Tag Archives: guide

Street art, Streetart, Guide, tour, Shoreditch, London, Sean Worrall, #artdrop, tour guide

Autumn Leaves – Street Art Announces change of season

This week saw knobbly knees being tucked into jeans for the first time in about 3 months, Summer is definitely over and Autumn brings with it a fresh  leaf fall.  This leaf is courtesy of Sean Worrall and it is a gorgeous specimen from his #artdrops project.

Suzanne from LA was the lucky person who retrieved this from the wall – just, tip toes required!

This particular leaf is number 11 of the 2019 #artdrops series.  We love the Extinction Symbol in support of Extinction Rebellion on the back.

On his  Facebook page Sean says:

“43 paintings [] will make up the month-long #43Leaves piece. 43 paintings on found recycled unwanted material picked up off the streets. Material picked up, cleaned up, painted on and then left hanging back out on the street for people to just take should they wish to”.

Thank you Sean for your characteristic generosity of spirit.

Nice to know another one of Sean’s leafs is taking up residence in a location far far away.  Sean’s free art #artdrops have featured on the Shoreditch Street Art Tours blog quite frequently in the past, check them out here

Links:

Sean Worrall website

Sean Worrall Facebook

All photographs Dave Stuart


Constant Changes

The enormous panoply of street art in Shoreditch changes daily and it is a constant thrill to be guiding the tour and to come across brand new art which we didn’t know existed. The tour this afternoon was no exception, we came across a lovely piece by Alice Pasquini which hadn’t been seen on any previous tour.   The colourful female character is in typical Alice Pasquini style and its placement outside a shop across lettering proclaiming various beauty treatments available within just “works”, even the drippy tag underneath Alice’s character contributes beautifully to the colour scheme.

London, Shoreditch, street art, tours, guide, Alice Pasquini

Alice Pasquini

Alice Pasquini was in London late last week in connection of the opening of XX: A Moment In Time, an exhibition of new works by female street artists in the Saatchi Gallery so this new piece dates back to last weekend. In another location there was a new piece of art which was so fresh we could still smell paint! Frankie Strand and ThisOne have created a green hued female character threatened in some way by a skeletal gypsy figure. This is the first time I have ever seen Frankie Strand paint a human (like) character.

London, Shoreditch, street art, tours, guide, Frankie Strand, This One, This1

Frankie Strand v. This One

Earlier this week on a different route the tour came across a couple of other fresh Alice Pasquini paintings.

London, Shoreditch, street art, tours, guide, Alice Pasquini,

Alice Pasquini

London, Shoreditch, street art, tours, guide, Alice Pasquini

Alice pasquini

Frankie Strand has been quite prolific in the past 12 months and earlier this year painted an interesting piece with Crey One on the boundary of the old Shoreditch Tube Station which fuses the core disciplines of graffiti and street art.  Notice This One also appearing in the margins on that piece.

London, Shoreditch, street art, tours, guide, Frankie Strand,, Crey One

Frankie Strand v. Crey One: street art & graffiti

Links:

Alice Pasquini

Frankie Strand

This One

XX: A Moment In Time

Saatchi Gallery 3 Feb 2016 – 6 March 20216

all photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland


No Rest For The Wicked

Do you think street artists take a break over Christmas? Not a bit of it, we found some lovely fresh street art on the tour today which all appeared since yesterday.

D7606 was spied around town, for him it’s a pretty long trip to visit London and this time he brought this gorgeous collaboration with City Kitty of New York

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, tour, guide, guided, D7606, paste up, collaboration, collab, pop art

D7606 (UK) & City Kitty (NY)

Several new stencil and paste up multimedia combos from US West Coast WRDSMTH also appeared overnight, this modern world romantic twist was a new one not seen here before:

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, tour, guide, guided, Wrdsmth, paste up, multi media, stencil

WRDSMTH – instagram validation

It’s always good to see street artists seeing out the old year in style, look out for the Shoreditch Street Art Tour annual review appearing in the next few days.

