Tag Archives: art otel

Pink elephant parade street art by street artist Fat Cap Spraysreflected in car windscreen

June Busting Out Street Art All Over

June is Summer’s portal, ushering in hazy sunshine, drinks with friends and a bump in street art action.  That’s the theory; June in London this year was on the whole rather grey and overcast, here are some of the artworks that leavened the damp squib the month became.

paste up street art of rock star Debbie Harry from Blondie by Postmans Art

Debbie Harry – The Postman’s Art

Nathan Bowen has been on a recent flurry of art activity, one particular piece I wanted to include falls foul of the very strict rigid inflexible “June and June only” qualifying period set for this post but thankfully there are other equally lovely ones.

permissioned mural street by Nathan Bowen and Harry Blackmore

Nathan Bowen & Harry Blackmore

In this artwork created in Pedley St, the latest graffiti hotspot, Pablo Fiasco fuses the first African American character to appear in the Peanuts cartoon strip with imagery inspired by the Jimmy Cliff film “The Harder They Come”, a combination every bit as brilliant as Fiasco’s masterful stencil technique.

stencil street art by Pablo Fiasco featuring Peanuts character Franklin and scenes from The Harder They Fall Jimmy Cliff

Peanuts character Franklin by Pablo Fiasco

stencil street art by Pablo Fiasco featuring Peanuts character Franklin and scenes from The Harder They Fall Jimmy Cliff

Pablo Fiasco Jimmy Cliff detail

Grace Kelly popping into a British phone box would be an iconic moment if it ever happened, D7606 is quite happy to do the imagining for us.  Let’s hope “indigo the art dog” from New York knows how to behave.

pop art style paste up street art with Grace Kelly in a phone box by street artist D7606

Phone box multiples with Grace Kelly – D7606

Seeing Coloquix art in London is relatively unusual but it always reminds me of the wonderful time I had in Sheffield exploring art in derelict buildings after travelling up there for a gallery show by Aida, which was the first time I encountered Coloquix’s art.

paste up street art female figure bouncing on space hopper by street artist Coloquix

female with space hopper – Coloquix

Woskerski and David Speed have alternated in the use of this particular spot in the past month, this fried egg by Woskerski was sensational.

Photorealistic fried egg painted on a building site hoarding in Shoreditch by street artist Woskerski

Fried Egg – Woskerski

At a nearby location this skull by David Speed was beautifully framed in the structure of the bus shelter.

neon pink skull street art painted on an abandoned bank in Shoreditch by street artist David Speed

David Speed

At a more formal level and not normally the kind of art that Shoreditch Street Art Tours covers, Art Night has been significantly redesigned for 2021.  It used to be a one night event in London involving a crazy evening pounding around one off art events in galleries in institutions and it was terribly easy to actually spend the whole evening stuck in a queue for the most popular elements.   For 2021 the event is strung out over a month and has been decentralised with much activity outside London.  Supporting a theme small acts of personal and collective defiance and self determination we had this biting feminist advert from the Guerrilla Girls.

Art Night 2021 billboard art by Guerrilla Girls

Guerrilla Girls -Female Artists

As an aside, whenever I am under extreme pressure to name a favourite piece of street art I often fall back to a piece by James Cauty in 2008 which mirrored the street but with the devastating ego blow in which my personal significance was accurately measured out by my invisibility, it was at the same spot.

Favourtie piece of street art ever, billboard art in Shoreditch

TRA TON SI SIHT – Jimmy Cauty, 2008

This building site hoarding is at the site of the former art hang out known as the Foundry, the Shoreditch location where a new 27 story hotel is being constructed where once was one of the largest Banksy’s in London.  It mainly hosts graffiti, this sublime abstract artwork seems to have the hand, meaning can control, of a graffiti writer but looks to be abstract to the point of no letterform at all.

abstract graffiti colourfields in Shoreditch - artist not known

artist not known

That building site is now emerging above ground level, it is quite scary to reflect on the fact that it will be a 27 story building when complete.

