Tag Archives: Interview

Street Art, Politics, Money, Fame

Shoreditch Street Art Tours’ guide Dave was interviewed on TRT World alongside illuminati such as street artist Pure Evil and gallerist Steve Lazarides, exalted company indeed.

Journalist Emma Birchley put together a well thought out assessment of street art as both a political voice and a career for urban artists. It becomes clear that the two are not mutually exclusive.

Street artists who work features in the clip that regularly feature on our tours include Manyoly (France), K-Guy (UK), A.CE (UK), Tizer ID, Amara por Dios (Swe), Bambi (UK) and someone called Banksy.

Links:

Very Nearly Almost Zine Interview

When I started regularly photographing street art over a decade ago wandering the streets of East and West London with my mate Sam “HowAboutNo”, not so many people were interested in the culture or doing this kind of photography. George MacDonald was! He created a photo based printed fanzine called Very Nearly Almost, usually abbreviated by its audience to VNA. I remember George wandering up and down the queues for urban art shows outside Black Rat Press and The Leonard St Gallery giving the zines away. Even though I had not started uploading any of my photos onto the net at the time of those early issues in 06/07, my gut reaction was “print is dead”, George proved me completely wrong.

London, Shoreditch, street art, Very Nearly Almost, George McDonald, Greg Beer, zine, magazine, interview, Cheffo,

VNA Issue 3 – CarTrain makes the cover!

Fellow contributing photographer Matt “Cheffo” Strutt has a very interesting interview with Editor in Chief George and Art and Design Director Greg in which they describe how the mag developed from being a photocopied stapled freebie to the lush feature filled publication it is today and how the culture has evolved in the years they have been covering it.

I have been proud to contribute photographs and the occasional article to VNA since about issue 6 or maybe 7, despite which Very Nearly Almost is still going strong.

Very Nearly Almost through the ages

The ethos behind the magazine (high quality photography) was touched upon in this article which appeared in the Evening Standard in 2010, down in the bottom corner a shot of the cover of Issue 11 features though the caption at the top, “street art’s NVA” does rather expose some poor sub-editing at the Eeny Stannit.

London, Shoreditch, street art, Very Nearly Almost, George McDonald, Greg Beer, zine, magazine, Evening Standard

Evening Standard, 13 Sep 2010

Being print based, many of the fascinating interviews with artists featured in VNA can only be found in the pages of a real copy you hold in your hands but fortunately many previous editions are still available as very reasonably priced back issues through the VNA shop . VNA is well worth considering for a subscription, Christmas is coming you know.

Interview Link: http://gcasfm.com/blog/very-nearly-almost

Shoreditch Street Art and Murals

I was recenlty interviewed by Georgina from Thinkhouse, a Dublin and London based youth communications agency. Georgina was particularly interesed in the changing street art dynamic in Shoreditch with the rise of colourful murals painted with permission competing for space and attention with illegal street art created without permission.