Links:

D7606

WRDSMTH

All photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland


London, Shoreditch, Street art,tour,tours,walk,walks,guide,guided, street artist, spraycan,paste ups, paper, Skeleton Cardboard

Street Artist Skeleton Cardboard Brings Day Of The Dead Early

A burst of activity by English street artist Skeleton Cardboard resulted in the discovery of a number of new nuggets by several Shoreditch Street Art Tours over the weekend.

 

We found the above painted doors yesterday morning on a route which we hadn’t explored since Saturday morning. A pair of skeletons exhort us to abandon various false media, perhaps we have to learn from their example, look where too much TV, too much responding to the junk mail, living on the never never got them!
Skeleton cardboard is not one of those globe trotting street art mega stars who gets high profile permissioned murals where ever he goes round the world, he has been doing small and generally witty pieces on Shoreditch walls and we can see a clear trajectory of improving street art over the past two years or so.

 

Just a couple of weeks ago Skeleton Cardboard had a solo show in Monty’s Bar on Brick Lane. The walls were peppered with dark, day-of-the-dead skeletal characters who mocked those stern proclamations prohibitions issued by various authority figures or found on product packaging which we are expected to read and heed. “Nothing of value stored in here” or “invalid if opened” takes on a darker meaning when juxtaposed with a grinning skull on a dancing skeleton.

London, Shoreditch, Street art,tour,tours,walk,walks,guide,guided, street artist, spraycan,paste ups, paper, Skeleton Cardboard

A couple of tour groups over the weekend also found new paste ups of skeletons painted on found vintage magazine paper. The magazine in question was a supplement to Amateur Gardening, a respectable gardening periodical it seems and the content was Percy Thrower’s picture guide, to what isn’t stated but we guess gardens. There is no date on the paper but Percy Thrower passed away in 1988, he bestrode the worlds of TV and horticulture like a garden centre goliath but those were days when a man mimicking various bird calls was prime time TV.

London, Shoreditch, Street art,tour,tours,walk,walks,guide,guided, street artist, spraycan,paste ups, paper, Skeleton Cardboard

Good street art pops off its background and Skeleton Cardboard has certainly found a couple of gorgeous locations for placing these paste ups.

We have previously found free art by Skeleton Cardboard on the streets, see here


Jef Aerosol New London Street Art 2014

French stencil legend Jef Aerosol surprised the Shoreditch Street Art Tour when he strolled past in a hurry after creating some fresh street art. By chance we happened to meet right at a spot where in 2008 Jef Aerosol put up a long lasting stencil of John Lennon and Mick Jagger.

Jef Aerosol,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,John Lennon, Mick Jagger

Brimful of excitement, the group was amazed later to find a new piece of Jef Aerosol work on the streets. This pasted image shows two Moroccan Gnawa musicians, Jef visited Morocco last month and it made a deep impression on him and the composition is an interesting addition to the many popular musical legends who have been a mainstay of his work.

 

Jef Aerosol,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,Morocco,musicians,gnawa,stencil, paste up

Jef Aerosol – Moroccan Gnawa musicians

Further East Jef has done an even better piece of art on the dilapidated and boarded up exterior of an old fishmongers. The images are stencilled onto the wall, not pasted and in addition to a couple of his urchin children there are two fishes rising up and escaping their normal aquatic boundaries, and interesting response to the former use of the site.

Jef Aerosol,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,stencil, flying fish

Jef Aerosol,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,stencil, flying fish Jef Aerosol,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,stencil, flying fish Jef Aerosol,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,stencil, flying fish

You can view a photographic survey of Jef’s London street art over the years  here.

Jef has had several significant shows in the UK over the past decade, our favourite was probably Spray It Loud in Islington back in 2008.

all photos: NoLionsInEngland


Banksy old, Banksy New

Lots of excitement in Banksy World at the moment with new pieces of street art appearing and old pieces being stolen.

First the two new new pieces, one has gone up in Bristol and has in effect been confirmed as a Banksy by its appearance on his website, from which these two photos are borrowed with thanks:

Banksy,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,theft,

mobile lovers, Bristol

Banksy,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,theft,

photos: Banksy.co.uk

The second piece is a brilliant composition mocking government surveillance of our phone calls and social media interactions, as described fully by The Guardian in various Pulitzer Prize award winning articles.  Everything from the subject matter to the style of the stencils, the colours, the humour, the use of the specific furniture and fabric of the street screams Banksy but as yet it hasn’t appears on his website.  The location is particularly brilliant, this piece is in Cheltenham, home to the UK government spooks at GCHQ.

