Tag Archives: Dave Stuart

Diggin In The Archives Pt 8

This week in spite of the latest official guidance to follow unofficial interpretations of the law, there have been no trips to Durham. I have followed my instinct to remain at home to see what scum is floating on the surface of the street art photography archive.

Ludo first put his art on London streets in 2009 and right from the off his Nature’s Revenge project dealt with man vs nature, weaponry, deception and death. Ludo’s work always had scale and awesome eye-catching placement. This weaponised orchid dates from 2011.

Ludo, 2011

Street artist and gallerist Rae visited London in 2013 and left an impressive range of paste ups, stickers, painted surfaces and this wacky sculpture which lasted all of 24 hours.

Rae, 2013

Rae, 2013

The Battle Of Fashion St pitted Ronzo’s monster, looking very much exactly like a medical diagram of a virus against studio stablemate Conor Harrington’s faceless soldier. Like most of Conor’s art this one lasted a long time.

The battle Of Fashion St, Ronzo and Conor Harrington, 2011

Graff snapping mate for many years Joe Epstein aka LDN Graffiti, author of street art book “London Graffiti and Street Art” has teamed up with 9 great street artists to raise funds for Great Ormond St Hospital. Each artist has created a special version of the book by hand painting the cover, so that’s 9 unique versions of the book.

LDN Graffiti, Joe Epstein, London Graffiti and Street Art, GOSH, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Alo, Dr Zadok, MadC, Neist, Pure Evil, Run, Stik, The Toasters, Vibes, Shoreditch Street Art Tours

Great Ormand Street Hospital COVID-19 Lottery fundraiser

For more images, details and a link to how to support the fund raiser and maybe win one of these fantastic prizes in the LDN GOSH Charity Lottery, click here

One of the featured artists in the LDN GOSH fundraiser is Pure Evil, he doesn’t so much redecorate the book cover as subject it to extreme abuse and reconfiguration, it’s bonkers but brilliant. In 2012 Pure Evil imagined the Hackney Olympics looting squad making off with some Olympics booty, as seen on this Redchurch Street shutter.

Pure Evil 2012

Pure Evil LDN GOSH Charity Book

In the happy days when I had a kind of job thing, I did one of my Street Art Photography Workshops in Hackney. I only found out this week thanks to Inspiring City’s Art Related Noise podcast interview that this stencil piece is “Lee P” by Findac. Lee P is otherwise known as street artist Eelus. The second shot illustrates the photographers’ intention – to show what Lee P was looking at.

Findac, 2013

Findac, 2013

More than a decade of pasting up street art has left no doubt that Donk has an awesome approach to impressive installations created from his own original photos. It would be very easy to dredge up one of Donk’s huge crowd pleaser paste up images like the Fashion St fence (with the tassels), the Willow Street horse facing POW (see featured image above) or the ghetto blaster on Sclater St but with no slight on any of those, sometimes his montages of smaller images show his versatility better. From 2013 this is a selection of hand finished unique Humble Magnificent and B Brave Indian images featuring Donk jr as model. Donk’s paste up’s typically decayed beautifully.

Donk 2013

Claudia Walde aka MadC is a graffiti writer and book author. She is also another of the artists to have created a unique painting on a book being auctioned to raised funds for Great Ormond St Hospital, details as above.

In culture with such a huge gender imbalance MadC is a rare example of an internationally regarded graffiti writer. In 2011 the Pure Evil Gallery hosted MadC’s first solo exhibition and graffiti writers came from all over to check out her top notch can skills and brilliant colour palette. Her 2013 abstract mural on Chance St in Shoreditch is well known and still running. Less known perhaps is this stunning 2011 graffiti on the old Micawber St launderette, look closely and you can pick out her name in there. It was huge though this is nowhere near the biggest piece of graffiti MadC ever did.

MadC, 2011

Mad C LDN Graffiti book cover

If you are interested in seeing previous DITAs, you can start with the first weekly compilation of the daily DITA uploads HERE.

