Tag Archives: paste ups

London International Paste Up Festival 2

The second edition of the London International Paste Up Festival took place 20-23 October 2022. Artists from all over the world, about 300 all told, sent in paper-based artwork which the organisers pasted up on a number of walls mainly around the Brick Lane area.

Fashion Street LIPF2

Street art was put up on a total of 7 locations, or 8 if you include the numerous paste ups that accumulated around LIPF HQ on Hanbury Street during the festival opening event. None of the LIPF2 locations had been used in the inaugural 2021 London International Paste Up Festival.

Seven Stars LIPF2, Brick Lane

In 2021 all the locations bar one were legal, permission had been granted by the owners. The exception was one wall where the LIPF team thought they had permission but it turned out they were listening to the wrong person! For 2022 there was no permission and indeed at several spots the apparent wall owners remonstrated with the paste up teams with varying degrees of forcefulness. At one spot the ground floor occupant harangued the team to be followed by an occupant from the floor above later saying how much they loved the art and the constant change.

Grimsby St LIPF2

In 2021 all the LIPF surfaces were virgin surfaces or tarps tied to walls. For the second event all bar one of the LIPF walls had long term prior history as paste up street art walls. The paste up festival waved a transformational wand at each wall, bringing complete more or less change in a single moment to surfaces more accustomed to perpetual evolution through gradual change. Last year’s art was essentially one layer deep whereas this year LIPF2 looks all the better for layering onto each walls accretion of texture, patina and depth. Also there were no gaps where original wall surface can be seen. So this year’s locations just looked more like street art from the wild compared to last year’s festival.

Puma Court LIPF2

Street art lends itself to collaborations, interactions and augmentations. Emo Ryan screenprints portraits of punk version of Queen Elizabeth garnished with Jamie Reid/Sex Pistols influenced wording, a recent paste up of the Queen by Silvio Alino had the right scale and similar text providing a perfect juxtaposition. The lily was well and truly gilded with the later addition of an artificial flower.

Silvio Alino, Emo Ryan and Me and Blue, Hanbury St

Coloquix/Appaaran collaboration for LIPF2

Paste up street art put up for the London International Paste Up Festival Second Edition

Tsunami_Mignonnerie / Raddington Falls interaction

One paste up spot with a long history of street art got the LIPF paste up team into spot of bother with an un-appreciative owner. Stik painted the Brick Lane Couple on Princelet Street in 2010. The adjacent wall was decorated in fine style with a succession of stencil images by Otto Schade from 2014 and paste ups really started appearing in large numbers in 2015. Someone in the property had a tirade against Benjay Crossman in 2019 leading to this sought after artist mulshing out his own art and leaving little doubt as to his feelings towards the owners. It would appear that the same person objected to the LIPF team decorating this long running spot and scrapped off the paste ups within his reach (short arms, stiff knees?). In the process of destroying the art he created a truly unsightly mess. Ironically, within the vague unwritten rules of paste up culture, ripped, torn, peeling and destroyed art gives a free pass to other artists to place fresh art over the desecration.

Princelet Street LIPF2 before the anti art attack

Princelet Street after the art desecration

2019 Benjay Crossman

Tweet_streetart from Melbourne collaborated with Metraeda from Dusseldorf on a balloon breathing faceted dragon. A barred gate locked to a wall provided appropriate context for several artworks including Palley’s R2D2 which was kept company by a rocket taking David Bowie to heaven and Cultof.XYZ’s “Allow access”. Old School street artists who submitted artworks included the famous London Police and West London writer CodeFC.

Tweet_streetart & Metraeda

Coloquix/Apparan collaboration for LIPF2

Puma Court – including Jace, 33WallFlower33, Tuby, Broken Hartist, Corrosive8, Cultof.xyz, Knapple

London Police, Uberfubs

Keith Flint and Queen Elizabeth by CodeFC. Also feaet No.rules art & LT66

Street artists are used to surrendering control over the fate of their art once they leave it on the streets. The London International Paste Up Festival begs artists to relinquish more, they are absent from the placement process. On the whole, with the exception of some artists who assisted with the pasting up or who attended some of the events in person, the gift of placement was in the hands of the team who spent many days pasting art on the walls. The aesthetic of the resulting walls was determined by opportunist interactions, intentional and chance colour combinations and a preference for chaotic randomness rather than disciplined straight edged borders and overlaps.

