Tag Archives: Apparan

Paste up street art put up for the London International Paste Up Festival Second Edition

London International Paste Up Festival 2

The second edition of the London International Paste Up Festival took place 20-23 October 2022.  Artists from all over the world, about 300 all told, sent in paper-based artwork which the organisers pasted up on a number of walls mainly around the Brick Lane area.

Fashion Street LIPF2

Street art was put up on a total of 7 locations, or 8 if you include the numerous paste ups that accumulated around LIPF HQ on Hanbury Street during the festival opening event.  None of the LIPF2 locations had been used in the inaugural 2021 London International Paste Up Festival.

Seven Stars LIPF2, Brick Lane

In 2021 all the locations bar one were legal, permission had been granted by the owners.  The exception was one wall where the LIPF team thought they had permission but it turned out they were listening to the wrong person!  For 2022 there was no permission and indeed at several spots the apparent wall owners remonstrated with the paste up teams with varying degrees of forcefulness.  At one spot the ground floor occupant harangued the team to be followed by an occupant from the floor above later saying how much they loved the art and the constant change.

Grimsby St LIPF2

In 2021 all the LIPF surfaces were virgin surfaces or tarps tied to walls.  For the second event all bar one of the LIPF walls had long term prior history as paste up street art walls.   The paste up festival waved a transformational wand at each wall, bringing complete more or less change in a single moment to surfaces more accustomed to perpetual evolution through gradual change.   Last year’s art was essentially one layer deep whereas this year LIPF2 looks all the better for layering onto each walls accretion of texture, patina and depth.   Also there were no gaps where original wall surface can be seen.  So this year’s locations just looked more like street art from the wild compared to last year’s festival.

Puma Court LIPF2

Street art lends itself to collaborations, interactions and augmentations.  Emo Ryan screenprints portraits of punk version of Queen Elizabeth  garnished with Jamie Reid/Sex Pistols influenced wording, a recent paste up of the Queen by Silvio Alino had the right scale and similar text providing a perfect juxtaposition.  The lily was well and truly gilded with the later addition of an artificial flower.

Silvio Alino, Emo Ryan and Me and Blue, Hanbury St

Coloquix/Appaaran collaboration for LIPF2

Paste up street art put up for the London International Paste Up Festival Second Edition

Tsunami_Mignonnerie / Raddington Falls interaction

One paste up spot with a long history of street art got the LIPF paste up team into spot of bother with an un-appreciative owner.  Stik painted the Brick Lane Couple on Princelet Street in 2010.  The adjacent wall was decorated in fine style with a succession of stencil images by Otto Schade from 2014 and paste ups really started appearing in large numbers in 2015.   Someone in the property had a tirade against Benjay Crossman in 2019 leading to this sought after artist mulshing out his own art and leaving little doubt as to his feelings towards the owners.  It would appear that the same person objected to the LIPF team decorating this long running spot and scrapped off the paste ups within his reach (short arms, stiff knees?).  In the process of destroying the art he created a truly unsightly mess.   Ironically, within the vague unwritten rules of paste up culture, ripped, torn, peeling and destroyed art gives a free pass to other artists to place fresh art over the desecration.

Princelet Street LIPF2 before the anti art attack

Princelet Street after the art desecration

2019 Benjay Crossman

Tweet_streetart from Melbourne collaborated with Metraeda from Dusseldorf on a balloon breathing faceted dragon.   A barred gate locked to a wall provided appropriate context for several artworks including Palley’s R2D2 which was kept company by a rocket taking David Bowie to heaven and Cultof.XYZ’s “Allow access”.   Old School street artists who submitted artworks included the famous London Police and West London writer CodeFC.

Tweet_streetart & Metraeda

Coloquix/Apparan collaboration for LIPF2

Puma Court – including Jace, 33WallFlower33, Tuby, Broken Hartist, Corrosive8, Cultof.xyz, Knapple

London Police, Uberfubs

Keith Flint and Queen Elizabeth by CodeFC.  Also feaet No.rules art & LT66

Street artists are used to surrendering control over the fate of their art once they leave it on the streets.  The London International Paste Up Festival begs artists to relinquish more, they are absent from the placement process.  On the whole, with the exception of some artists who assisted with the pasting up or who attended some of the events in person, the gift of placement was in the hands of the team who spent many days pasting art on the walls.  The aesthetic of the resulting walls was determined by opportunist interactions, intentional and chance colour combinations and a preference for chaotic randomness rather than disciplined straight edged borders and overlaps.