Art credits and links are by each photo. All photos: Dave Stuart

Diggin In The Archives Part 7

Never in history have the words “relax lockdown measures” been so badly abused. Please stagger your viewing of this post and share with only one person outdoors. Here are this week’s street art little gems from the past.

Jorge Rodrigues-Gerada is probably more widely known these days for his enormous land art portraiture but in 2012 London was blessed with a number of works by Jorge. This beautiful 2012 charcoal portrait was ludicrously short lived.

Street art, Shoreditch, Shoreditch street art tours, London, Tour Guide, Dave Stuart, street art photography, BLastFromThePast, BackInTheDay, DiggingThroughTheArchives, shoreditchstreetarttours

Jorge Rodrigues-Gerada 2012

Cartrain was a marmite kind of artist, people either loved him or hated him. I had got pretty fed up with him constantly hitting up stencils right onto the edges of Banksy stencils around Shoreditch. Then in 2007 he came up with these collages, a massive transformation. The first few had proper gilded picture frames and he added spoof Perspex gallery labels alongside them though I guess the logistics of economically sourcing frames led to the cardboard cut out frames. I thought it was brilliant, others struggled to make sense of the random meaningless combination of images. Then came his appropriation of Hirst’s diamond skull and that evolved into a whole other drama of its own. The unusual diptych framed specimens here date from 2011.

Cartrain, 2011

There is nothing quite so exciting as a good hack of the corporate intrusion on the visual landscape. Meaning, ad busting rocks and Vermibus is a master of the form. In 2012 Vermibus was one of the key participants at Moniker Art Fair which in those days was still based in its original Village Underground location. This advert box, not far from Moniker, is a single purpose intrusion into the public pathway, it’s an illuminated obelisk straddling the pavement angled for visibility to car and bus occupants. The Featured image at the top is also Vermibus hijacking an illuminated ad box in 2012.

Vermibus, 2012

The second image is a collection of keys for illicitly accessing the different forms of those advertising spaces displayed by Vermibus at Moniker.

Vermibus at Moniker, 2012

Remember Ai Wei Wei was placed under house arrest in China in 2010? In April 2012 I chanced upon this Free Ai Wei Wei stencil by Bambi sweetly captioned “You can cage the singer but not the song”. This photo is out of focus, the lighting is shite and composition is abysmal but when you want to photograph a piece of street art you stumble on en passant, you make the best of whatever light and technology is available. In this case, it was the shittiest out of date corporate Blackberry with a camera not much more advanced than a pinhole and the Guinness enabled focussing feature selected. When I returned in daylight with a proper camera a few weeks later it had been buffed.

Bambi, 2012

Lovepiepenbrinck shared her time between Hamburg, Berlin and London and for years put out a series of piggies each presented as a different character. The piggies were quite small, often they were high up and sometimes completely hidden in dark spaces. Finding the piggies was like a treasure hunt. This example was the Ronald McDonald piggy obviously. One piggy was disguised as a shark, mounted in a small glass cube and glued to the outside of the Tate Modern in 2012 when Damien Hirst had that huge show there. Its title was “The physical impossibility of being a shark in the mind of a pig”. Street art genius! (And I never got to see it for real, security had it removed very quick).

Lovepiepenbrinck, 2013

Stay alert! You have nothing to fear in isolation except Skeleton Cardboard’s morbid dancing skeletons. These used to appear in many imaginative forms, often interacting with the fabric of the wall or as a response to existing artworks. Dem bones were guaranteed to raise a smile . . .

Skeleton Cardboard, 2013

Nether‘s street art first appeared in London in 2012. When he returned in 2018 his style was dramatically altered, though those distinctive planes remained a feature. Also sneaking into the margins of this this photo are an awesome piece by Mr Wany, a detail from the edge of a Pez mural also dated 2012 and the conceptually brilliant pulse of EKG from New York.