Art Otel new building under construction in Shoreditch with graffiti on hoardings Awards, Fugs, Mase, Krops et al

Legal graffiti on building site hoardings – Awards, Fugs, Mase, Krops et al

all photos: Dave Stuart


Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

Old Banksys Reappear In Shoreditch

Two old specimens of Banksy street art hidden for many years in Shoreditch have been brought back into public view and Shoreditch Street Art Tours was the only “outsider” present to witness the unveiling.   Two images, a huge rat and a TV being chucked rock star style out of a window have lain out of sight under protective wooden sheeting for 12 years though they are perhaps among the more “storied” of Banksy’s street artworks.

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

Banksy Rat and TV, May 2019

The stencils were created in 2004 when a festival was organised in the car park behind the Foundry bar.  They were visible until late 2007 when they were covered up under a protective wooden cover.

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

Sweet Toof, Cyclops, Burning Candy on the wooden protection, 2008

In 2010 Hackney Council made the preservation of the TV and the rat a condition of the planning consent for the demolition of the existing building and its replacement by an 18 storey (now 23 storey!) hotel.

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

The TV out the window stencil, a brilliant rock and roll cliché, looked like it was made for that wall, it’s an image that has to be on the side of a windowless building that looks like it ought to have windows.  The image wouldn’t work on say a garden wall or a bridge support.  Inside the Foundry all kinds of crazy things went on and prominent in the bar was a array of flickering TVs, a TV flying out the window from the Foundry seemed entirely plausible.

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

The rat has always been a bit unsatisfactory, It has never been clear what this rat is about, it is often described as a rat with a knife and fork but if you look that is actually a jigsaw blade not a knife and the fork is more like a harpoon or a pitchfork, we don’t know what the rat is doing, why it fits at this location nor what the red ring around the eye is about and the technique is a bit sloppy.  However Banksy’s street art isn’t diminished by poor execution, they were never meant to be superb specimens of perfectly executed art and indeed evidence of haste is perhaps part of the essence of the way Banksy has to create his street art.

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

“Eat The Rich”? Banksy

More significantly, Banksy hated the rat!  When asked to comment on the closure of the Foundry in a 2010 BBC news broadcast, Banksy sent one of his classic emails saying

 “No one ever went there for the beer-it was always a bit warm and flat. I would appeal to the developers not to keep my graffiti. It’s a bit like demolishing the Tate and preserving the ice cream van out the front.” Banksy, Newsnight email 4 Feb 2010”

There you have it, the artist Banksy does not wish the art to be saved and so the council’s 2010 decision to require its preservation is morally dubious to say the least.  Note the explicit confirmation that the artwork is a genuine Banksy.

It is interesting to note that the TV image has a Banksy tag next to it and they are increasingly rare out in the wild.

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

Banksy tag

The immediate future for the rat and the TV is that metal frames are going to be constructed around them and after separating the wall from the rest of the building structure and dismantling the walls above the art by hand, a massive crane is going to be used to lift the two wall segments separately over the building where they will be stored covered up at the front of the building site.  The developers have not made their ultimate intention clear, their obligation is to provide free viewing access to the public of these two Banksys either within the hotel or somewhere else within the Borough.  The developer is known to have planned to include 6 other Banksys from the Foundry building within the so-called Art’otel development but none of the other 6 survive.

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

Banksy Grim Reaper, Foundry

For the meantime, make the most of the brief period visibility of those two Banksys in their original location before they lose whatever sense of context they may have had in their original location and ponder the puzzle of why the council decided to preserve this rat against the artist’s own wishes yet remain oblivious to some real masterpieces that appeared on the Foundry building before and since.

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

Buffed 2011 – feat Elmo ATG, & Gold Peg and Sweet Toof collab

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

Elmo, Masker, Milo Tchais, Run, Zezao, Gerard Gademann; May 2011

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

Jo Peel animation, 2013

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

Fintan Magee (detail) 2014, also feat Eine, Pez, ALO, Borondo

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

Waleska Nomura. 2015

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

Phlegm, 2015

Note the knowing nod to Banksy’s TV in the phlegm above, very nice.

Banksy, rat, stencil, tv, Foundry, Shoreditch, London, art otel, art hotel, street art, street art tour

EINE “Last Days Of Shoreditch” 2016

This article is a summary of a longer version published on Graffoto blog

30 May 2019 UPDATE: The exposed Banksys have been covered up again!

Dec 2023 UPDATE: Both Banksys can now be seen in their new locations on the hotel building

All photos: Dave Stuart