Tag Archives: Sculpture

Winter Lights 2020 Canary Wharf London

Dark nights and biting cold make classic ingredients for some light art so off to Winter Lights at Canary Wharf, selfie heaven in the form of 26 sculptures.

Affinity; Amigo and Amigo & S1T2Starting with our favourite, Constellation is part Dr Who theme tune vortex visual and part early 80s wire frame battlezone tank game. The white light projected into water vapour clouds is totally immersive, absorbing and nothing like as wet as it might sound.

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Constellation; Studio Joanie Lemercier

Pre visit consultation of the website suggested Absorbed By Light had compelling crowd “interaction” photograph potential but the crowds clustered around the bench means sharp elbows and abandoning your British reserve is essential, time and rumbling stomachs decreed we wouldn’t throw ourselves into that scrum. In a desperate attempt to contrive a street art reference, this installation channeled two great pieces of art by Banksy, the Mobile Lovers in Bristol and the bench with seagulls at Dismaland.

Constellation; Studio Joanie Lemercier

The Bra Tree fused the after effects of a Tom Jones gig in the park with a 1970s women’s lib rally, it probably looks much the same in daylight, the illuminations operate from 4pm to 10pm, as at night. All the bras are believed to be part of the artist’s original installation, evidence suggesting otherwise gratefully received. Perhaps a more imaginative name would have inspired some more enlightened thinking about explosion in a lingerie department.

The Bra Tree

Everyone can take fabulous photos at Winter Lights, the Mountain of Light is particularly photogenic.

Mountain of Light; Angus Muir Design

Shish-Ka-Buoy looks like a rather psychedelic sex toy and once that thought is planted in your mind you just can’t erase it.

Shish-Ka-Buoy; Angus Muir Design

Sasha Trees is one installation that involves quite a bit of a schlep from the main clusters and you’ve probably seen it already so even though it looks great if time is tight, this would be the one to drop

Sasha Trees; Adam Decolight

Sky on Earth is a genius proof of the “there’s a queue, better join it quick” herd instinct. The installation has subwoofer bass note throbs accompanying a bubble bath with intermittent light flickers, you can extract the impact, effect and visuals just as effectively from around the perimeter but everyone who didn’t have kids under the age of 10 politely queued 10 minutes for the privilege of walking down the channel in the middle.

Sky On Earth; UAII Studio

Light festival veterans in London will find a number of the installations quite familiar. I can’t think how many light festivals the Light benches have appeared in and some such as Liquid Sound and Bit.Fall looked identical to last year. Some were just downright underwhelming such as Seeds Of Life located in a shopping mall.

Squiggle; Angus Muir Design. So 2019.

Pools Of Light was also present last year and still looked like a 6th form disco light show fell into a ball pond. This was amusing to the resigned attempts of steward to prevent people throwing the balls around in the face of what looked like about a dozen American Football matches taking place on the same pitch.

Pools Of Light

It’s fun, it’s photogenic, it runs for a week until next Saturday 25th January and the forecast for this week is fortuitously dry. Arriving at Canary Wharf tube station drops you right into the action so getting there isn’t too problematic, so perhaps well worth considering Winter Lights for a free thing to do in January.

Mountain of Light; Angus Muir Design

Lactolight by Lactolight

Aquatics; Philipp Artus

Ditto; Ithaca Studio

Time and Tide; Paul and Pute

All photos Dave Stuart

See Winter Lights Website for more information

Three by Three

“Good Things Come In Threes” isn’t really a saying but it would be particularly apt for the recent sightings of mini street art sculptures by Three, also known as 3x3x3.

Shoreditch, Street Art, Tours, London, Three, 3x3x3, sculpture, street artist, Hong Kong, cast concrete

Three Up

One of the curious things about a piece of art by Three is that you spot one, then you don’t notice it the next twenty times you pass by and then it catches your eye again, at which point you wonder if it is a new one or one you had spotted before.

Threedom

After spotting a lovely new specimen in August Three confirmed that this was new and that he was back in the UK – Three is from Hong Kong; and that there were more to find. However, you just can’t go and hunt these tiny concrete accretions and expect to find them, try for yourself, you just drive yourself bonkers spotting small little things on walls and you trot over only to find it is just some random old bit of plastic or something, Three’s sculptures reveal themselves to you when they are ready or when you are sufficiently deserving.

Threeology

We have located three new ones so far, there are definitely more out there. One of the new ones photographed here has sadly already been harvested by a street art thief. C’est la vie.

Three degrees

Threeism

Links:

Graffoto Interview “To The power Of Three”

All photos: Dave Stuart

Jonesy Art: Two Heads Better Than One?

In the mind of an obsessive street art spotter things get little more exciting than the chance discovery of new art by Jonesy. Two new pieces have appeared recently which raise the bar for sculptural street art.

Shoreditch, London, street art, tours, Shoreditch street art tours, Jonesy, sculpture, castings, environmentalism, pesticides

Pesticides by Jonesy, Aug 2018

The first features a dragon fly pinned to a three headed character. The second has what appears to be a pair of Titan beetles, the largest insects in the world against a pair of faces.

