Three by Three

“Good Things Come In Threes” isn’t really a saying but it would be particularly apt for the recent sightings of mini street art sculptures by Three, also known as 3x3x3.

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Three Up

One of the curious things about a piece of art by Three is that you spot one, then you don’t notice it the next twenty times you pass by and then it catches your eye again, at which point you wonder if it is a new one or one you had spotted before.

Threedom

After spotting a lovely new specimen in August Three confirmed that this was new and that he was back in the UK – Three is from Hong Kong; and that there were more to find. However, you just can’t go and hunt these tiny concrete accretions and expect to find them, try for yourself, you just drive yourself bonkers spotting small little things on walls and you trot over only to find it is just some random old bit of plastic or something, Three’s sculptures reveal themselves to you when they are ready or when you are sufficiently deserving.

Threeology

We have located three new ones so far, there are definitely more out there. One of the new ones photographed here has sadly already been harvested by a street art thief. C’est la vie.

Three degrees

Threeism

Links:

Graffoto Interview “To The power Of Three”

All photos: Dave Stuart

Jonesy Art: Two Heads Better Than One?

In the mind of an obsessive street art spotter things get little more exciting than the chance discovery of new art by Jonesy. Two new pieces have appeared recently which raise the bar for sculptural street art.

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Pesticides by Jonesy, Aug 2018

The first features a dragon fly pinned to a three headed character. The second has what appears to be a pair of Titan beetles, the largest insects in the world against a pair of faces.

Beetle detail – Pesticides

Both of the pieces are called Pesticides and both have multiple heads which represent the conflict inherent in our collective agri-industrial choices. Pesticides harm the environment and kill animals, they percolate up the food chain and accumulate in our bodies, yet without them we can’t produce enough food to feed our ballooning population.

Dragon fly detail – Pesticides

Having had the chance to ask Jonesy himself about the meaning of multiple headed creatures within his art it is interesting to revisit some older specimens starting with this classic Tar Sand Nightmare piece, Tar Sand oil production being the incredibly polluting, energy intensive, expensive and land destroying oil production favoured in Alberta, Canada and elsewhere.

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Sand Tar Oil by Jonesy 2012

That piece is phenomenally resilient. It lost its Native American/Aboriginal Canadian headdress, other artists occasionally paste over it yet it survives and recovers, outlasting the temporary indignities foisted upon it.

Sand Tar Oil by Jonesy (photo 2013)

Earlier this year a painting of a double headed creature smothered in toxic air pollution appeared in Shoreditch, the dilemma here being between the damning choice between petrol (CO2 pollution) and diesel (NOx) combustion.

Fossil Fuel CO2 v NOx, Jonesy, 2018

Back in 2014 this Genetically Modified Organism appears to be a kind of mutant Siamese twin.

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GMO by Jonesy, 2014

Links:

Jonesy Facebook

All photos: Dave Stuart

Epic New Mural In Shoreditch

A beautiful mural on the theme of “connectivity” which truly stands alongside the best in the world has been created in Shoreditch and it is stunning. The fun started in Spring this year and went on until August, 8 groups of artists working in pairs have painted a long montage of murals thematically linked on the idea of “connectivity”. The whole piece has been placed with permission on a building owned by a communications company and Graffoto has had the pleasure of discussing many aspects of this brilliant new mural with Lee Bofkin representing Global Street Art which managed the project.

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Busk and Oliver Switch, flanked by Ninth Seal and Best Ever to left, Ed Hicks and Dr Zadok to right

The first visible signs of dramatic change appeared in March 2018 when Hunto and Mr Thoms painted the end or perhaps the start of the building. The mural has “connectivity” as its theme. This can be seen in how the network of talkers, listeners and webcams painted by Thoms connects into the kissing cubist couple by Hunto and then the pipes in the network were left hanging on the fringes until Captain Kris and Tizer came along to paint the next section.