The Viaduct – early stages

The Viaduct LIPF2

Homo Riot, Vision Ox, Oddo, Punk Flamungo, Raffaele Giovani, DaddyStreetFox, TFA, Vermin, Pissandvinegar art, fiftyseven designs,Slow Shrug,  Grimsby St, LIPF2

So.Schoen.Immer.Weider, Cameron twins, Hello The Mushroom, Taxed, Olly Walker, Apparan, Zelda Bomba at Puma Court

The LIPF2 spots are live and active street art locations, they remained dynamic and constantly changing even over the period of the Festival itself as new art was added by artists.  K-Guy had been a participant in the 2021 LIPF but in 2022, having not managed to get ready in time for the submission deadline decided the best means of getting involved was simply to pop up and add his contributions himself.  Those contributions were themselves subject to very rapid augmentation by another reliable contributor to the Shoreditch street art smorgasbord, Alex Arnell.

K-Guy

Fashion St

People immersed in the street art scene, in particular the practitioners, the artists may ponder what gives someone the right to take over whole walls and go over existing art in the name of a festival.   Specially one in which very few of the participants are active in the installation, necessitating an element that might be construed as curation.  If there is a conceit at the heart of the method, the actual achievement in elevating the appreciation and status of paste up street art justifies it.

Princelet St Oct 2022 pre LIPF

Princelet Street LIPF2

Shoreditch Street Art Tours had the pleasure a few years back of introducing the artist Apparan who is one of the main organisers involved in conceiving, managing and generally pulling off the London International Paste Up Festival to the charity Urban Heart Guate.  Urban Heart Guate promotes various forms of therapy including art to support a better life and environment for young children growing up in communities in Guatemala blighted by poverty, crime and gang violence.  A free street art tour by Shoreditch Street Art Tours on the last afternoon of LIPF2 raised donations to support the work of Urban Heart Guate.   The official link to contribute via LIPF to this fabulous cause can be found HERE

The organisers of the London Paste Up Festival are continuing to raise funds in support and have partnered with Pepita Coffee to raise funds from purchases of reusable coffee tins packed with luxury ground coffee and featuring a collage of photos of LIPF1 art, they look stunning!

Collectors edition Pepita ground coffee for for the London International Paste Up Festival Second Edition

Collectors Edition Paste Up Festival coffee jar by Pepita Coffee

Message London International Paste Up Festival on Instagram for more details on how to get your mitts on one of these beauties.

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With apologies to the 300 artists who participated in LIPF2, it would be wonderful to provide links to all artists or indeed to identify everyone whose art features in the photographs in this summary but sadly this isn’t practical.

The 2nd London International Paste Up Festival was supported by:

Shoreditch Street Art Tours

Brick Lane Shisha Lounge

Great Art UK

Inspiring City

Pepita Coffee

La Tundra Revista

All photos: Dave Stuart


paste up street art in Shoreditch by comedian Bill Boorman also known as street artist Beirdo celebrates 50th anniversary of Pride in London with the message Pride is more that a parade

Pride Street Art In Shoreditch

Last weekend marked London’s main 2022 Pride celebration and a lot of new Pride street art appeared in Shoreditch in celebration of and support for the LGBTQ community.

On the Shoreditch Street Art Tour on Sunday I was asked by one guest why the London Pride was in July rather than June as they were used to.  Post tour digging revealed that “Pride in London”, the official title at present, is timed for the closest Saturday to the anniversary of the Stonewall riots in NYC which followed police raids on the Stonewall gay bar on 28th June.

The pride rainbow flag features in a lot of the Pride art pieces in its 6 colour traditional colour form, as opposed to the usual 7 colour representation of a rainbow.  The first rainbow flag was designed by the artist Gilbert Blake in 1978 at the request of Harvey Milk (see the film Milk, excellent).  It had 8 colours, the traditional 7 colours of the rainbow plus hot pink above the red.  Each of the 8 colours was assigned a specific meaning.  In 1979, aiming to increase flag production, the pink strip was dropped as hot pink material was not readily available.  The turquoise stripe was also dropped so that the flag could be split and displayed in symmetrical paired halves each having three stripes.  Thus the common Pride 6 colour rainbow evolved.