Beetle detail – Pesticides

Both of the pieces are called Pesticides and both have multiple heads which represent the conflict inherent in our collective agri-industrial choices. Pesticides harm the environment and kill animals, they percolate up the food chain and accumulate in our bodies, yet without them we can’t produce enough food to feed our ballooning population.

Dragon fly detail – Pesticides

Having had the chance to ask Jonesy himself about the meaning of multiple headed creatures within his art it is interesting to revisit some older specimens starting with this classic Tar Sand Nightmare piece, Tar Sand oil production being the incredibly polluting, energy intensive, expensive and land destroying oil production favoured in Alberta, Canada and elsewhere.

Shoreditch, London, street art, tours, Shoreditch street art tours, Jonesy, sculpture, castings, environmentalism, pesticides, Tar Sand Oil

Sand Tar Oil by Jonesy 2012

That piece is phenomenally resilient. It lost its Native American/Aboriginal Canadian headdress, other artists occasionally paste over it yet it survives and recovers, outlasting the temporary indignities foisted upon it.

Sand Tar Oil by Jonesy (photo 2013)

Earlier this year a painting of a double headed creature smothered in toxic air pollution appeared in Shoreditch, the dilemma here being between the damning choice between petrol (CO2 pollution) and diesel (NOx) combustion.

Fossil Fuel CO2 v NOx, Jonesy, 2018

Back in 2014 this Genetically Modified Organism appears to be a kind of mutant Siamese twin.

Shoreditch, London, street art, tours, Shoreditch street art tours, Jonesy, sculpture, castings, environmentalism, GMO, Genetically Modified Organism

GMO by Jonesy, 2014

Links:

Jonesy Facebook

All photos: Dave Stuart

Small Faces In Great Places

A couple of months ago on another blog we wrote about the nation’s 17^th favourite piece of art, Stik’s couple on Princelet Street. Never static, there have been some developments, evolutions and surprises.

The first bit of news is that unsurprisingly (as Stik had told us when we interviewed him) the couple was restored to its pristine original condition when Stik painted over the elephant a couple of weeks ago.

Study that photo taken 2 weeks ago closely, on the right there is one small pottery face where several months ago there were two. The niqab wearing female next to Stik’s couple got lucky last Friday night and now has found a new partner!

The cautious and often well advised anonymity of street artists sometimes leads to prolonged searches for an artist’s identity and not always one that ends in success, as indeed was the case for me regarding the identity of the face maker. Last week when hunting for the source of a sticker we stumbled across the identity of the artist who makes the small faces, j.ace. Well done j.ace, we love your faces but putting up signed artworks three days after we found your identity – that’s very mischievous humour!

That sticker

More faces by j.ace

Link: j.ace instagram

all photos: Dave Stuart

Cityzen Kane “Portal” Making Of

On a balmy warm week in mid 2014 the Shoreditch Street Art Tour came across a complex permissioned street art installation by the street artist Cityzen Kane. Cityzen Kane has now put up a film of the making of “Portal”, the immensely popular sculptural piece.

The film captures the intensity and the amount of handcraft Cityzen Kane puts into his sculptures.

That week, Shoreditch Street Art Tours had the pleasure of being joined by the Vagabrothers from San Diego and they were able to do a quick interview with Cityzen Kane as he installed that piece, it comes up 2’40” into their Shoreditch Street Art video (look out for their subliminal appearance in Cityzen Kane’s video at 6.40) .

Cityzen Kane’s portal was put up as a tribute in memory of his son Joe who had taken his own life a year earlier. Given the tragic nature of its inspiration, it is perhaps poignant that from time to time the central figure actually cries in the rain:

London, Shoreditch, Cityzen Kane, Portal, sculpture, clay, video, making of

Portal – detail

Cityzen Kane’s personal message reads:

Help save young and vulnerable lives from the despair of depression, Shatter the stigma around suicide. Please support www.papyrus-uk.com or www.thecalmzone.net

June 2017 Update: CityZenKane’s Portal is no longer on that wall but in the spirit of his intent and message, I thought I would let you know about A Guide to UK-based Free Mental Health Helplines by Cassiobury Court.

Paul at Cassiobury Court writes that there are fourteen different helplines in the guide. He wrote the guide because many helplines of this nature exist, and people seeking out the services of these helplines may be confused by their sheer number. This guide helps to demystify these helplines so people can select the most appropriate one for their needs.

Other resources:

OK Rehab: For guidance and support for people experiencing problems with substance misuse and co-occurring mental health problems

Street Art Goes Over Our Heads

Street art should never go over our heads though great examples of street art are often literally looking down on us. Street art environmentalist and master craftsman Jonesy has been adding a few wonderful bronze castings on top of lampposts around Shoreditch.

Shoreditch, London, tour, walk, Street art, street artist, sculpture, sticker, bronze, casting, Jonesy

Jonesy bronze casting

Shoreditch, London, tour, walk, Street art, street artist, sculpture, sticker, bronze, casting, Jonesy, insect, Issac Cordal

Jonesy bronze casting

The first one I spotted by complete chance a couple of weeks ago caused me to spend some time wander about with my eyes cast upwards looking for more, which revealed other artists working over our heads!