The Viaduct – early stages

The Viaduct LIPF2

Homo Riot, Vision Ox, Oddo, Punk Flamungo, Raffaele Giovani, DaddyStreetFox, TFA, Vermin, Pissandvinegar art, fiftyseven designs,Slow Shrug, Grimsby St, LIPF2

So.Schoen.Immer.Weider, Cameron twins, Hello The Mushroom, Taxed, Olly Walker, Apparan, Zelda Bomba at Puma Court

The LIPF2 spots are live and active street art locations, they remained dynamic and constantly changing even over the period of the Festival itself as new art was added by artists. K-Guy had been a participant in the 2021 LIPF but in 2022, having not managed to get ready in time for the submission deadline decided the best means of getting involved was simply to pop up and add his contributions himself. Those contributions were themselves subject to very rapid augmentation by another reliable contributor to the Shoreditch street art smorgasbord, Alex Arnell.

K-Guy

Fashion St

People immersed in the street art scene, in particular the practitioners, the artists may ponder what gives someone the right to take over whole walls and go over existing art in the name of a festival. Specially one in which very few of the participants are active in the installation, necessitating an element that might be construed as curation. If there is a conceit at the heart of the method, the actual achievement in elevating the appreciation and status of paste up street art justifies it.

Princelet St Oct 2022 pre LIPF

Princelet Street LIPF2

Shoreditch Street Art Tours had the pleasure a few years back of introducing the artist Apparan who is one of the main organisers involved in conceiving, managing and generally pulling off the London International Paste Up Festival to the charity Urban Heart Guate. Urban Heart Guate promotes various forms of therapy including art to support a better life and environment for young children growing up in communities in Guatemala blighted by poverty, crime and gang violence. A free street art tour by Shoreditch Street Art Tours on the last afternoon of LIPF2 raised donations to support the work of Urban Heart Guate. The official link to contribute via LIPF to this fabulous cause can be found HERE

The organisers of the London Paste Up Festival are continuing to raise funds in support and have partnered with Pepita Coffee to raise funds from purchases of reusable coffee tins packed with luxury ground coffee and featuring a collage of photos of LIPF1 art, they look stunning!

Collectors edition Pepita ground coffee for for the London International Paste Up Festival Second Edition

Collectors Edition Paste Up Festival coffee jar by Pepita Coffee

Message London International Paste Up Festival on Instagram for more details on how to get your mitts on one of these beauties.

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With apologies to the 300 artists who participated in LIPF2, it would be wonderful to provide links to all artists or indeed to identify everyone whose art features in the photographs in this summary but sadly this isn’t practical.

The 2nd London International Paste Up Festival was supported by:

Shoreditch Street Art Tours

Brick Lane Shisha Lounge

All photos: Dave Stuart

Portland and NY Street Artists visit Shoreditch

This August a group of street artists from Portland, Oregon as well as their friends from other endz visited Shoreditch to bless the public realm with their creativity. Various combinations of this group have been visiting Europe regularly over the years and the street art they create is never short of impressive.

City Kitty, RX Skulls, Toastoro, Voxx Romana and Wrdsmth

Gang mural (above and feature image) : City Kitty, RX Skulls, Toastoro, Voxx Romana and local friend Wrdsmth

RX Skulls and Voxx Romana have been at the centre of the previous manifestations of this team, on this occasion they were joined by City Kitty from New York, Toastoro from Portland and team photographer Cody Keto.

Cat Bus Toaster by Toastoro, Chonk by RX Skulls (also feat Boxitrixi, ODDO, DaddyStreertFox)

Each artist has embraced differing themes and influences yet there is commonality in the techniques, placements and energy. Paste ups, stencil, stickers and various installations are all deployed in the name of public decoration, sometimes in adventurous and novel ways.

My name is Voxx Romana, observe my stencil

Toastoro stencilled paste up

RX Skulls is one of the best known art sticker makers around and he came prepared with masses of stickers, as well as paste ups and stencils.

RX Skulls paste up

RX Skulls sticker

RX Skulls, Voxx Romana/Vane PDX collab, Toastoro (also feat D7606, Slow Shrug)

Visible in the very corner of the photo above is a small RX Skulls paste up on the corner of the window ledge, a relic from 2018 which can be seen in its early days in the photo below. Also visible in the following photo is a sculpture by 3x3x3 and a paste up from C3, C3 is one of the UK artists RX skulls has collaborated with and if you look closely above you can see the carbonised remains of that C3 in the layers of historic grime.

RX Skulls vs C3 also feat 3x3x3, 2018

Which leads to the next photo in which another aspect of the art practice of this posse is apparent, their enthusiasm for an art collaboration. A collection of conjoined skeleton RX Skulls characters called the Chonks are seen in partnership with art from his UK friends D7606 and C3. The Chonkening reflects RX’s intention to cram in tons of movies this year, don’t we all have an accumulated cinema deficit following the pandemic? Another conjoined couple are off on a tattoo spree with a tattoo gun.