Nether, 2012

It looks like the archives are going to be forked over for some time yet, each one of these photos reveals itself like a little speck of glass in an ankle deep farmyard.

Two months intensive use of the internet means you don’t need to be told where to find the previous selections of archive gems, but here is where it began with the first weekly compilation of the daily uploads: DITA 1

Art credits and links are by each photo. All photos: Dave Stuart

Diggin In The Archives Part 6

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? By the time you read this Boris should have made his “statement” to the nation and one suspects the tunnel will seem to be stretching much much longer. Activities do expand to fit the time available and blowing the dust off the photo archive is a good a rabbit hole as any to fall into, so here is this week’s selection of gems from the past.

You wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a snorkeler (snorkelist?) walking down the road with a lion on their shoulders in 2013, it was Shoreditch after all. Twisted surrealism from Dal East.

Dal East, 2013

ACE is full OG London, his comic and pop art influenced collage screen prints were pasted up all over Shoreditch from the beginning. They still appear although nothing close to the quantity he used to put out. One of my all time favourite paste up artists. And there’s Skewville , yet again, he keeps popping up in the archive photos. 2011.

ACE, 2011

In 2009 Graffoto founder HowAboutNo and I wandered Shoreditch and beyond on our lunchbreaks, chatting shit and shooting crap. Daytime street art creation was quite rare in those days and one lunch time we spied an artist in act of pasting up some big faces. He scarpered. Brummie Tempo33 told me a while later they had thought we were cops! Not many people wandered round in office garms photographing street art those days.

Tempo33, 2012

As I started to develop a little bit of an interest in street art I had a conceptual difficulty with stickers;,that fact that anyone could have put them up challenged their authenticity. Then I started to get my head around “Representation”.

It would be very easy to upload a photo of a stunning mural by D*Face, rightly they are appreciated worldwide but his stickers are in my humble opinion are way more significant to his street presence.

Liskbot’s hand finished stickers and paste ups go back a decade, still prolific!

The unknown sticker looks and feels like a corporate logo.

D*Face, Liskbot 2011

East London in 2011 was full of Malarky cartoons. Superficially they had the characteristics of children’s illustrations but close inspection revealed a real darkness. Often painted with compadres #Billy, Mr Penfold and Sweet Toof. These old Hanbury Street gates used to host art by great artists such as Donk , Stik, Saki and Bitches and Macay collab, Mau Mau and Alex Face collab and an Otto Schade “Creation Of Adam” masterpiece. And Curly 😉

Malarky, 2011

In the next pair, the elevated elevation behind the grey gantry is the old Shoreditch Tube Station, closed in 2006. The first picture is from October 2011 and features a Rowdy creature and a piece by fellow Burning Candy crewmate Horror. The second picture dates from July 2012. The difference is the Olympics buff. One of these pics cost me a gorgeous Colnago Road bike, stolen by some Tower Hamlets low life as I climbed up on the wall to get the pic

Rowdy, Horror 2011

The Olympics Buff, 2012

When its good, Street Art can be very “of the moment”. The flip side is that years later the context or relevance of a piece of art may be forgotten. This Teddy Baden multi layered stencil features Mandeville, one of two mascots for London’s 2012 Olympics. Mandeville was named after Stoke Mandeville Hospital, the world famous spinal injuries hospital that organised the first games festival for injured people, seen as a precursor to the Paralympics. The orange flash represented a London taxi hire light. Mandeville was much maligned in the press, there will always be some mirthless killjoy. He didn’t have a good feeling about Teddy’s feline either.

I enjoyed the privilege for many years of submitting a selection of street art photos to the VNA guys for their quarterly zine. The vast majority of them went unpublished, there were far better photos from far better photographers to chose from. This is one of the unchosen. . . .

Teddy Baden, 2012

I took the liberty of visit to Shoreditch on my bike this morning, first time in over 2 months. Very little had changed, street artists have been socially distancing from the walls. Notwithstanding whatever guff we get from Boris this evening I suspect there may well be more sucking from cess pit of my street art photos this week, catch them daily on my Instagram or facebook.

