Shoreditch September Street Art Highlights

September turned out to be a perfect goldilocks month for street art in Shoreditch, not to hot and not too cold, not too wet and not too dry, just perfect!  Here is a selection of some favourites from the past month, some of which are already no more, have ceased to be, expired (etc).

Last weekend our Sunday tour had the pleasure of bumping into Airborne Mark doing one of his characteristic Origami paintings.  Here is a look at the origami model he was using as the reference, the final masterpiece can be seen in the featured image at the top.

Another artist we bumped into last weekend was the ever friendly D7606 who reclaimed a long running spot with this glorious Princess Grace Kelly in a London phone box “two Margeritas, one four cheeses, an Americano and 3 garlic breads please.”

There is a tendency for photos to bubble to the surface on my computer in reverse chronological order, most recent first so perhaps it is appropriate that another graffiti writer we at the weekend was writing their name backwards using a very long handled roller brush.

Yet another artist we bumped into sprang a real surprise on us, reveal a new form of his art.  Ben Wilson is better known as the Chewing Gum Man.   I told him that the group I was with hadn’t seen any of his chewing gum pictures to which he replied “ah ha, have you seen my new mosaics and he spent 10 minutes giving us a personal guided tour of new paintings done in single mosaic pieces.

These are even trickier to spot than his chewing gum pictures (other than on the Millennium Bridge where it is hard to stop stepping on them).

An artist we met in action earlier in the month was Daniel K Swann.  Passing by the following day I found that the positive message David wished to convey had been painted all across the road.

One artist we met twice was the recently relocated Wrdsmth from LA.

Lest you think my time is spent beating street artists off with a stick, one street artist who was around who we didn’t see was Shepard Fairey.  He was present at the opening night of his show of collaborations with D*Face and Kai and Sunny at StolenSpace Gallery but the queue to meet the legend outside the gallery was daunting.  I visited the show a couple of days later when it was much quieter, you can read the review HERE.   Shepard Fairey left his mark with a significant collection of new stickers many of which we hadn’t seen previously in London.

ED Hicks popped up with several new works in September, leaving aside the – cough – adverts, my favourite was this stunning John Martin meets Dali fragmenting landscape with portal and apocalyptical skyline everything but the kitchen sink piece.

Now for a couple which have already featured on my or less daily street art updates, I loved these bunny hands by Enigma.

Placement is often a significant contribution to great street art so this moth by Marie Alice was really spot on.

All photos: Dave Stuart in month of September 2021