strong case for anointing Goldie and Rob del Naja as such.   Like Fab Five Freddy this genre straddling pair now regularly feature at contemporary art auctions in the leading auction houses as well as having cutting edge music careers. It is hard to recall the sponsor’s logo appearing so gratuitously in a graffiti writer’s canvas before.

Goldie

Rob Del Naja

A fascinating time line photo display records key personas and moments in the parallel development of hip hop and graffiti in London.  Having had the good fortune to catch and photograph the last few years of the legendary Pit in Golbourne Road, the stash of polaroids from the early days of the Pit credited to “Rob Fever” was particularly exciting.  (The Pit was known as a place you entered at your own peril as there was with a high risk of getting robbed or “taxed” in the parlance).

The Pit, 1980s, photos: Rob Fever

The Pit, 2010, photo Dave Stuart

The connections and the documentary details are absolutely fascinating providing plenty of opportunity to make your own “degrees of separation” analysis. Among Toby Mott’s collection of agitprop posters and punk flyers is a gig poster for The Slits.  The Slits’ guitarist and lyricist Viv Albertine’s on/off/on/off (repeat) boyfriend Mick Jones of The Clash invited Futura2000 to tour with them painting backdrops during Clash gigs, Futura stayed with Don Letts whose massive influence (well represented here) was secured early on in a period as resident DJ at the Roxy in London, a Roxy guest book is displayed open on a page showing Joe Strummer of the Clash signing in and further up the page you can decipher the signatures of Ari Up and Palmolive, both of The Slits.  The loops, the links and the lines of influence between the characters who were the genuine innovators across multiple genres are so clear.

Old school graffiti legends from US and UK whose art is now as comfortable in the galleries and private collections as it was once on the streets contribute artworks that represent where their post street career has taken them.  The stand out is the exceptional draughtsmanship of Mode2 (London/Paris).

Mode2

Shepard Fairey has a large display of art consistent with his impact, activism and influence – the significance of his 2008 HOPE poster in making the case for Barack Obama should never be underplayed and, a rarity in this show, he maintains a career which to this day continues to embrace stickering and street art muralism.

Shepard Fairey

ESPO is the Philly typographer who painted the iconic “Let Us Adore And Endure Eachother” in Shoreditch, and as well as a large typography based installation it was nice to stumble upon some fresh ESPO graff on a wall in west London.

ESPO

ESPO, Shoreditch 2012, also feat Phlegm & Shok 1 (photo 2013)

Daze from NY has been a gallery artist for decades, it was cool to see Daze hit a proper wall in Shoreditch.

Daze

The show is also a homage to the documentarians, people that there were people there at the time who thought to record the scene and collect the crap.   Keep diving into the various glass cases displays, they hold a treasure trove of battered copies of relatively obscure but now indispensable books that appraised the many manifestations of the music and graffiti culture as it evolved and before it became of such widespread interest.

Henry Chalfant

Check out the photos being uploaded by Beezer on Instagram, they are incredible historic records.  When a graffiti legend like Haze from NY wants to take your photo, that’s respect shown where respect is due

Beezer in front of Beezer; photographer Eric Haze

Curious juxtapositions – or more degrees of separation:  Kenny Scharf’s Cosmic Cavern with its psychedelic day-glo assemblages zinging with UV lighting is the latest incarnation of a characteristic Scharf playhouse, the sort of which was clearly a huge influence on the 2010 Faile/Bast Deluxx Fluxx collaborative installations; Cosmic Cavern is set up next to Paul Insect’s Rubbish Shop with its playful upcycled trash characters, Insect produced characters like these for years with Bast before Bast’s untimely early passing in 2021.

Kenny Scharf, Cosmic Cavern 2023

Paul Insect, Rubbish Shop

Some contributions feel like their significance is perhaps undersold by lack of context in their gallery notes, with several of the photographer’s work feeling like it may have turned up in the wrong exhibition by mistake.  Swoon is one of the few artists in the show whose origins as a public artist sprang from an urge to put unfiltered, uncurated art on the street as opposed to morphing from a graffiti writer to a spraycan artist.  Swoon’s art practice ranges from stunning paste ups on the streets to intricate paper and print installations in institutions but in this show, her single wall creation feels overwhelmed by a “whole wall” piece by Pablo Allison documenting the humanitarian horror and desperation of migrating people travelling from Latin America to USA.