RX Skulls & C3; RX Skulls & D7606

RX Skulls wall of fame

In a lovely gesture RX gave a number of stickers which were hugely appreciated by guests of the Shoreditch Street Art Tour.

RX Skulls stickers

By the way, sticker placement at seriously impressive height was achieved using a special applicator I have seen on the net but never seen in action before.

Toastoro sticker

Voxx Romana came similarly prepared and perhaps most striking were his collaborations with Danny Ebru who provided the marbled paper background to Voxx Romana’s stencils, something Voxx brought with him on his previous visit. The backgrounds are simply delicious.

Voxx Romana & Danny Ebru collaboration

Voxx got inventive with stencils wrapped around corners, borrowed background colours complement the stencilled definition of the face as if the whole thing was a single original collaborative art piece.

Voxx Romana 90 degree stencil

Another returning member was the collaboration machine City Kitty. City Kitty focusses more on hand painted paste ups rather than print runs and consequently gets up fewer pieces than the other guys. City Kitty does the street art podcast Scratching The Surface which is so damn good, several recent episodes were interviews recorded on this European foray. If you are interested in the sticker arm device mentioned above then listen to all of City Kitty’s podcasts, one of them is with the artist whose side hustle is selling those poles.

City Kitty

Toastoro, whose pseudonym is a fusion of the word “toast” and the name of Studio Ghibli animation character “Totoro”, has had art up in Shoreditch in the past courtesy of friends putting him up but this visit really marked his first overseas in-person “campaign”. Toastoro introduced two art techniques rarely seen in London street art: LED illuminated street art (hold tight Lost Hills) and layered art which Toastoro calls vinyl topography, the textured layered effect is hard to relive or convey through “mere” photographs.

Literally lit Toastoro

Toastoro vinyl topography

The Studio Ghibli reference implicit in the compound name Toastoro influences his subject matter which included sightings of Totoro (obvs) with a body shaped rather like a slice of bread, susawatari dust bunnies and funniest of all, a souped up cat bus (“My Neighbour Totoro”) with added toaster functionality.

susuwatari pavement stencils by Toastoro

Cat Bus Toaster by Toastoro

Toastoro visited Shoreditch with a group of street artists from Portland and New York and created original street art

Toastoro sticker

Voxx, RX and Toastoro all felt pavement stencilling was in order, something Voxx Romana and RX Skulls have done in Shoreditch on previous visits.

RX Skulls & Voxx Romana pavement stencils

Pavement Stencil by RX Skulls

Toastoro pavement stencil

The boys from Portland also put out some #FreeArt. RX Skulls became only the second street artist I can recall putting out bronze street art.

RX Skulls

Accompanying the street artists was the amazing and super cool photographer Cody Keto. While out one evening the group bumped into Stik, a chance encounter which gave Cody the opportunity to create some amazing light trail photographs at Stik’s famous Hoxton Couple statue. Cody has kindly given permission for his stunning photos to appear here.

Portland guys vs Stik with Stik guest appearance. Photo courtesy Cody Keto Photography

Catching Brick Lane Action – (behind) Cody Keto and (closer)Toastoro

The love extended to this group of visiting artists is really a reflection of the way they reach out to and embrace the wider world. This is most apparent in their collaborations, these guys are total collaboration engines and it is not surprising to see them collaborating by design, on opportunity and by chance.

City Kitty/Toastoro cats and bamboo shoot collab (also feat Pablo Fiasco, RSH & an older Mowcka)

City Kitty/Toastoro collab detail

City Kitty & RX Skulls collaboration

City Kitty hooked up with Neon Savage, the pair having collaborated many times down the years since meeting in Croydon in 2017 a fact gleaned from their podcast conversation on the always excellent City Kitty podcast.

City Kitty & Neon Savage collab

RX Skulls & Polar Bear collaboration

One of the group told us that the highlight of the visits had been the welcome they received in Europe, visits were made to Manchester, Hackney Wick, Paris as well as Shoreditch and Southbank. There were planned hook-ups as well as chance encounters with street artists and many artists and fans travelled to meet the team.

a group of street artists from Portland and New York and created original street art

Hanging at Montys for the “Bring and buy”

Toastoro at Southbank Undercroft

City Kitty at Southbank Undercroft

RX Skulls at Southbank Undercroft

Mowcka has previously collaborated with City Kitty and travelled to hook up in Shoreditch.

Toastoro, City Kitty and visiting friend Mowcka

The combination of artists in this travelling circus changes on each visit but fear not, art by absent friends appears courtesy of those who do make the trip.