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Then we can see how Captain Kris and Tizer, in their section which depicts a connection between the real and the virtual, took the hanging connections and blended them into their artwork, in particular the yellow conduit at the bottom morphs into a triangular branch like enclosure which closes right at the point where the robot with the VR headset is connecting with the female dancer.

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Captain Kris & Tizer

The dancers are dancing on a woodland floor which then flows seamlessly into the amazing woodland scene by Ed Hicks and Dr Zadok. The connectivity depicted in the Hicks/Zadok woodland is provided by the fungal mycelium network, an organic information superhighway which actually really connects plants, trees and mushrooms across the forest floor.

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Ed Hicks, Zadok – The Mycelium network

The corner panel where King John Court meets New Inn Yard supports a vanitas painting by Busk and Mr Switch. The connection aspect here is the ammonite shell at the top which has not changed over millennia and thus provides a connection across the ages.

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Busk and Mr Oliver Switch

This then flows into a collection of hands in a lattice structure, the hands depict meetings, greetings, introductions, friendships, Ninth Seal and Best Ever have captured a very human form of connectivity.

Shoreditch, London, Colt, Mural, Connectivity, network, communication, street art, street artists, Best Ever, Ninth Seal

Mobile connectivity

Next to this is a beautiful tribute to old school modes of connection and communication by Nomad Clan, a pair of artists from Manchester. The lost art of letter writing sits alongside the pigeon post, now superseded by email.

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Nomad Clan Rewind

Those curious double headed arrow symbols in Nomad Clan’s art will be instantly familiar as “fast forward” and “rewind” to anyone who ever played or recorded on C60 and C90 cassettes. The fast forward arrow draws your eye to a collaboration between Mr Cenz whose multicoloured portraits are a familiar sight across London and Lovepusher, known for his amazing 3D letter writing. On the left Nomad Clan pay homage to retro connectivity, the female character to the right has the future of connectivity in the palm of her hand.

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Connectivity past, present and future

The whole project in its current form (not to suggest that this is anything other than the final manifestation) was brought to a conclusion by an abstract multi layered network created by AutOne and Neist whose complex handstyle we have loved for years.

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AutOne, Neist

The organisation and logistics behind such a colossal mural is also hugely impressive and generally is something that Global Street Art is tremendously qualified to undertake. Just a few stats making the rounds: the mural is about 115m along its base and 13m tall making a surface area of almost 1500square metres; 250 litres of black emulsion (who buys black?) were applied as background and over 500 cans of spraypaint went into the painting.

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Future Connectivity – Lovepusher, Mr Cenz

The end result of all these dynamics and the organisation and dare I say the connections is just about the most impressive, fresh, single piece themed collaborative mural Shoreditch has seen. All the artists involved deserve a magnificent pat on their respective backs and Lee and the Global Street Art team have every reason to feel very proud of this incredible achievement.

This post is an extract from a post on sister blog Graffoto in which Lee Bofkin of Global Street Art explains in an interview the genesis for this project, how the artists were selected and the mechanics and process of actually creating the mural, hopefully you might think it worth popping over to Graffoto to read a little more and see more photos.

Links:

Global Street Art website

Hunto instagram

Mr Thoms instagram

Captain Kris instagram

Tizer instagram

Ed Hick instagram

Dr Zadok instagram

Busk One instagram

Mr Oliver Switch instagram

Best Ever instagram

Ninth Seal TBA

Nomad Clan instagram

Mr Cenz instagram

Lovepusher instagram

AutOne instagram

Neist instagram

All photos: Dave Stuart

Latin Weather – Latin Street Art

England is experiencing a temporary geo-psyche shift; our footballers think they are Brazil and our weather thinks we are Los Angeles and for the time being we have almost no need for weather forecasts. This past week Memi Martinez and Veracidade, two street artists from far sunnier countries have made London their temporary home bringing a Latin heatwave of their own.

I don’t know if their presence at the same time is coincidence but any excuse will do to post this picture capturing two international artists in action on opposite sides of the same property.

