Tag Archives: billboard

Lovehearts On Shoreditch Streets by Grete Hjorth-Johansen

Radiant lovehearts paste ups first started to be seen around Shoreditch in about February this year. As a bit of a sucker for super saturated colourised photo edits this series was in equal amounts intriguing and beautiful. A recent chance encounter with the artist Grete Hjorth-Johansen revealed a fascinating story to the art.

Grete is in the habit of taking walks in her local woods where she chances upon tree trunks scarred with the amorous carvings of lovers initials entwined in love hearts. These existential protestations of affection, some testifying to mutual passion others perhaps declaring an ambition rather than any prevailing actualité inspired Grete to document these remote and often hidden love charms. Does shortening to initials rather than full names confer a degree of anonymity or does brevity reduce the time take to gouge the text into the tree bark? These considerations have challenged graffiti writers and street artists throughout history. That’s before we get to the matter of font design, which is the essence of graffiti. There is also something wonderfully old fashioned and almost permanent about these carved markings in a world of fleeting social media impressions.

love hearts carved in trees photographed by artist Grete Hjorth-Johansen pasted up as street art on walls of Shoreditch

Grete Hjorth-Johansen #Lovehearts

These myriad unknowable possibilities inspired Grete to return and take photos at night, illuminating carvings from above with a torch, that iridescent loom of light in each of the photos is Grete’s torch. This technique is much favoured by archaeologists struggling to read the shallow, time worn inscriptions on building foundation stones and gravestones (try it!). The photos are then rendered to transform the muted shades of the woods into highly solarised and charming colour forms.

love hearts carved in trees photographed by artist Grete Hjorth-Johansen pasted up as street art on walls of Shoreditch

Grete Hjorth-Johansen #Lovehearts

Grete has recorded some 900 different carvings giving her an extensive library of imagery. What do you do with a project that has built on so much time and work but you don’t have an exhibition? You can go back to the very basic premise of street art, you find a space on a wall, put your aart up yourself and you curate and hold your own exhibition. Admission free. Grete took charge of her own destiny, did things herself and no waiting for anyone else’s consent created her own public display of these wonderful images. This is about as punk as it gets and it’s what street art was and is all about.

love hearts carved in trees photographed by artist Grete Hjorth-Johansen displayed on digital advertising board at Old Street in Shoreditch

Grete Hjorth-Johansen #Lovehearts

As well as the art aspect, Grete’s project places her as recorder and documentarian of the lovers’ efforts to immortalise and publicise their affections. If you’re the type of person poking tree trunks with a knife this is possibly the best outcome you can dream of. Imagine you’re D&C and you come round the corner in Old Street to find your passion memento lit up in neon. Not bad, although possibly not good if the carving was 20 years ago and affairs have moved on.

love hearts carved in trees photographed by artist Grete Hjorth-Johansen displayed on digital advertising board at Old Street in Shoreditch

Grete Hjorth-Johansen #Lovehearts

It be great to get a statement from one of the original Romeos or Juliettes but one of the points of these relics is that the message is public but the protagonists remain private, again the similarities with graffiti are inescapable. Step forward H and S please!

love hearts carved in trees photographed by artist Grete Hjorth-Johansen pasted up as street art on walls of Shoreditch

Grete Hjorth-Johansen #Lovehearts

This chance encounter with Grete actually took place at the very spot on a corner of Old Street roundabout where I stood in April 2008 to begin my very first street art tour. We were under a digital billboard which every 30 seconds displayed a collection of Grete’s lovehearts project at about 1000 times life size. Leaving aside the matter of art washing by the advertising businesses, these images brought colour and joy to Old Street for a whole fortnight, well done Grete. As long as lovers continue to love and boys and girls take knives on dates then let’s hope Grete continues to provide our streets with the beautiful photographic #Lovehearts paste ups.

Grete Hjorth-Johansen Instagram

Grete Hjorth-Johansen Website

All photos & video: Dave Stuart

love hearts carved in trees photographed by artist Grete Hjorth-Johansen pasted up as street art on walls of Shoreditch

Grete Hjorth-Johansen #Lovehearts

love hearts carved in trees photographed by artist Grete Hjorth-Johansen pasted up as street art on walls of Shoreditch

Grete Hjorth-Johansen #Lovehearts

love hearts carved in trees photographed by artist Grete Hjorth-Johansen displayed on digital advertising board at Old Street in Shoreditch

Grete Hjorth-Johansen #Lovehearts

love hearts carved in trees photographed by artist Grete Hjorth-Johansen pasted up as street art on walls of Shoreditch

Grete Hjorth-Johansen #Lovehearts

love hearts carved in trees photographed by artist Grete Hjorth-Johansen pasted up as street art on walls of Shoreditch

Grete Hjorth-Johansen #Lovehearts

Advertising Shits In Your Head and No Ad Day

Two interesting things are coming up which relate to issues often raised on the Shoreditch Street Art Tour.