Vane PDX (Voxx Romana obliged)

Vane PDX transparent sticker

Vane’s sticker is printed on a transparent background, Voxx’s placement on Vane’s behalf intentionally responds to the red letterpress print by Jean Peut-Etre. One of those “chance” collaborations perhaps.

DRSC0 – absent friend

visited Shoreditch with a group of street artists from Portland and New York and created original street art

Eye see Pam Goode – present in spirit

Also making appearances were friends from their local scenes that London did not have the pleasure of welcoming in person this time such as Cheer Up, Cuz Chris and Robots Will Kill

Cheer Up

Notice the writing of Cheer Up’s name in the glitched font in the face – genius!

Cuz Chris

City Kitty & Chris RWK sticker collaboration

Tracy Blackstock by Dreph admires stickers by RX Skulls and a Chris RWK/Knor collab

This visiting group of artists peppered Shoreditch and other parts of Europe with new street art embodying innovative, novel, collaborative, improvised fun wherever they went. There were so many dimensions to the art and the activities they got up to and we thank them all for their contribution to the street art scene.

Links:

RX Skulls Instagram

“Art From Arrex. Stick It.” RX Skulls 2014 stickers in Shoreditch

“Secrets Of The Sticker Shed – Sticker Making Workshop” (How to become RX Skulls)

Voxx Romana instagram

City Kitty instagram

Toastoro instagram

Cody Keto Photography Website

RX Skulls stencil

RX Skulls visited Shoreditch with a group of street artists from Portland and New York and created original street art

RX Skulls stencils

Birmingham Street Art – not just Banksy

“It’s A Brum Ting” has been the signature tune of the past fortnight as Birmingham hosted the Commonwealth Games. So what is it about Birmingham, why is it so great? Armed with a cheap cheap day return rail ticket I set out several weeks back to discover if Birmingham Street Art is what Goldie, Trevor Francis and Banksy (might have) appreciated about the UK’s “Second City” ™.

Justin Sola, Void One & Mose78

The art started right outside the train station, FokaWolf was well represented as was Brummy staple Tempo, of whom more later.

Fokawolf

Tempo 33

Gent 48 is a giant of Birmingham’s street art scene so perhaps it was either fitting, or just inevitable, that the first mural spotted was by Gent48, painted in January this year when Birmingham was sorting out the torch relay for the opening of the Commonwealth Games. The mural features Haseebah Abdullah, England’s first hijab-wearing boxing coach and Salma Bi, who founded the first all Asian women’s cricket team.

Gent 48

The one flag planted in my vague, unplanned plan was to locate Birmingham’s 2019 Banksy. Tick the box, complete the set. The route took me through a cluster of architecturally fascinating buildings. London is quite staid by comparison, so many planning luddites have ensured our post war rebuilding lacks the surprise, flair and modernism a waddle around the centre of Birmingham will reveal. The interior of the Birmingham Library is so worth exploring for its design as well as its exhibition content.

Exterior view of Birmingham New Street train station designed by Alejandro Zaera-Polo

Birmingham New Street by Alejandro Zaera-Polo

Birmingham Library

Birmingham Library interior

The route to the Banksy had already been mapped out by the Charm Bracelet trail by Mick Thacker and Mark Renn.

Birmingham Jewellery Quarter Charm Bracelet pavement plaque trail, Mick Thacker and Mark Renn

Birmingham Jewellery Quarter pavement plaque trail, Mick Thacker and Mark Renn

What’s to say about the Banksy on Vyse Street. Great placement, great use of the street furniture and a poignancy likely to rise as rampant inflation and fuel poverty drives up homelessness next winter. It is well preserved and thankfully no gallerist twat has laid his grubby “Preserving street art for private collectors” hands on it. So far. It’s a pig to photograph clearly and parts of its execution are a tad indifferent.

Banksy confirmed this stencil as genuine with a website message saying “God bless Birmingham. In the 20 minutes we filmed Ryan on this bench passers-by gave him a hot drink, two chocolate bars and a lighter – without him ever asking for anything.”

Arriving in Birmingham I expected graffiti; thanks to an awareness of its recent history of street art festivals I expected murals; I wasn’t fully prepared for the brilliant explosion of sticker art. Every lamppost, traffic light, street sign and pole had been claimed by sticker art, one of my favourites being the huge variety of brace faces by Tempo who we used to see fairly frequently in London 10 or so years ago.

Tempo 33

When Tempo was up in London our main delight was his large circular non permissioned paste-ups so finding a number of larger spraypainted murals was a pleasure.

Tempo 33

Other sticker artists included Wreck1, Lisk Bot, Never A Servant, the legend Fokawolf and a very impressive scattering of the playful and rare (to me at least) street art of Pahnl.