Memi Martinez is from Argentina and over three days painted a colour scorched surreal cartoon of one three legged being pouring tea into an umbrella masquerading as a teacup held by a mirror image plump thighed “thing”. It’s about Brits initially spurning umbrellas as an effete French fad before eventually adopting them so ubiquitously that they became almost as British as that other great tradition we appropriated from another culture: a cup of tea.

We had the opportunity several times over three days to bump into this charming visitor and all who came across Memi were overwhelmed by her bright spirit and her generosity, here we see a group of international students from the USA over for a semester excitedly showing off some stickers Memi kindly gave them.

Memi’s stickers

Memi made a small video clip of this group and it appeared on her Instagram as a “story”, lovely to see who pleased the character on the passing truck is with the artist interacting with her new fans.

Memi in action:

Memi worked for three days on this single mural and when you look closely at the solidity of the limbs and the beautiful graduation of the shading on the inside and outside of the cup clearly her meticulous approach paid off.

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Meni Martinez detail

Veracidade aka Mauro from Brazil paints portraits and drops images of houses as a tag. First sighting was last weekend, a “quick thing” down Brick Lane.

Then a couple more paintings all featuring people raising their eyes to the skies appeared.

Veracidade, also featuring Brazilian artist Milo Tchais (detail of)

Both the artworks above feature a stylised house in the image, Mauro totes his painting gear around in these fabulous pvc bags in the style of the houses that he uses as his tag.

This piece is opposite the Pure Evil Gallery and features a lovely “hat tip” to Pure Evil’s “nightmare” series with the long tear running down the face

Two Veracidade artworks, a bag and the artist!

Here are a few of those Veracidade tags that have sprung up around Shoreditch:

Veracidade – also featuring Glor Mowcodelico

Now, I must dash, something about the heat and the colours Memi has brought to London has left me with a craving for a Harvey Wallbanger.

LINKS:

Memi Martinez Instagram

Vercidade Instagram

All photos: Dave Stuart

Meeting Of Styles 2018

At the end of May there is a Bank Holiday in the UK and a couple of weekends ago this provided a marvellous opportunity for a huge array of spraypainting talent to gather in Shoreditch for a frenzy of graffiti and art at the Meeting Of Styles Festival. Since that date a load of the artists who participated in the meeting Of Styles have been mentioned on the Shoreditch Street Art Tour.

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Dan Kitchener Meeting Of Styles UK 2018

Meeting Of Styles is an international series of festivals which takes place in multiple locations around the world each year, this year 11 events are scheduled spread across the far east, South Africa and 6 cities in Europe. Since 2014 the London edition of MoS has found a home in the extraordinary Nomadic Community Gardens in Shoreditch.

Nomadic Community Gardens

Here are a few of the highlights of this amazing festival of art and music.

Nomad Clan Meeting Of Styles UK 2018

Xenz Meeting Of Styles UK 2018

On the Graffoto blog we have done a longer set of highlights which includes some of the history of the London meeting of Styles festival and a look at the development of the Nomadic Community gardens which has become a thriving vital community space in Shoreditch.

Graffoto Blog Post

All photos: Dave Stuart

I Don’t Like Cricket – I LUVITAAAAAAH

It is not often that cricket and street art meet but that did happen today in the home of street art, Brick Lane, Shoreditch when a small but perfectly formed group from the Shoreditch Street Art Tour came across the Cricket World Cup being displayed on Brick Lane.

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ICC Cricket World Cup meets Shoreditch Street Art Tours Group

The gentleman holding the trophy on behalf of the ICC confirmed that he was English (albeit not a cricketer), let’s hope this is not the only pair of English hands to be placed on that trophy next year.

Mine!

The other street art connection is that a huge mural welcoming the World Cup to the home of cricket appeared on Brick Lane last night painted by the professional spraycan artists Graffiti Life – good job guys!

It’s Britain; all welcome (photo Chris Howell)

Photos: Chris Howell (featured image and where noted above) and Dave Stuart (using Chris Howell’s camera cos he forgot his own phone this morning!)

