Tag Archives: Old Street

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

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

Intertwining figures in cubist style by street artist Yorgos painted on unusual shape wall

Yorgos new street art and old

On Christmas Eve the Shoreditch Street Art Tour had the pleasure of bumping into Yorgos photographing a charming new street art piece in his signature style painted the night before.  Ever the friendly one, Yorgos delighted guests on the tour by posing alongside his new masterpiece.

street artist Yorgos shows off his Shoreditch mural showing intertwined bodies with picasso cubist faces

Yorgos shows his characters on Christmas Eve 2023

Yorgos told us that he had painted the artwork the night before but hadn’t been able to get a decent photograph.  He had returned to get his daytime photograph but confessed he was a bit worried that it might have been tagged or painted over before he got there.  Lucky for all is was still in pristine condition.

Having seen out the old year with that beauty, Yorgos welcomed 2024 in with another banger.  This was painted on a wall some might consider complex but Yorgos seems to have found its geometry a simple problem to solve.  Cubism in a couple of squares!

close cropped photo of Intertwining figures in cubist style by street artist Yorgos painted on unusual shape wall

Yorgos, New Year 2024

This wall was actually right at the spot where my very first street art tour convened in 2008 and it is I believe the first time that spot has been taken over for a full mural piece in this style.

Yorgos showed he fully understand the ephemeral nature of street art and it was just as well he got his photos on Christmas Eve, that piece was painted over this week.

New graffiti writing over Yorgos mural

Polo STS over Yorgos, Jan 2024

I am sure we will see more from Yorgos this year, can’t wait.

Links:

Yorgos Instagram

All photos: Dave Stuart

Street Art on the Old Street Area of Shoreditch

One Off Street Art Tour By Popular Demand – More Art, Different Streets!

We have had several requests recently from guests who have done our public street art tour to be guided around the street art over on the Old Street side of Shoreditch High Street rather than the Brick Lane side.

Street Art on the Old Street Area of Shoreditch

Permissioned Graffiti colours from Eighties Conspiracy on Old Street

We have been running our private tours around the Old Street area for years, they are different to our public tours mainly because typically private guests such as office parties and school groups want a shorter tour.

Boris Johnson Borissor Coldheart Care Bare Artistic graffiti on the Old Street Area of Shoreditch by graffiti artist Tizer

Borissor Coldheart Care Bears by Tizer, Old Street 2020

Always eager to please, we are delighted to announce a public tour on Sunday 1st August which will start from Old Street Roundabout rather than Spitalfields Market.  The only overlap with our “traditional” public tour will be the very last part where we look at Eine and Banksy.

Street Art on the Old Street Area of Shoreditch

Paste ups close to Old Street

Book quick by clicking HERE, spaces are likely to run out.

Street Art on the Old Street Area of Shoreditch

Mesa work in Progress and Urocki, Holywell Lane 2020

This may become an occasional thing so if you can’t make 1st August 2021 just drop us an email and we can let you know when we arrange future dates.

Feature image: Stik and others on site of former Foundry arts space

All photos: Dave Stuart

Chewing Gum Selfie

On the Shoreditch Street Art tour this afternoon our especially observant guest Ingrid spied a new Ben Wilson gum pic which I wasn’t aware off.  Ben paints a lot of diverse subjects, many of which are drawn from the immediate vicinity of the piece of gum but none can be quite as close to home as this self portrait.

London, Shoreditch, Old Street, Ben Wilson, gum pic, chewing gum man, selfie, self portrait, artist

Ben Wilson Self Portrait

It is a wonderful likeness, as you can see from this photo of Ben which I took last Summer he delighted guests on a previous Shoreditch Street Art Tour.

London, Shoreditch, Old Street, Ben Wilson, gum pic, chewing gum man,tour, group

Ben Wilson meets The Shoreditch Street Art Tour

This wasn’t the first time a tour guest found a gum pic I didn’t know about, in fact after I had described Ben’s work to top London “things to do” picker from About London Laura Porter  on an early tour Laura suddenly found one, the first I had ever seen and it took a guest on the tour to find it!

London, Shoreditch, Old Street, Ben Wilson, gum pic, chewing gum man

Ben Wilson, 2013

Recently we spotted another recent gum pic painted a couple of weeks ago, I wonder if T.S are the initials of the gentleman immortalised in gum having an outdoor ciggie break.

London, Shoreditch, Old Street, Ben Wilson, gum pic, chewing gum man, smoker

Ben Wilson “I’ll Quit Tomorrow”

Another unusual thing about Ben, apart from painting found chewing gum on the streets, he has no web presence of his own, no social media so, sorry, no artist link here!