Tag Archives: Political art

Street Art vs Brexit

Yesterday evening the UK’s parliament voted to show that they had not changed their mind since December on a withdrawal agreement that hadn’t changed since December.  Street artists have not been impressed with the political process over the past three months, nor indeed the past three years or so.

Artist Not Known, March 2019

“Bye Bye” says an anonymous artist who spotted a gate in Shoreditch conveniently painted EU flag blue. This flag with one member missing piece echoes Banksy’s enormous EU flag with a tromp l’oeil worker chipping away a star brilliantly greeting UK leavers as they depart through Dover.

Banksy, Street art, mural, Dover, Brexit, EU Flag, painter, ladder, stencil

Banksy, Dover June 2017

It was noticeable and disappointing how little political street art appeared during the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign. The most memorable from a very small entry list were these spoofs on the adverts for Banksy’s street art documentary “Exit Through The Gift Shop” lampooning Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

Boris Johnson, Artist Not Known, June 2016

Nigel Farage, Artist Not Known, June 2016

Since then we have seen a ramping up of the Brexit street art as the unthinkable went from implausible to likely to now pretty much unavoidable.

Brexit Through The Chip Shop – CodeFC, June 2017

Scrap Brexit – Uberfubs, 2018

In the aftermath of the referendum result the immediate targets for street art scorn and derision were David Cameron, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, the architects and chief pom-pom wavers for the Leave cause.

Spineless Nigel Farage, UKIP party by MCLN, August 2016

Boris Johnson buffoon, fuckwit, bellend, racist, snob by Boo Who Up North

3 Brexiteers – Derek Davis (gone), Boris Johnson (missing inaction), Jacob Rees Mogg by Subdude, April 2018

Boris Johnson is DUMBO by K-Guy

The political paralysis and consequential insertion of heads into the sand really gained a head of steam in December.

Scrap Brexit – Uberfubs, Dec 2018

Theresa May faced a vote of no confidence by her own party after cancelling the first so-called “meaningful vote” in December

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Street Art Tour, Political Art, Joe Bloggs, Jonesy, Theresa May, Brexit,

Maygo by Joe Bloggs, Dec 2018

I was recently obliged to take a few weeks away from the walls and pavements of Shoreditch and on resuming street meanderings last weekend I was bowled over by the amount of Brexit street art that appeared in that short absence.

The duo Quiet British Accent belatedly brought George V into the debate.

Quiet British Accent – Bugger Brexit, last weekend

Theyen Rich aka Corrosive 8 deploys the sound political debating stratgey of making your opponent look simultaneously stupid and obscene, the Prime Minster’s watersports would certainly rate triple X. He also borrows the buses to nowhere from anarcho-punk artist Jamie Reid and adds a Carrie Reichardt slogan.

>Mistress Theresa’s Golden Shower – Corrosive 8, last weekend

Corrosive 8 with nod to Jamie Reid & Carrie Reichardt, last weekend

Benjamin Irritant’s rabbit asks a very pointed rhetorical question, is it great again yet?

Benjamin Irritant, last weekend

The Misfortuneteller has developed a witty street cartoon style in the past couple of years, this largest piece to date borrows its style from a closing down sale, its simplicity belying the fact that it is emphasizing the gap between the Brexiteer’s promises of “the easiest trade deals ever negotiated” against the visibly increasing isolation the country faces with borders and barriers hardening, no deals and inward investment evaporating.

Britain Closing – The Misfortuneteller, March 20219

Subdude, producer of a lot of Brexit related art over the past few years, has deviated from his usual distinctive style of political humour on flat colour blocks to deliver a hand drawn condemnation of petty sectarian spats, photos and cartoons on newspaper pages make it clear who is the target of the jibe. Apparently Subdude has put six out on the streets but so far I have only found three, one of which overlays a political cartoon illustrating Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn both facing a common dilemma, Brexit actually threatening to irreparably split both of the UK’s main political parties. Ironically, in order to placate their parties both are having to turn away from the fact that neither actually supports the position they politically obliged to adopt, we live in weird times.