Check out the previous weekly compendiums: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5

Art credits and links are by each photo. All photos: Dave Stuart

Diggin In The Archives Part 5

“We can’t throw away all our hard work so far” – every politician last week.

This is the 5th compendium of the daily scrapings of the digital archive, is it really only 5 weeks since we were ordered back to our bunkers?

Gold Peg was undisputed queen of the rooftop. She got up in pretty tense spots, happy to mark the environment with text or imagery, a rare example of someone with a foot in both the graffiti and street art camps and hugely regarded in both. Gold Peg’s art was always breathtaking and photogenic, this artist is a classic example of someone impossible to adequately represent in just a couple of images.

Street art, Shoreditch, Shoreditch street art tours, London, Tour Guide, Dave Stuart, street art photography,

“Too many artists, not enuff anarchists!!!”, Goldpeg, Shroeditch, 2011

This railway bridge pic also features 10foot (naturally), Serva, aze, rakit and the legend that is TOX trackside.

Gold Peg et al, Paddington, 2010

Everywhere you went in Shoreditch in 2012, Usain Bolt’s eyes seemed to follow you. Painted by the genius JimmyC.

Usain Bolt by Jimmy C, 2012

That photo of JimmyC’s Usain Bolt has a van in the foreground which was obstructive, irrelevant and the photo is poorly composed. Every other photo I took of that mural has a superb Dan Kitchener mural below the JimmyC. Both paintings were brilliant, each distracted from the other in a kind of unfortunate way. Dank’s refined and distinctive geisha girls and his drippy Bladerunneressque neon night scenes are rightly revered these days though if you go back more than a decade he had a quite variety of quite different styles. Dank’s mural under the JimmyC was one of a number of brilliant trackside images he painted in 2010, the next image was painted on the Village Underground wall in that same style.

Dan Kitchener, 2010

Remember your parents nagging you to stop staring at the pavement? If you listened to them you’d have missed Pablo Delgado‘s miniature paste ups with painted shadows. Over several years he pursued increasingly surreal themes, Pimps ‘n Hos in Shoreditch was one of his early sets. Yes, that’s Skewville and Banksy hangin’ with the pimps as well.

Pablo Delgado, 2011

In August 2011 Pure Evil had a show at XOYO debuting this pop art eye candy, the first sighting of the Nightmare series. October 2011 I think, this was one of the first specimens to appear on the street. And so it continues, the Nightmares pour out of the Pure Evil creative engine

Also in shot is a beautiful Swoon paste up. A couple of Swoon pasteups in this alleyway in Shoreditch lasted quite a long time, like more than a year. Partially visible is a pasteup from Mr. Farenheit and yet again a Skewville stencil muscles into the frame.

Pure evil, Swoon also Skewville, Mr Farenheit 2011

Mobstr does a line in knowing and occasionally provocative text based stencils. You could read this as street artists with easy, low risk placement are challenged by Mobstr to get a bit higher and a bit riskier. Or maybe you see Mobstr proposing a photogenic “loadsa-likes” placement spot; or we can even see a commentary on street art as a tool of gentrification doing the developer’s bidding. All interpretations equally valid, feel free to make up your own.

As an aside, in 2011 Brick Lane was named London’s Curry Capital which is about as obvious as declaring Pall Mall the capital of palaces. The Banglatown banner with its photo of the later discredited Tower Hamlets crooked Mayor Lutfer Rahmen appeared illegally over Roa’s famous crane on nearby Heneage St to the outrage of local residents and business who forced the council to have the banner removed within 2 weeks.

Text stencil byMobster, also featuring Kata, Unga, Andalltha and The Misfits

France is blessed with superb stencillists, Jana and JS have done Shoreditch a few times and when they do Shoreditch, they leave the place seriously more beautiful. This example is slightly unusual in being a stencil on paper rather than stencilled in situ on the wall.