Sticker artists Werck1 and Lisk Bot on a traffic sign in Birmingham

Werck1, Lisk Bot

NVRASIR

Sticker artists Fokawolf and "Titty"on a lamppost in Birmingham

Fokawolf & “Titty”

street art pictographic installation by Pahnl

Pahnl pictogram installation

sign subversion by street artist Pahnl in Birmingham

Pahnl sign subversion

Birmingham embraces adventurous and exciting architecture but the ancient brick and steam midlands’ post-industrial relics co-exist alongside the modern. Graff was popping up in some breathtaking spots and with more canals than Venice (Brummies say), canal-side vistas in particular are worth hunting out.

Birmingham & Fazeley Canal

River Rea graff

Post industrial heritage shot with The Birmingham & Fazeley Canal in Birmingham

Farmers Bridge Locks

Paste-up action in the vicinity was fairly limited, the paste-up hall of fame hunt will have to wait till the next visit.

Void One, Foka Wolf

The urban huddle of car parks, streets and old factories in Digbeth just to the east of the city centre forms an amazing gallery. It is dominated by amazing murals, some appear to be permission murals liable to change, some look like relics of street art festivals with tags acknowledging “City of Colours” (2014 – 16) and “HighViz Festival” (2019-21) as well as our perpetual favourite – get up and get away with it.

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Chance plays a key role in street art spotting in a city you haven’t explored before. There is the chance of what artists are “up” at that moment, your experience, your sample will possibly be completely different to anyone else before or after. Also, what route do you take across the urban spider web of streets, alleys and paths? From A, B may be sought by going right then left; or you can turn left then go right, that’s two different street art galleries right there. While slaloming through the mainly industrial streets from Digbeth back to the train station, a glance over the shoulder into an open door revealed a delicious collection of political and tribute murals inside a fortuitously empty car park.

Void One memorial tribute mural to Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, Astro (UB40) and Captain Tom

Street Art mural in a Birmingham car park featuring Donald Trump by street artist Gent 48

Donald Trump by Gent 48, Character and graff by Ziner

Two faced Jeremy Hunt as NHS Joker mural in a Birmingham car park by street artist Void One

NHS Joker by Void One

portraits of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King in a mural in a Birmingham car park by street artist Title

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King by Title

Street Art mural in a Birmingham car park featuring Theresa May and a screaming policeman by street artist Title

Theresa May by Title

A good street art city should house a collection which is too vast for you to cover in your limited time, especially on a one day visit. It should also have change, renewal, vibrant health and life and Birmingham’s street art scene has both of these. It is hard to put it better than Birmingham’s own Prince Of Darkness when Black Sabbath reunited last Sunday (Paranoid at 1 min exactly) for a spine tingling surprise set (iplayer, some areas, go to 2 hours exactly, next 3 months) at the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony:

“You are the best…..Birmingham forEVVVAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH”

Selected Links:

Gent 48 instagram

Ziner instagram

Tempo 33 instagram

Banksy website (Please tell Banksy you found him through Shoreditch Street Art Tours)

All Photos Dave Stuart

52 Birmingham street art photos

Street Art Animations From Dr Cream

NFTs are the current buzzword in the art world and street artists are getting quite excited about their potential for street art. Street art overlapping the digital realm is nothing new and one of it longest standing exponents is the self-styled guerrilla animator Dr Cream who has been producing street art animations for the past decade.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, tours, Dr Cream, springbot, Spring, linoprint, linocut, animation, stopframe, timelapse, Shoreditch street art tours, paste ups,

Springbot by Dr Cream feat also the Rolling Fool, Cat Rider and Shark Army, 2017

In the famous Star Yard off Brick Lane there is at the moment a lovely collection of paste ups from Dr Cream comprising the full set of frames required to replicate one of his famous street art animations. You can do this yourself, take a few quick snaps and hey presto with a bit of photoshop create your own replica of one of Dr Cream’s animations. Other animation makers may be available. The Star Yard collection yielded this version of Daisy Riot’s strike.

street art stop frame animation of a female swinging a large bat by Dr Cream in Shoreditch

Daisy Riot Guitar Swat

For years we had failed to locate every necessary frame to make a seamless replica of one of his animation, this changed at the London International Paste Up festival last year when Dr Cream obligingly put all the frames for another Daisy animation.

Paste-ups by street artist Dr Cream used to create a stop Frame animation

Daisy Riot animation frames by Dr Cream

You may wonder why bother with this complex process fusing the real and the virtual when you could just make a wholly digital animation. There are several great reasons for doing it this way: the fun, the audience but most of all it is the beauty of introducing random chance abstract colours and textures from the street into the animation.