Banksy,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,theft,

photo: flickr user SaLLy

Everyone seems agreed it is a Banksy and I’m joining that crew!  This photo was taken by flickr user Sally, thanks Sally.

The new Bristol Banksy has already been removed though not without some controversy.  The piece was taken in “to prevent any vandalism or damage” by Broad Plains Boys Club based next door to the property with the Banksy on, they believe they can sell it to raise much needed funds that would help them avoid closure due to funding cuts.   Certainly they seem to believe that it may have been deliberately placed there by Banksy for them to use for fund raising, even though that isn’t really his usual modus operendi for contributing to deserving causes.   In their favour it seems unlike Banksy to install a nice piece like this in such a casual way that a couple of dozen easily removed cross head screws are all that stand between it and liberty.  Perhaps he did want them to take it.  There is a debate that the door actually belongs to the council and isn’t the Boys Club’s to remove or sell.  On the other hand, reports suggest that the wood sheet it is painted on was placed there by Banksy and therefore didn’t belong to the council.  Doubtless this one will run awhile until facts become fully established and lawyers chip in.

.

Meanwhile, in a seemingly unrelated development, a video has appeared by StealingBanksy.com showing the recent removal of a Girl With Balloon Banksy piece from a wall in Shoreditch, sometimes our tour swings by this spot.

Banksy,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,theft,

StealingBanksy.com

The organisation behind its removal is part of the Sincura Group.  Whispers started circulating two months ago that this Girl with Balloon was to be put on display in an exhibition this April with six other pieces of Banksy street art after which the pieces were to be auctioned.  If we heard that rumour, you can be certain Banksy heard it too.  We expected a publicity blizzard to blow up around this display of street Banksys but Banksy himself has hijacked the agenda by launching his own pre-emptive newsworthy stunt, cutting right across the promotional efforts to pump up the show of the street Banksys.

If Banksy hadn’t appeared on the walls at exactly this point in time, all the press coverage surrounding Sincura’s publicity hype would have focussed on “Banksy has done hardly anything in the UK recently”, now Banksy has prevented that train of thought developing steam.  Great timing Banksy!

Banksy,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,theft,

I Hate This Font, Banksy, May 2012

Curiously, StealingBanksy.com seems to be somewhat over-reaching in a strange attempt to dress up their activity as some kind of glamorous vandalism.  Illegally stolen? Not if rumours that they bought the wall off the legal wall owners are to be believed.

Sloppy errors of fact relating to Banksy’s street art are littered across the StealingBanksy blurb. There were more than just the two Girl With Balloons they claim in London.  What is their objective, to attach some sense of scarcity value to their Girl With Balloon?

Banksy,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,theft,

Girl With Balloon, 600 yards from King Johns Court, Shoreditch (buffed)

 Banksy,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,theft,

Girl With Balloon, honest (buffed), 300 yards from King Johns Court

 The film also claims that the Girl With Balloon from King Johns Court was painted in 2006 but we know for certain it dates from well before that.

Banksy,London, Shoreditch, street art,graffiti,tour,guide,guided,walk,theft,

Girl With Balloon, photo ArtOfTheState, 2004

Banksy certainly dislikes his street pieces being removed and sold like this, he’d much rather they lived a natural life on the streets, even if falling victim to the buff is their fate.  If speculation that he intended the mobile lovers in Bristol as a life saving gift to the Broad Plains Boys Club is in any way accurate that would be a radical change for the Master!

UPDATE: the always excellent Vandalog street art blog has just published a fascinating interview with a Director of the Sincura group, well worth reading here

Thanks to great friends ArtOfTheState and HowAboutNo for fact checking and opinion sharing and use of ArtOfTheState’s photo with kind permission, to Sally for kind permission to use her Cheltenham Banksy photo and to Banksy for use of his photos.