Swoon (Pablo Allison to right)

As a historical record, this exhibition peters out in the late 90s.  Beyond that period the dominant focus is on the way in which a selection of graffiti legends and a few street artists these days make their mark in the formal galleries and even museums of the art world, the evidence suggests many of the artists are adequate rather than transformative.

Some things in life, like walking on the moon say, will never be a lived experience for the vast majority.  If you haven’t cut a hole in a trainyard fence, sneaked through the tunnels under Fabric or dodged security to paint a train in a metropolitan train yard then the experience and passions that bond the graff writing community might as well be planting flags in a moon crater for most of us.  The point of art is to stimulate our imagination, to peer beyond the limitations of our experience and three of London’s finest, Tox, 10foot and Fume who live and breathe an intense London graffiti life have simulated a tube tunnel setting peppered with canvasses and photos cartoonising their adventures on the underground.  A series of 5 illustrations by Fume are based on am infamous incursion at Oxford Circus tube station on Christmas Day 2020.

Fume, Tox, 10Foot

Fume “Platform Damage” (detail)

While the exhibition does a great job on graffiti’s old testament and the crusade to Europe is revealed in compelling detail, the tailing off of the historic forensics coupled to the absence of Banksy leaves the street art story somewhat lacking its Book of Genesis.  The presence of Faile, Shepard Fairey and Keith Haring brings in the US behemoths while Kaws and Monsieur Andre, here under his real name, represent tributes to the inventiveness and subversion that should and occasionally does characterise street art.

Kaws

Faile, Shepard Fairey

The flat and sugary and flat colours of paintings by Pose, Dabsmyla and Husk towards the end juxtaposed with Priest’s “crime scene in duplo-land” sculpture create the impression that post graffiti urban art is characterised by nursery land imagery, which is little unadventurous.

Pose, Dabsmyla, HuskMitNavn

For visual impact the geometric super saturated colour overload of a Felipe Pantone mural is hard to beat, Pantone has set up a dizzying illusion room suggesting Anish Kapoor stalactites on acid in an old Radio Rentals showroom where the TV sets have lost their signal (the older generation in the UK may recall TV shops displays of the trade test transmissions in the days before VHS and daytime TV). Mesmerising and disorientating.

Felipe Pantone

Cunningly placed right before the gallery gift shop is Duncan Weston’s Ralph Lauren brand pisstake, poised somewhere between critiquing brand power and poking fun at our inclination to obsess over brands.  It works so well some were questioning if it was bad taste having a Ralph Lauren outlet in a show of activism and youth culture.

Duncan Weston

Peppered around the gallery are genuine tags by many of the graffiti writers who were around for the set up and launch of the show, look for locations such as on the roof of Insect’s Rubbish Shop and the spoof street furniture like newspaper bins in various locations. Unsurprisingly perhaps there has been a steady accretion of unsanctioned and opportunist tags and stickers, deliciously reflecting the irreverence this culture has always had for the formal gallery environment and the fact that this is a living vibrant culture which is appropriately in the hands of (extra)ordinary people.

16th Feb v 3rd March

The big picture for Beyond The Streets is it weaves through the various sub cultures, sampling key moments and pinpointing connections and influences.  Its short coming perhaps is that the joining of dots and drawing of lines for street art does not quite match up to the high bar set for the other art forms.

ESPO

There are about 18 artists with art on display that fit within a reasonable definition of what street art is, of those only 4 have art practices not based on spraypaint which obscures the reality that in today’s street art culture, particularly if the gaze is turned away from the world of permissioned murals, there is far more going on with materials on the streets than just spraypainting.