Jana & JS, Brick Lane, 2012

Anyone finished Instagram yet? Check out the previous weekly compendiums: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

Art credits and links are by each photo. All photos: Dave Stuart

Diggin In The Archives 4

Diggin into the archives bring back lots of mostly good memories but some of these artists have done so much brilliant street art that picking just one or two highlights is cruelly dismissive of their street opus. Another week of suspended animation has rolled past so here we go with the 4th collection of flashbacks trawled up from a long forgotten sector of the hard drive.

Anthony Lister did quite a number of stunning superheroes and faces over a number of years and a number of visits. It was quite easy to miss that Lister was parodying the Banksy in Cargo with this piece. Responding to the Banksy piece Lister declares himself over stencils and certainly now with the advent of muralism and greater tolerance of street art the old fashioned single layer stencil is nothing like as common as in the old days.

Lister, 2012

Industrial revolution superhighway meets imaginative Sweet Toof vandalism. Although not terribly far away, the location was quite different to the usual Shoreditch street art beat. Bonus image at the top of the page is Sweet Toof, Cyclops and Rowdy Burning Candy crewmates collaborating in Shoreditch in 2008.

Sweet Toof, Regents Canal, 2010

Louis Masai has done a phenomenal number of projects and art campaigning in support of species preservation and the environment generally. These two are the earliest Masai artworks I found on the streets, dating from late 2011. This blast from the past surfaced on the annual Earth Day last week. One planet, one love, one chance.

Masai featuring False

Masai

One of my lockdown distractions has been reading JR’s “Can Art Change The World”. The first time I came across his Inside Out project was this large mugshot on Redchurch St in 2011. The idea was that you sent JR a photo, he would print it and send it back to you and you had to paste it up on the wall. You may have had to send a photo of it in situ back to him. The self imortalising person in the photo is Ross T. The juxtaposition of Ross’ #insideout portrait with Ron English’s speech bubble was too good to be mere coincidence. Rock The Mouse was a shutter relic from a 2009 Mickey Mouse by Yan77 from Chrome and Black shop which used to be across the road.

Ross T in JR’s Inside Out, 2011

There are many artists whose style, ability and creativity have evolved dramatically over the years such as Airborne Mark, or The Pilot as he was known back in 2009. The first photo comes from a hoarding under the Westway where Garfield Hackett and Mutoid Waste staged One Foot In The Grove in 2009. Looking back through my archives One Foot In The Grove was a stunning event, I pass that location on the tube every time I go to QPR and never fail to peep into the space under the flyover and think of that show.

The Pilot, Acklam Rd, 2009

Airborne Mark was an OG mid 80s graffiti writer, this specimen of his graff was in Leake St back in 2008.

The Pilot, 2008As a reminder of how far Airborne Mark has come, here’s a gorgeous specimen of his origami folds painting style today.

Airborne Mark, Shoreditch, 2019

Sometimes it’s about the beauty, the drama or the politics of the street art; sometimes it’s about being in the right spot at the right moment. Monsieur Qui has visited Shoreditch a few times, leaving just a few tantalising illustrations to hunt down each. Love the art, love the bird nesting in the passerby’s topknot giving extravagant coiffure’s to both art and life.

Monsieur Qui, 2011

Saki and Bitches’ voluptuous temptresses appeared in some pretty eyecatching spots. Given Saki’s home country is Japan, the influence of Japanese art and use of Japanese subjects in Saki’s work, the appearance of “Tokyo Rising” alongside this Saki’s sturdy study of feminine charm was pure chance. Saki held down this elevated high street spot for several years.

Saki and Bitches, 2011

I’ll try to make time for daily blasts from the past this week but making no promises ok. Check out the previous weekly compendiums: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 .