Isaac Cordal

Issac Cordal – no idea how long it has taken me to notice this one

Paul Insect

Paul Insect – also getting up quite high

Finally, an older Jonesy specimen looking wonderful at night:

London, Shoreditch, Brick Lane, Night photography, street art, artists, graffiti

Jonesy – looking more sinister and ferocious than ever

All photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland

Finding Free Art

New art and free art made this day another exciting day for guests of Shoreditch Street Art Tours.

Three guests went home as proud owners of new art by Sean Worrall, left as”Free art” on the streets of Shoreditch. In case you don’t know, some street artists like to leave art which people can find and collect, usually there is a message written on the back inviting the finder to help themselves to the art which is deliberatelyremovable, not permanently attached to the wall.

Sean Worrall has a #365artdrops (opens in a new page) project to leave 365 pieces of Free Art on the street usually painted on materials found on the streets then returned to the streets. Guests have in the past found pieces of Sean’s work as reported HERE .

Shoreditch, London, Street art, found art, free art, Sean Worrall

Sunny likes #365artdrops

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This was day 2 of life on the street for an installation piece by street artist Sell Out. Sell Out’s image, a framed collage, reproduces the cockerel familiar to millions of us from breakfast cornflakes packets. Written in the frame is the repeated refrain “I hate cereal”. Sell Out is referencing the protest last Saturday night against gentrification in the area which resulted in the Cereal Killers café on Brick Lane being defaced with paint. You decide how you interpret Sell Out’s take on that event! Suffice to say, a number of Sell Out’s customary paper butterflies were flying out of the frame of the image, originally blu-tacked (is that a verb?) to the wall but this afternoon lying on the floor (photo below taken yesterday morning) and some guests helped themselves to those butterflies as Sell Out has always intended in the past.

Sell Out

Sell Out’s work has been featured a few times before on our blog here

The new art? An incredibly exciting discovery of new bronze castings by Jonesy!

Shoreditch, London, Street art, Jonesy, sculpture, bronze, casting

Jonesy’s Oroborus

All photos: Nolionsinengland

Shoreditch Street Art Face Off – Gregos is back!

French street artist Gregos was spotted back in Shoreditch this weekend in the company of Nemi UHU, the fish tile creator. This first came to our attention with the surprise finding of a fat faced portrait sculpture bursting through a wall on Brick Lane last Friday.

colourful grimace

Gregos first put his work up in London last February when he and a group of 10 other street artists, all friends of C215, came to London to launch “Vitry Ville Street Art: L’aventure continue”, a new book celebrating the art in C215’s home town. He put up 50 self portrait sculptures of varying sizes. There are seven basic portrait castings of Gregos’ own face in a variety of poses, each installation is decorated according to mood, location and whim.

The one we saw most of last year was rudely poking its tongue out at the English, that may have been just a happy accident from the French artist’s point of view as this sculpture was created in 2006 when Nicolas Sarkozy was President of France. Gregos was most definitely not a supporter and the rude tongue portrait was designed as a message and personal insult from Gregos to Sarkozy.

Oi, Sarkozy!

Gregos’ ambition is to put up another 50 sculptures on this visit so there should be plenty of sculpture spotting opportunities around Shoreditch and Camden where he has been know to visit so far. On Sunday, Gregos installed and painted a new sculpture in Shoreditch providing passersby with a grand spectator sport. Even a cruise-by from the police didn’t stop him.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, tours, tour, walk, Street artist, Gregos, Nemi UHU, French , sculpture, portrait, face

‘scuze me, has anyone seen Gregos?

Ducks and Superheroes Street Art from Sell Out

The London street artist Sell Out was very busy in Shoreditch on Saturday morning and the Shoreditch Street Art Tour found a variety of his work at various locations.

This fountain on Brick Lane has been used as a scene for a number of Sell Out installations, this time a Sell Out Duck floated around while butterflies skirted around its head. There was something about this duck’s stare…..not the kind of duck that hangs around nurseries, kids baths or fairy tale illustrations!

London, Shoreditch, street art, street artist, Sell Out, superheroes, sculpture, Spiderman, Batman, butterflies, tour, tours, walk, walks

Duck

Then we found Spiderman scaling this sheer brick wall, the lattice detail was stenciled by Mexican duo Lapiztola but in the close up of Sell Out’s Spiderman, it takes on the appearance of a web.

London, Shoreditch, street art, street artist, Sell Out, superheroes, sculpture, Spiderman, Batman, butterflies, tour, tours, walk, walks

Spiderman

We also found Batman who seemed to be helping the citizens of Shoreditch by handing out Sell Out’s butterflies.

Batman

Finally, a huge flock of hand painted butterflies stuck on with blu-tack invited people to find the butterfly with their name as a souvenir of the Shoreditch street art, the effect was a bit like those tourist shops where you buy personalised gifts with individual names but of course with Sell Out’s particular spin on artists using street art to promote their art sales, he actually wants people to find their name and keep the butterfly. There were several dedicated to Dave 😉

name butterflies

Sell Out website

All photos: NoLionsInEngland