Street art print stop frame animation of a female swinging a large bat by Dr Cream in Shoreditch

Daisy Riot back lift axe

As for NFTs, hey are coming to street art and there will benefits and there will be negatives, maybe we’ll go into that another time.

Check out the long history of Dr Cream’s street art animations HERE

Photos and animations: Dave Stuart

June Busting Out Street Art All Over

June is Summer’s portal, ushering in hazy sunshine, drinks with friends and a bump in street art action. That’s the theory; June in London this year was on the whole rather grey and overcast, here are some of the artworks that leavened the damp squib the month became.

paste up street art of rock star Debbie Harry from Blondie by Postmans Art

Debbie Harry – The Postman’s Art

Nathan Bowen has been on a recent flurry of art activity, one particular piece I wanted to include falls foul of the very strict rigid inflexible “June and June only” qualifying period set for this post but thankfully there are other equally lovely ones.

permissioned mural street by Nathan Bowen and Harry Blackmore

Nathan Bowen & Harry Blackmore

In this artwork created in Pedley St, the latest graffiti hotspot, Pablo Fiasco fuses the first African American character to appear in the Peanuts cartoon strip with imagery inspired by the Jimmy Cliff film “The Harder They Come”, a combination every bit as brilliant as Fiasco’s masterful stencil technique.

stencil street art by Pablo Fiasco featuring Peanuts character Franklin and scenes from The Harder They Fall Jimmy Cliff

Peanuts character Franklin by Pablo Fiasco

Pablo Fiasco Jimmy Cliff detail

Grace Kelly popping into a British phone box would be an iconic moment if it ever happened, D7606 is quite happy to do the imagining for us. Let’s hope “indigo the art dog” from New York knows how to behave.

pop art style paste up street art with Grace Kelly in a phone box by street artist D7606

Phone box multiples with Grace Kelly – D7606

Seeing Coloquix art in London is relatively unusual but it always reminds me of the wonderful time I had in Sheffield exploring art in derelict buildings after travelling up there for a gallery show by Aida, which was the first time I encountered Coloquix’s art.

paste up street art female figure bouncing on space hopper by street artist Coloquix

female with space hopper – Coloquix

Woskerski and David Speed have alternated in the use of this particular spot in the past month, this fried egg by Woskerski was sensational.

Photorealistic fried egg painted on a building site hoarding in Shoreditch by street artist Woskerski

Fried Egg – Woskerski

At a nearby location this skull by David Speed was beautifully framed in the structure of the bus shelter.

David Speed

At a more formal level and not normally the kind of art that Shoreditch Street Art Tours covers, Art Night has been significantly redesigned for 2021. It used to be a one night event in London involving a crazy evening pounding around one off art events in galleries in institutions and it was terribly easy to actually spend the whole evening stuck in a queue for the most popular elements. For 2021 the event is strung out over a month and has been decentralised with much activity outside London. Supporting a theme small acts of personal and collective defiance and self determination we had this biting feminist advert from the Guerrilla Girls.

Art Night 2021 billboard art by Guerrilla Girls

Guerrilla Girls -Female Artists

As an aside, whenever I am under extreme pressure to name a favourite piece of street art I often fall back to a piece by James Cauty in 2008 which mirrored the street but with the devastating ego blow in which my personal significance was accurately measured out by my invisibility, it was at the same spot.

Favourtie piece of street art ever, billboard art in Shoreditch

TRA TON SI SIHT – Jimmy Cauty, 2008

This building site hoarding is at the site of the former art hang out known as the Foundry, the Shoreditch location where a new 27 story hotel is being constructed where once was one of the largest Banksy’s in London. It mainly hosts graffiti, this sublime abstract artwork seems to have the hand, meaning can control, of a graffiti writer but looks to be abstract to the point of no letterform at all.

artist not known

That building site is now emerging above ground level, it is quite scary to reflect on the fact that it will be a 27 story building when complete.

Art Otel new building under construction in Shoreditch with graffiti on hoardings Awards, Fugs, Mase, Krops et al

Legal graffiti on building site hoardings – Awards, Fugs, Mase, Krops et al

all photos: Dave Stuart

Shoreditch Paste Up Frenzy!

Shoreditch is full of little corners where street art survives and accumulates in layers, like a busy kitchen pinboard. Last week one such canvas near Columbia road was transformed by, in no particular order, Donk, Skeleton Cardboard, Rider and Tommy Fiendish into the beautiful paste up collage you see in the feature image above.