Art credits and links are by each photo. All photos: Dave Stuart

Diggin In The Archives 3

Four weeks of Lockdown now, most sensible countries have extended their lockdown period for a few more weeks but don’t worry, the archive isn’t going to be running on fumes any time soon. This is a compendium of seven daily uploads to my instagram from the photography archive. The featured above was by Best Ever in 2014, more from Best Ever below.

The relationship between impact and size is not at all clear in street art. Isaac Cordal‘s forlorn concrete figures were found in nooks and cranies in London over several years from 2010. Spotting them was difficult, how the artist installed them at their illegal elevated perches was inspiring. A few survive to this day.

Issac Cordal, 2010

As a great fan of stickers it is a bit remiss not to have looked back at some great stickers of times past. PS, or “Public Spirit” was an amazing sticker artist, the examples here date from 2010 and 2011. PS was comfortable with a range of styles from fantasy illustration to op art via pure abstract geometeric but always in a very distinctive teardrop style. The first sticker in this series has a little clue how to look for the initials PS embedded in the swirling shape of the art – other than the purely symmetrical ones (so far as I can see anyway).

At least one PS sticker dating from that period survives in Shoreditch.

Fake stencil! Fake Street artist K-Guy! Fake photo from 2017! K-Guy has Total Authority!.

K-Guy, 2017

Burning Candy represented by Cept, Sweet Toof, Tek 33 and DScreet had the first spot on lockdown for many years. The Garage owner received a council enforcement notice demanding the piece be buffed but flatly refused. Garage now rolled over by development.

Cept, Sweet Toof, Tek 33 and Dscreet 2010

Burning Candy at its largest grew to 9 members, the second photo features two of London’s hottest #rooftop kings of that time, MightyMo and Goldpeg

Mighty Mo, Goldpeg, 2010

Otto Schade painted very intricate musing on human emotions using a stencil technique, symbolically connecting the emotions and the nervous system to external stimuli. This was one of his earliest ribbon paintings on the street, the owners buffed this very shortly after Otto finished it.

Otto Schade, 2010

Stewy Stencils populated Shoreditch and Norf London with a menagerie of animals, reaching a zenith with the size of this horse. The horse appears to be tethered and getting fed, not sure if that was Stewy or a clever augmentation by someone else. Either way its great when there is a little more to the stencil than just a spot where there was no cctv. Then virgin wall, now a hotel stands on the property opposite the Pure Evil Gallery. A version of this horse closer to Brick Lane was brilliantly augmented by Saki, might have to dig that pic out later but let’s hope we aren’t in Lockdown that long.

Stewy Stencils, 2012

From the days when artists did find virgin unpainted derelict walls in Shoreditch. “Plastic Bones” Best Ever v. Deadleg collaboration.

Best Ever v. Deadleg, 2011

Next week, same time same place yeah? Check out Part 1 and Part 2

Art credits and links are by each photo. All photos: Dave Stuart

Diggin In The Archives 2

Another seven days of posting photos of street art dredged from the archives. In lockdown you have plenty of time with your thoughts and the wandering mind generates random recollections. Those which stand out lead to a photo being thrust into the limelight. So there was some kind of logical process behind the selection of images from week 3 in lockdown, even if the process is irrefutable evidence of lockdown fever.

In 2009 Jeff Soto painted some awesome street art in Shoreditch. Graffoto reviewed his StolenSpace show Inland Empire starting per Graffoto’s wont with a look at some street art. At time of the review 4 pieces of Jeff Soto street art in Shoreditch had been found, The street art in the featured photo above was the 5th, his “Thanks London”. Ultimately there were 6.

On the Posher fringes of the Notting Hill – Paddington border this was an unexpected mewsy location full of character. Paul Insect‘s spider was the size of a small child and provoked the awe of this big child.

Paul Insect, Paddington, 2009

Vhils was pretty much the star of Cans Festival in 2008, he returned in 2009 and created some awesome art. This pair of portraits in Camden were amazing, the technique is basically removing the hoarding surface, like chiselling or drilling perhaps but quite how the patterned effect on the other portrait was achieved best remains an artistic mystery.