Subdude, March 2019

Cigarette packet health warnings have been used as the basis for political street art for over 10 years, in fact almost since the regulations came in in 2003, think K-Guy in the mid 2000s. Wanker’s Of The World, whose mission is to identify and award that sobriquet to suitable candidates in the public eye are responsible for enormous cigarette packets mocking the main proponents of the Brexiteers. There are apparently 6, we located 5 in the past week. Ironically, the adoption of those cigarette packet warnings is actually an EU law which mandates the format, size and range of messages in all EU countries.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, chair “European Research Group”. Brexit Can Be Fatal, last week

Theresa May, Brexit Causes Family Arguments (who’s putting out the bins?)

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude, political art, EU art, Brexit art,

Boris Johnson, Brexit harms your children

Michael Gove, Quit Brexit Now

IN the interests of fairnessm here is a comprehensive review of all the pro Brexit street art seen since 2016:

 

Who knows what the monkeys in the chamber are going to do next, certainly they don’t!

Banksy Bristol Museum Poster 2009

This is a condensed version of a blog post that originally appeared on Graffoto blog

LINKS:

Banksy website

CodeFC Instagram

Uberfubs Instagram

MCLN Instagram

Boo Who Up North Instagram

Subdude  Instagram

K-Guy Instagram

Joe Bloggs Instagram

Quiet British Accent Instagram

Benjamin Irritant Instagram

The Misfortuneteller Instagram

Wankers Of The World website

All Photos: Dave Stuart


Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude,

All Change Street Art Gallery

The public gallery we call “Shoreditch Street Art” changes every day.  Give the pavement wanderings a couple of weeks break and the accumulation of brand new art is breathtaking.  Here is just a small sample of the new art seen this morning on my first tour for 15 days.

On International Women’s Day it is a pleasure to feature at the top of the page MissKK, a female artist from Budapest who has put up a number of quirky but charming collaged females including Daphne Groeneveld and Vivienne Wood (below)

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude,

Vivienne by Miss KK

Neon Savage was certainly busy, several collaged clusters of soul divas and cure fluffy animals appeared and only someone with no heart could possibly resist a blue furred three eyed bunny rabbit.

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude, political art, EU art, Brexit art,

Grace Jones, The Ronettes by Neon Savage

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude,  political art, EU art, Brexit art, cuddly bunny

Totally neon blue 3 eyed bunny, Neon Savage and My Dog Sighs

An artist who has been grabbing our attention in the past couple of months is daddystreetfox, one of my favourites from a recent prolific burst of activity is this paste up image of a photographed collage to which  it appears sequins are added.

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude,

DaddyStreetFox

The recent stencilled “you warm my heart” piece by Northern Southner has been augmented by Sell Out and turned into a crazy, wild haired expressionist character who appear grateful for your affection.

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude,

Sell Out with Northern Southner

Making a welcome return to Shoreditch is Agos_art from Tenerife who takes the credit for and ouroboros and serpent spotted today.

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude,

Agos_Art

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude,

Agos_Art

It was striking how much Brexit related street art was created in the past fortnight, and in this context our minds go back to how little appeared during the actual campaign in 2016.  These political statements have the chilling form of cigarette packet warnings, from the imaginatively monikered WOTW collective who kindly include their weblink in the image!

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude,  political art, EU art, Brexit art,

Jacob Rees-Mogg, chair of “European Research Group” is WOTW!

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude,  political art, EU art, Brexit art,

Boris Johnson – WOTW

Subdude has been doing his political humour on paste ups for a number of years but it is always great to find hew has new targets for his ire.

Street Art, Shoreditch, political art, EU art, Brexit art, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude,

Subdude vs Trump & Kim Jong-un

We were also amused by this adaptation of the EU flag on an appropriately coloured door panel,  credit to the always prolific “Artist NotKnown”.

Street Art, Shoreditch, political art, EU art, Brexit art, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude,

Bye Bye EU

Probably the piece I most feel in love with was this cardboard collage sculpture by Catmousey9, if Adam Neate and Basquiat had a baby…….

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude,

Catmouse 9

All the walls in the “Shoreditch Triangle” curated by Outside The Zone are getting their periodic makeover which means goodbye to the amazing mural by Tom Lewis but we look forward to seeing the emergence over the next few days of what will undoubtedly be a brilliant new collection of murals.  Follow developments on our instagram and facebook feeds.