Streetart, Shoreditch, ShoreditchStreetArtTours, LondonStreetArt, LondonArtTours, LondonStreetArtTours, , Streetartist, paste up, Paste ups, portraits, canvas, Donk, Rider, zombiesquegee, Tommy Fiendish, Skeleton Cardboard

L-R Rider, Donk

Skeleton Cardboard

L-R Rider, Tommy Fiendish, Skeleton Cardboard

Whether neglect or tolerance is the reason why the property owner has allowed street art to accumulate, mutate and flourish on this canvas is a matter for another day but it is interesting to look at just a few examples of how the patina of this door’s surface has evolved down the years.

A year Ago in November 2019 the door looked like this:

Feat Anne-laure Maison, Donk, Arrex Skulls, Subdude, Fosh, Citty Kitty, Shuby, Noriaki, Silvio Alino, D7606

Just a week ago a fair portion of the art present in 2019 was showing a steely determination to cling on in spite of tempest and subsequent creatives.

Nov 2020: Feat DaddyStreetFox vs Anne-laure Maison, Donk, Subdude, Fosh, Citty Kitty, Shuby, Noriaki, Silvio Alino, Bento Ghoul, Voxx Romana, Pyramid Oracle, D7606

The Pyramid Oracle paste up still visible in parts in 2019 and 2020 has already lasted since 2015, thanks mainly to its height.

2015: Pyramid Oracle, also feat Sweet Toof, Donk, Voxx Romana, Noriaki, Anna Laurini, Ema, D7606

HIN was busy around Shoreditch 2012 – 2014 and if you looked at the bottom of the door in 2013 you would see a HIN character with an Aida face created from her infamous “East End Still Sucks” response to the Hackney Olympics. That originally started out as a “go vegan” augmentation by HIN of Aida’s screen printed tiger paste up as shown in the following shot, the HIN body was still visible last week!

2013: Sweet Toof, Aida, Kid Acne, Ema, Donk, Angry Face, HIN

Finally, back in 2012 this canvas was one of many to host the Sweet Toof/Paul Insect street group show. This photo also features a framed print by New York street artist Gaia in a walk on part!

2012: Sweet Toof, Paul Insect, Aida, Hin & Aida collab, Kid Acne, Ema; print by Gaia

As always the beauty of the art process here is the absence of the selective and restrictive eye of a curator, an organiser.

A few years ago a permissioned wall on Hanbury Street triggered a similar “longitudinal” review of the changes time wrought on that particular canvas, click here.

Finally, if you have enjoyed this look back through a street art time machine why not put an end to that lockdown stir crazy feeling by joining the author on a tour of Shoreditch’s street art, click here

All photos: Dave Stuart

24 Hours – Street Art Changes

Almost every day Shoreditch Street Art Tours comes across new art on the streets and it is a privilege to be able to reveal constantly changing art through the tours and through our social media channels like Instagram and Facebook. Last weekend a huge quantity of new art was found on Sunday which we believe was created since the previous visit 24 hours earlier, this is a little insight into the extent to which the street art can change in just one day.

Paste up by Brighton based artists The Postman Art proved very popular when they first appeared in Shoreditch in November last year so it was lovely to find a number of new works from them on Sunday morning, The framing and the brickwork make the Ewan McGregor particularly photogenic.

Shoreditch, London, Streetart, paste ups, change, ephemeral, street art tour, tour guide, The Postman's Art

Trainspotting era Ewan McGregor – The Postman Art

Robert Smith – legend! The Postman Art

Amy Winehouse (small!) – The Postman Art

Jean Michel Basquiat -The Postman Art

It became apparent on Saturday that there was going to be a new body of work from The Postman Art in Shoreditch when we disturbed a bit of daytime action by this duo the day. Photo used with The Postman Art’s blessing – many thanks.

The Postman Art in action

Also new on the walls was work by Winniemmay, as a group we did spot the artist installing a few of these on Saturday, so it was nice to see the finished articles.

Shoreditch, London, Streetart, paste ups, change, ephemeral, street art tour, tour guide, WinnieMmay

I roll and fall – Winniemmay

Winniemmay put one of her paste ups over a large freehand painted portrait she did late last year but had accumulated a number of tags and stencils, she told us “everyone else has gone over me, why can’t I?”

Let’s get messy you & me – Winniemmay

We love Uberfub’s sequined skulls and there evidently have been more than one dance macabre over the past week. A couple of skulls born early last week (instagram) had disappeared by Saturday, been laid to rest perhaps. On Sunday the largest sequinned skull I have seen loomed over Brick Lane reminding us to “Scrap Brexit”.

Shoreditch, London, Streetart, paste ups, change, ephemeral, street art tour, tour guide, Uberfubs,

Scrap Brexit – Uberfubs

On Saturday morning we came across a new sculpture by the Italian duo UrbanSolid. It was as single brain emitting a wifi hotspot signal, very clever. It was also, as you can see below “signed”. Overnight that single brain hotspot had grown to a multi coloured quartet.