Vhils, Camden, 2009

If interiors designers could replicate the distressed wood effect of 124 Hackney Road it would be in every wooden staircase in Islington – oh wait! Many many lovely pieces of art appeared on this façade at the beginning of the last decade, it is actually sad to see it looking so sterile these days. This collaboration between Ella et Pitr and Macay complimented that surface beautifully.

Ella et Pitr & Macay, Shoreditch, 2010

For many years my mental equilibrium was both preserved and yet shattered by daily breaks from the grindstone for walks with photography companion and art show/drinking/blog buddy Sam Martin aka Howaboutno. Anything could happen and rarely did. One lunchbreak we spotted a pair of traffic wardens about a hundred yards distant, something made us suspect they weren’t run of the mill meter maids. Turned out it was Tinsel Edwards and Twinkle Troughton ticketing parked cars with spoof parking ticket/artworks. I still have mine. Bonkers but fun, these days its just charity chuggers and product samples.

Read about the ire they provoked on the streets on Graffoto.co.uk

Tinsel Edwards and Twinkle Troughton, Oct 2009

Parking Ticket

“Best of Times, Worst of Times”, ed 500

Is it an armada of invading toaster erupting from a portal or toasters being sucked into a black abyss? It was 2009. The genius of something so banal! You could not help but smile every time you saw street art Toasters sporting the colours of Wolverhampton Wanderers home kit pop up, except when it was in the away end cos that generally signalled home defeat for QPR.

Toasters, Kingsland Road, 2009

Phlegm, one of my fav artists, has been doing a very entertaining series of daily sketches of life in lockdown in his own unique style. Yesterday’s was a characteristically Heath Robinson bike.

Phlegm, “Bike maintenance”, 2020

Here is a couple of photos which “interrogates the boundary” between hipster bikes and street art. “AMAZING” is by Eine from 2009. The dude on the elevated bike which looks like the prototype for Phlegm’s drawing must surely have had an interesting time doing emergency stops (2008). In the background is a fragment of Eine’s 2008 EXCITING.

I could have responded to the theme with photos of street art where my bike accidentally encroached on the shot, got loads of those😂

AMAZING unicyclist, Hackney Road, 2009

EXCITING two story bike, Old St, 2008

During the week I also wrote about brilliant artist Jamie Reid’s exhibition at the Horse Hospital in London covering the evidence of his influence on a lot of street art but mainly to highlight his 5 minute “artist walk through” his exhibition. That is on my other street art blog HERE.

Diggin In The Archives part 1 is HERE.

This post is a compilation of my daily instagram posts from the past 7 days

Art credits and links are by each photo. All photos: Dave Stuart

Diggin In The Archives 1

Two weeks ago today I received a text message from the NHS telling me I had to isolate, though I had actually gone into a self imposed lockdown a week earlier when I returned from my Father’s funeral in Ireland. On a daily basis I have been digging through the photo archives and posting some older gems with a few thoughts on why I had picked them. This is a compendium of the first two weeks worth.

This first photo I captioned “When dumpster diving goes wrong.” but it was about combining street art with found surreal elements, also the strong colours complemented the colour of Gianni Lee’s character outside Cargo.

Gianni Lee, Mar 2019

Sweet Toof, Rowdy and Knapple shenanigans last year, check their instas for a dose of artistic positivity . This photo reveals the scale of this collab which perhaps isn’t so apparent when you view it from street level. Also, light as candyfloss as Knapple is, impressive piggy back stamina from da Toof geezer.

Knapple, Rowdy, Sweet Toof, January 2019

In 2009 David Choe dropped a heap of awesome stuff in London, I only found out [last week] that the guy spraypainting the underpass from the passenger seat of a moving car in the opening montage of Exit Through The Gift Shop is David Choe.