The first is that this Sunday we celebrate No Ad Day. Street artists have often cited an anti advertising stance to justify their actions, the essence of the message being “who gave advertisers permission to hijack public space to bombard us with their advertising messages, we are reclaiming our visual landscape”. No Ad Day takes the view that advertising is pernicious, not necessarily truthful, overwhelming and a mechanism for artificially stimulating demand in the absence of a natural imperative to acquire based on need. So this Sunday, in cities around the world including New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Madrid and undoubtedly many more, there is possibly going to be some subtle action to reduce the quantity of advertising.

No Ad Day, Street art, Advertising, ad busting, ad hijacking, ad subversion, billboard, bus stop, bus

via No Ad day website, photographer unknown

Look out for blank advert spaces, hijacked advert spaces, subverted adverts and perhaps more. If an ad looks a bit odd, check it out it might just have been hit by someone engaging in a No Ad Day activity.

On the street art tour we often delight in discovering subverted adverts and hijacked advertising spaces, we will certainly be keeping our eyes peeled in London this weekend.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, Advertising, ad busting, ad hijacking, ad subversion, billboard, fly posters, H.O

H.O subverts a collection of illegal fly posters, Nov 2016, photo Dave Stuart

London, Shoreditch, Street art, Advertising, ad busting, ad hijacking, ad subversion, billboard, bus stop, bus

Hogre puts art where advertising used to be, June 2016, photo Dave Stuart

London, Shoreditch, Street art, Advertising, ad busting, ad hijacking, ad subversion, billboard, flyposter

Lady Gaga D’Faced, photo Dave Stuart

The results of stripping adverts from the urban landscape can be quite impressive, in 2010 the vast quantity of illegal billboards all over Athens, from the Centre to the Port of Piraeus in one direction and out to the airport in the other suddenly whited out. Whether this was driven by economics or principal, or even possibly but more remotely actually just a clamp down on illegal advertising, it made a huge difference to Athen’s appearance.

Athens, Advertising, ad busting, ad hijacking, ad subversion, billboard, buff

Athens, 2010, photo Dave Stuart

The second thing I want to let you know about is a rather interesting publication with the awesome title “Advertising Shits In Your Head”. This is a book to be published by Dog Section Press.

London, Shoreditch, Advertising, ad busting, ad hijacking, ad subversion, billboard, bus stop, bus, Advertising Shits in your Head

Advertising Shits In Your Head, photo via Dog Section press

Advertising Shits In Your Head combines theory and practice in one short book about the modern subvertising movement. It will certainly be an interesting read for the curious. At present a crowd funding campaign is very close to raising the target needed to proceed to publication, if you or someone you know might be interested in this book, do look a bit closer. Funding deadline date is 28^th November, the day after No Ad Day, funding is 85% towards target.

Advertising, ad busting, ad hijacking, ad subversion, billboard, bus stop, bus, Advertising Shits in your Head

Advertising Shits In Your Head, photo via Dog Section press

You can in effect pre order the book by contributing just £5 to the funding though I’m looking forward to rocking a Dog Section Press Teeshirt on some tours next Summer.

One evening early last month when the campaign was first launched I luckily caught this particularly relevant subverted advertising lightbox in Islington.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, Advertising, ad busting, ad hijacking, ad subversion, billboard, bus stop, bus

by @ProtestStencil, photo by Dave Stuart

On the web page for the funding are many other recent updates of subvertising actions,

98428-1-2d7567a23d1854b6f04a67479268c097

photo via Dog Section Pres, photographer unknown

My friends at VNA magazine, my favourite zine got this ace interview from Dog Section Press Editor Vyvian Raoul about the ideas and manifestations of this new wave of artivism. So, check out the crowdfunding page now and help push the appeal over the line (update – now 93% funded).

Feature Photo via No Ad Day

Photo sources cited, if any photographer would like a credit for their photograph please drop an email