Vhils

The show rates high on fascinating early history.  Plenty to geek out on, plenty of nostalgic “oh yes, I remember missing out on that moment”.   The show feels like an amalgam of several different brilliant shows bought together.    However, there is just so much art and a huge quantity of fascinating archive material that extended or even repeat visits are recommended.

Celluloid Records – covers by Futura2000; Gastman collection

UK legend Nylon: Graphotism cover star

Daze, Shoreditch 2023

ESPO, Westbourne 2023

All photos: Dave Stuart


Detail of art by street artist Faile and Shepard Fairey in Saatchi Gallery exhibition "Beyond The Streets"

Beyond The Streets Exclusive Intervew

Beyond The Streets, a huge public exhibition dedicated to the history of graffiti, street art and related cultures related has arrived in London after previously showing in New York and LA.

The exhibition is epic in scale and wide ranging in content and features art and installations from many household names from the urban art realm.   Yesterday, the day before the official opening to the public, we manage to put together a taster video and we grabbed an exclusive moment with the curator Roger Gastman, if you have seen Banksy’s Exit Through The gift Shop he was the Zvengali saviour parachuted in by Banksy to wave his “make-shit-happen” wand over the chaos of Mr Brainwash’s LA debut show.

One burning question is why no Banksy The elephant is not in the room.  Yet.  We have a sneaky feeling that these guys could still have something up their sleeve.

Our full review will follow eventually, there’s no rush!

Public mingle in front of artist Toby Mott's display of anarchist posters at Beyond The Streets exhibition at Saatchi Gallery London

Beyond The Streets

“Beyond The Streets”

Feb 17th – May 9th

Saatchi Gallery, Duke Of Yorks HQ, King’s Road, London SW3 4RY

 

 


image of Cartoonneros street art to illustrate how it relates to his art in his exhibition at Pure Evil Gallery in Jan 2023

Street Artist Cartoonneros Surviving England On Ten Pounds

Argentinian stencil artist Cartoonneros is in town again, this is hard to miss if you are paying attention in Shoreditch.

image of Cartoonneros street art to illustrate how it relates to his art in his exhibition at Pure Evil Gallery in Jan 2023

Kurt Cobain, Jean Michel Basquiat by Cartoonneros, also feat Tizer

image of Cartoonneros street art to illustrate how it relates to his art in his exhibition at Pure Evil Gallery in Jan 2023

Frida Kahlo and Van Gogh portraits by Cartoonneros

A few days ago I had the honour of visiting a posh west end gallery (private, appointment only!) with Cartoonneros and after that visit, rather than go for a coffee as I had anticipated, our stencil hero said “stick with me, I got something to do in Piccadilly”.  So, trying not to cramp his style, I followed at a discreet distance and captured a few additions to the chaos and colour that surrounds Anteros and he/him/his errant arrow.  Enjoy the vid, sorry about the sound.

Most importantly, Cartoonneros has his third show at The Pure Evil Gallery with an opening event this Thursday.   No excuses.

image of Cartoonneros street art to illustrate how it relates to his art in his exhibition at Pure Evil Gallery in Jan 2023

Kurt Cobain by Cartoonneros; also 2Rise

image of Cartoonneros street art to illustrate how it relates to his art in his exhibition at Pure Evil Gallery in Jan 2023

Frida Kahlo and Van Gogh portraits by Cartoonneros

image of Cartoonneros street art to illustrate how it relates to his art in his exhibition at Pure Evil Gallery in Jan 2023

Cartoonneros putting Putin in the bin

image of Cartoonneros street art to illustrate how it relates to his art in his exhibition at Pure Evil Gallery in Jan 2023

Mona Lisa street stencil reproductions by Cartoonneros

image of Cartoonneros street art to illustrate how it relates to his art in his exhibition at Pure Evil Gallery in Jan 2023

Esto ne es un stencil (except when its in Piccadilly)

Cartoonneros: “Surviving England On Ten Pounds”

Thursday 26th Jan 2023, 6-9pm

Pure Evil Gallery

98 Leonard Street,

Shoreditch