Louis Masai Exhibition “Missing”

London street artist Louis Masai has a superb exhibition at the Crypt Gallery, St Pancras Church, Euston Road open until Sunday. By the time sufficient superlatives have been polished and photos that do it justice have been tweaked, the show will be over – it has a very short run until this Sunday. Therefore the message at this moment is brief: get along to Louis’s show this weekend!

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Missing – Louis Masai

This is by some distance the best staged, solid and most thought provoking show in London from an urban artist for quite some time.

Pangolin Trafficking – Louis Masai

ShellP Louis Masai

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Louis’ environmental concerns have featured on the Shoreditch Street Art Tour in the past and have always been hugely impressive, this show could be the best thing you see this bank holiday weekend.

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Save The Bees – Masai (Shoreditch, 2014)

Missing – A Solo Show by Louis Masai

The Crypt gallery

St Pancras Church

Euston Rd

London NW1 2BA

Open Friday, 25^th May – Sunday 27^th May 2018

Summer Is Here – Oops Maybe Not

Sitting at my keyboard, fresh in from a perma-drizzle that looks set for the day it is a little difficult to remember that London has had two” Summers” already this year. Twice, barely a fortnight apart, we enjoyed temperatures over 25 degrees and boy did the street artists love that! Lots of new street art has been appearing daily so here is a little update of some of the fresh street art that has caught our eye over the past fortnight. At the top of the page, Shok-1 produced another of his superb X-Ray images.

Ben Wilson aka Chewing Gum Man has been particularly prolific just recently in Shoreditch and he delighted me with the story behind the two characters featured in a new chewing gum pic outside the Bricklayers Arms. Two deliverymen, Lee and Bryan were hefting barrels up from the pub cellar, Ben had a chat with them and concluded, as recorded on the chewing gum, that Lee and Bryan should be paid more!

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Lee and Bryan, Draymen, by Ben Wilson

Ben Wilson explains …

Not far away from that spot is another one of those chewing gum pics where Ben paints the view, no prizes for recognising Rivington Street:

Rivington St Chewing Gum Art by Ben Wilson

Rivington Street

Last week Jean Peut Etre caused much excitement when he was spied by a tour group collaging his pasted images and letterpress prints in several Shoreditch locations seeming always just a few moments ahead of the group.

Jean Peut Etre Collage

One of the greatest pleasures a fan of street art can enjoy is to discover an unexpected piece by a favourite artist and this came to pass the other day. Wandering around Shoreditch on a so-called day off, armed with a proper camera photographing loads of great street art the other day I spotted a fantastic new Jonesy I had not noticed before, an absolutely stunning cast bronze piece. The casting shows what appears to be a vulture nestling in a roundel of blasted twigs, themselves surreally mounted on the leg of a bird.

Jonesy

A subsequent peek on Jonesy’s facebook account revealed that this had actually been in situ since last September, a full 7 months ago. Just goes to show that even when your eye is constantly scanning high and low for new visual disruptions it is always possible to overlook the beauty hiding in plain sight on the streets. This next bronze casting, believed to be more recent was something I was specifically hunting for.

Jonesy

Howl Owl is a regular visitor to these shores and the cute little owls are packed with personality and get up to all kinds of mischief. A veritable parliament of owls came to roost in Shoreditch this week and this particular group set up a sub committee with a clowder of Keef’s cats on a stinky sewage pipe, looking like they contemplating setting off in a pea green boat.

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Howl Owl and Keef collaboration

We mustn’t forget that some street art is done with permission, the weekend before last JXC painted this quality image of Judge Dredd taking out Mickey!

Mickey Mouse justice Judge Dredd style

Finally, it was lovely to receive a link to an article on the Travel Mag online where they select their 7 favourite walking tours in London and kindly featured Shoreditch Street Art Tours, we are honoured and thank them, check out the best in London here.

LINKS

Shok-1 Instagram

Jean Peut-Etre Instagram

Jonesy Facebook

Howl Owl Instagram

Sad Keef Instagram

JXC Instagram

all photos: Dave Stuart