Street Art, Shoreditch, London, Brick Lane, street artists, graffiti, tours, Miss KK, Sell Out, Northern Southner, Agos_Art, Catmousey9, Subdude,  political art, EU art, Brexit art, Tom Lewis, Carl Stimpson

au revoir to this amazing mural by Tom Lewis & Carl Stimpson

You can’t cover everything in a one morning wander and we did see so much recently new art, just a sample of which is shown here but unfortunately a 3 year old iphone only has so much battery power!

Links:

Neon Savage instagram

DaddyStreetFox instagram

Sell Out aka Alex Arnell instagram

Northern Southner instagram

Agos_Art Instagram

WOTW: weblink per image

Subdude instagram 

Catmouse 9 website

Tom Lewis website

All photos: Dave Stuart


General Election 2017 Street Art

Today Britain goes to the election, we express political preferences through a mark on a ballot paper.   Walls are also great surfaces to express political opinions and here are a few highlights from the 2017 General Election, a period that began back in the third week of April.

One of the first out of the blocks was Banksy with his stunning comment on Brexit at the port of Dover.

Banksy, Street art, mural, Dover, Brexit, EU Flag, painter, ladder, stencil

Banksy

The election has witnessed a rare mis-calculation by Mr Banksy (or maybe he does a great job of just not screwing up in public!).  He offered a limited edition “archive quality” girl with balloon print to anyone from six tory controlled wards in Bristol that sent in a photograph of their polling paper showing a tick in the box for the labour candidate.   The initial response on Saturday from the Electoral Commission professed that the law was complex in this area but by Monday Banksy had announced a “Product Recall” on the basis of a legal opinion from the Electoral Commission that those polls would be invalidated.  Tweets purporting to be from local constabulary also declared the action illegal.

source: www.banksy.co.uk

Well known British contemporary artist Jeremy Deller provided a plain rebuttal to Theresa May’s campaign slogan, this work put up widely across London by the Fly Leaps organisation.

Jeremy Deller

The blind as a bat Theresa May poster next to Deller’s is by Kennard Phillips who produced the now legendary image of Tony Blair taking a selfie in front of a burning oilfield which was displayed in the window of Banksy’s Santa’s Ghetto on Oxford St, London in 2006.

The punchiest exponent of using other people’s walls to deliver punchy political messages for many years is one of my favourite artists Dr d.  For this general election Dr d has gone back to  spoof Standrd (note the spelling at the end) headlines, as can be seen here above Unify’s adaptation of Shepard Fairey’s famous Obama HOPE poster.

 

Dr d. above; Unify below

 

CodeFC put up a couple of strong stencilled compositions.  Sadly the one in Leake Street asking “Theresa who?” had burned bright but briefly as art and graffiti is wont at that location but with the grace of CodeFC we have used his photo as the featured imagae at the top of this post.  Brexit Through The Chip Shop simultaneously references a great British culinary institution, the title of Banksy’s 2010 street art documentary and the greatest political fraud of our lifetime.

CodeFC Brexit Through The Chip Shop

I am not sure who did this one but the idea of giving Putin a Pussy Riot style balaclava whist simultaneously referencing the conspiracy of Russian intervention in the US elections is clever. [Update 22 June: Heath Kane, hat tip to Subdude for letting us know]

Who Would Putin Vote For – Artist Unknown

Probably from the same “artist unknown” [update 22 Jun: seems unlikely], the rather wishy washy tory slogan “Strong and stable” is appropriated in condemnation of the UK arms industry.

artist unknown

A political wishlist expressed in the form of sequined skulls has been put up by Uberfubs, it would be great if they could all come true but this one in particular would be on my list.

Uberfubs

Many artists such as Subdude never stop expressing political views.   Paste up digs at Trump and Putin have given way over the past few weeks to a plethora of comments at the general political state of the country and specifically against Teresa May.

Subdude

Subdude seems to have gone a bit off message with this image (or maybe I am just missing the point) which has been modified in a Basquiat kind of style though as you scan down a polling slip looking for Jeremy’s name to put your tick against, try to get the surname spelt right.

Please vote wisely and safely

All photos Dave Stuart except “Theresa Who?” featured image by CodeFC