Shoreditch, London, Streetart, paste ups, change, ephemeral, street art tour, tour guide, UrbanSolid

UrbanSolid Saturday 1piece

UrbanSolid 4UP on Sunday

Benjamin Irritant highlighted his loathing of the “want it all, want it now” society we live in with this message in screaming capital letters nicely framed on a distressed door panel, again on Brick Lane. Several other new paste ups by Benjamin were spotted.

Shoreditch, London, Streetart, paste ups, change, ephemeral, street art tour, tour guide, Benjamin Irritant

CONSUME DESTROY TOMORROW TODAY – Benjamin Irritant

Finally, a few dental additions appeared in Shoreditch on Sunday.

Sweet Toof

On Sunday I spotted 28 new pieces of street art that I had not seen before despite having had a good look at all those walls just the day before. This was just a small sample of Shoreditch’s street art hinterland, there was almost certainly much more art put up on other walls in the area. This daily evolution and transformation of the street art is typical of Shoreditch, now it’s your turn to go out and enjoy it!

Links:

The Postman Art Instagram

Winniemmay Instagram

Uberfubs Instagram

UrbanSolid instagram

Benjamin Irritant Instagram

Sweet Toof Instagram

All photos Dave Stuart (Instagram)

Ludo In London

A few weeks ago French street artist Ludo visited London and put up three large paste ups in his signature style. There are a little north of Shoreditch but were well worth making the journey to find.

One of the pieces found a very interesting connection with the owner of the business whose wall Ludo’s floral grenade adorns. Len Maloney, proprietor of JC Motors LNM faces a battle to save his business in the face of massive inflation busting rent and rate rises on his premises and felt that the grenade in the flower captured exactly how he feels. In a quote for Graffoto Len said “I was puzzled at first by this huge flower but I stepped back and realised the flower was growing a grenade. TfL have put up my rent and Hackney Council under pressure from central Government are jacking up the business rates, I have a real fight to keep this business that I have worked so hard for over the years going. My staff would be unemployed, apprentices might not finish their apprenticeships, opportunities for future apprenticeships and employment will disappear. I feel I could explode and the artist’s grenade flower seems to capture how I feel. TfL are about to pull the pin!”

Ludo, London, Street art, East London Trades Guild, Paste ups, flowers, weapons, connections,

Left to right: Jay, Peter, Singh, Hakeem and Len outside JC Motors, Stean St, Haggerston

When asked why he chose this spot for this piece of art, Ludo told Graffoto “the spot just felt great for me visually…from the barbed wire, the bricks, textures…that’s how I find my spots as I don’t really know what’s going on inside. The only thing that motivates me is to tell a story and the background is as important as the artwork”. So, that Len saw such a specific relevance in the artwork to him and his team is pure serendipity; “good thing about art is you take it as it touches you” says Ludo.

There is more about the background to that story and flashbacks to brilliant art Ludo has put up on London’s streets in the past decade on Graffoto (link).

Links:

Ludo website

East London Trades Guild

All photos: Dave Stuart

Manyoly At Large

Last weekend I found some lovely new street art in Shoreditch, that is always an exciting thing and of course I want to share it with you. This isn’t about a couple of Banksys appearing nearby in the City Of London, this is about the beautiful colourful portraiture of French street artist Manyoly.

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Manyoly Sep 2017

Manyoly’s paste ups first appeared in London just before Christmas last year and charmed all who came across them.

Manyoly Dec 2016

Such was the positive reception Manyoly has already been back several times and on her most recent trip Manyoly beautified Shoreditch with several more very large pieces.

Manyoly Sep 2017

Manyoly told Shoreditch Street Art Tours that she has been passionate about Women’s issues since her early teens and her bright colourful female portraits are a way of capturing a woman’s energy.

Manyoly Dec 2016

Manyoly eschews famous people, “we have enough people on earth to never need to paint them” she said and her paintings are fusions of various women she has seen on the street, often mixing features from different races and ethnic backgrounds in the one portrait.

Manyoly stickers can be seen on surfaces in Shoreditch if you look hard enough.

Manyoly April 2017

Guests on the Shoreditch Street Art Tour hear about the challenge Manyoly faces pasting up irregular shaped paste ups with fronds of paper protruding around the edges, certainly its a bit tricker than pasting up A4 rectangles of paper. This high speed timelapse from Manyoly showing her pasting up a very large portrait on Great Eastern Street is a fascinating insight into how a street artist breaks the task down into a sequence of steps.

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A post shared by Manyoly (@manyoly)

For more about Manyoly’s art on the streets and hanging indoors check out her website

All photos Dave Stuart except the timelapse via Manyoly’s instagram page