David Choe, Nov 2009

Own that intrigue. Street art stimulates passers by in a way that adverts don’t. People notice. Circles by L’Enfant, figure by David David, tile by Nathan Bowen, calligraphy (aka tag) YAS21. This is the Old Truman Brewery wall that now is a canvas for Shepard Fairey’s Shadowplay mural.

L’Enfant, David David, Nathan Bowen, Yas21, 2018

Although captioned “Give Us A bite”, I will confess that in 2011 I captioned this street photography style picture of Stik’s family group “Who Ate All The Pies”.

“Give Us A Bite”, Stik, 2009

Of all the weird, wonderful, beautiful, clever and funny stuff that appeared on Cargo’s walls, this by Bortusk Leer has to be the wackiest! Anyone else remember his kid’s tv series?

Bortusk Leer, 2009

A squadron of Banksy Happy Choppers on Holywell Row, Shoreditch, there is a better photo by Steve Lazarides in his “Banksy Captured” book.

Banksy, 2006

Escif got a lot of coverage in the past week for his spectacular sculpture in Valencia which was torched as part of the Fallas celebrations, though with Spain in lockdown few got to see it actually live. In 2010 Escif had a show at Pictures On Walls in that period when it was welcoming folk in off the street, as opposed to the “by apppointment only” fortress it had been in its Scrutton St and Willow St days. These are POW’s shutters painted by Escif with Petro on window dressing detail.

Escif, also feat Petro, 2010

Elbow Toe had a stunning installation at the urban art epicentre The Leonard St Gallery. He visited London more than once in that era. He commented to me at the time that getting up in London felt so chilled compared to NY. This piece if I recall correct was a representation of his wife. 2007.

Elbow Toe, 2007

This context photo also features then Shoreditch based artist Jawa, and Mudwig is a small puce apparently but the many faults of Mudwig were regularly discussed on walls in those days.

Elbow Toe feat Jawa and Mudwig, 2007

Burning Candy owned the East End. Sweet Toof and Cyclops went large here on the plot opposite where CitizenM stands today, before the North London line curved past that building. Back of Chariots for those familiar with that landmark. Also features SNOE TRP, EINE and REAK.

Burning Candy, Snoe, Eine, Reak et al 2007

If you are going to admire someone else’s genius, nothing says “wow” quite as much as having your art admire theirs. Pure Evil’s Pearly Kings express what the rest of us thought of Swoon’s 2007 amazing filigree paste up on Coronet St. Also features Jef Aerosol looking pretty hyper and The Krah. This wall used to host some great street art. Street art photography companion Howaboutno and I always disagreed on whether you should clear shit and rubbish out of photos.

Swoon, Pure Evil, Jef Aerosol, The Krah, photo 2008

Judith Supine from NY made surreal psychedelic art which really paid attention to its surroundings, location was everything. This one is by the entrance to the long lost iconic Dragon Bar. Such a shame we don’t get visits from Judith Supine any more.

Judith Supine, 2007

Nurses and doctors are the front line, they are performing heroics without thought of their own safety and in the face of apparent shortages of safety equipment that would render their service less fraught with risk. It is saddening to hear just now (when first posted to Instagram) of two nurses in the UK who have passed away after treating patients affected by COVID-19. Both were mothers of 3. My thoughts are with the family. This piece by Stik now seems sadly prophetic.

Stik, 2009

Roa had been dropping an amazing menagerie of dishevelled creatures in Shoreditch since 2009 but this gate in 2012 kicked thing up another level in terms of making visible a degree of gore which characterised man’s relationship with his fellow creatures. If it was shocking then, you hadn’t been paying attention. Also, this was one of his less long lived London pieces and is correspondingly less well known.

ROA, 2012

Damn tourists getting in the group portrait, Suriani’s dramatic pasteups made great photos.

Suriani, 2009

Standby for more blasts from the past for as long the shutdown prevents my return to work.

Art credits and links are by each photo. All photos: Dave Stuart

<<	May 2020					>>
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
27	28	29	30	1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31