Subdude used an 8 stripe Pride flag to highlight statutory homophobia on the African continent.

paste up street art in Shoreditch by political street artist Subdude points out that homosexuals are legal targets in 30 African nations celebrating 50th anniversary of Pride in London

Subdude – Pride London 2022

Street artist Beirdo prefers 6 colours, or perhaps was just out of hot pink and turquoise A4.

Anti Conversion Ban Therapy paste up street art celebrates 50th anniversary of Pride in London with of messaages on rainbow coloured paper comedian Bill Boorman also know as  street artist Beirdo in Shoreditch

Beirdo – Pride London 2022

Apparan sends her greetings and wishes you Happy Pride, with 7 rainbow stripes.

paste up street art by street artist Apparan in Shoreditch celebrates 50th anniversary of Pride in London with a heart depicting love with 7 stripe rainbow flag motif flowing through it

Apparan – Pride London 2022

Drash La Krass has a list.  No homophobia, no biphobia, no transphobia, no sexism!

Drash La Krass glittery paste up street art in Shoreditch celebrates 50th anniversary of Pride in London with a no homophobia no bi-phobia no transphobia no sexism message

Drash La Krass – Pride London 2022

Ghead_Tra is a new name this year to the Shoreditch street art scene and his art hates hatred and Conservatives.  The God Loves Gays tricolour specifically aims at the vile spewing Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas USA.

Anti gay anti abortion extremist with Westboro Baptist Church placards held by children

Westboro Baptist Church anti gay anti abortion message – credit Jerod Harris

 paste up street art celebrates 50th anniversary of Pride in London opposing Westboro Baptist Church anti gay  art with messages by street artist Ghead_tra in Shoreditch

Ghead_art – Pride London 2022

If this next text based piece isn’t Ghead then Ghead ought to get together with the unknown artist as the message seamlessly blends two big issues Ghead has gone long on (anti gay bashing, anti Tory).

 paste up street art celebrates 50th anniversary of Pride in London with anti Tory text set in rainbow flag colours  by an unknown street artist in Shoreditch

Unknown artist – Pride London 2022

Sidenote: on another matter the same so-called place of worship also espouses extreme views on abortion and Ghead_tra parodies another specimen of Westboro extremism in opposition to that message.

Street artist Ghead_tra mocks Westboro Baptist Church anti-abortion views with modifications of their own anti abortion text say “abortion is my bloody choice”

“Abortion is my bloody choice”, Ghead_tra, July 2022

Ahead of this week’s Tory party implosion Social Sniper homed in on an issue which highlighted the breakdown of trust by members of the LGBTQ community in politicians.  This may need to be read slowly.  Conversion therapy is a process aimed at “curing” or changing expressions of gender behaviour, identity or expression.  To describe it as controversial would be to miss the most unacceptable aspects of the practice by a million miles.  Boris Johnson decided not to proceed with legislation to ban the practice which provoked howls of horror, at which point he flipped and decided there would be a ban except it wouldn’t apply to trans conversion therapy.

Anti Conversion Ban Therapy paste up street art depicts a trans woman and trans flag by street artist Social Sniper in Shoreditch

Social Sniper – – Pride London 2022

For the curious, the background to Social Sniper’s art is another form of colour spectrum specifically representing the trans community and their supporters.  Trans Pride is taking place this weekend (Saturday 9th July 2022), the weekend after Pride weekend.

Wandering down a parallel track again, one senior tory we didn’t know about before appeared on TV regretting that he had had to support the flip flops on conversion therapy policy.  When politicians publicly admit to supporting policies they fundamentally disagree with, how can voters expect to elect a representative possessing even the tiniest fragment of integrity.

Mike Freer MP

I am hugely indebted to my Shoreditch Street Art Tours co-guide Subdude for his insights and information regarding the content and installation of the art discussed.

All photos: Dave Stuart except where  stated

Featured artwork: Beirdo