In early 2017, broccoli supplies in England collapsed due to a crop failure in Spain, prices soared, shops set up barricades.

A street artist made light of such woes as real broccoli started to appear in art on Shoreditch walls!

The art consisted of real broccoli cut in half with additional collaged elements showing the face, hands and feet of a bearded gentleman.   From January 2017 on round and square mirrors Broccoli Man appeared, then from March the natural greens of the broccoli were replaced by reds.

The placement was often amusing, such as on this huge unofficial billboard advertising a tv program about a certain recreational plant, suggesting that the programme was an in-depth feature on broccoli.

Adrian Boswell, the artist behind the face in the broccoli introduced himself one morning, and in addition to being a very friendly chap who regards putting broccoli up on walls as an obvious thing to do, Adrian is also a prolific collage artist.

Adrian’s gallery is on Brick Lane at the Old Truman Brewery, just ask for Broccoli Man.

Adrian is a quiet spoken, industrious indeed prolific artist.  He acknowledges that his work ethic and intense bursts of activity may see him working 30 hour continuous sessions without sleep in his studio.

Adrian has a number of projects in the pipeline including opening a gallery abroad, taking the broccoli street art concept to another level and, of course, producing more studio art.  He is also engaged on an ambitious book project, hoping to produce a book a year for 10 years.

Broccoli continues to appear on the street, the broccoli has turned gold, perhaps in response to that brief period in 2017 when it became a luxury item and recently a rainbow spectrum of broccoli appeared.

In the most recent installations in Shoreditch, gold Broccoli Man has appeared imprisoned in a cage

This blog post is based on a longer blogpost on Graffoto in which we examine the whole broccoli crisis in more depth and ponder an unexpected role for government spits in suppressing evidence of the broccoli crisis.

Link: Adrian Boswell website

All photos Dave Stuart except additional gallery photos of artwork courtesy Adrian Boswell website

Other sources: Websites of The Times, The Daily Telegraph, www.her.ie, www.bbc.co.uk