Tag Archives: Street Art

Spot The Difference! Competition Time

The third London International Pasteup Festival team tactically arranged the new art submitted for the festival around existing art. Some of that existing art was well weathered from LIPF2, the second London International Pasteup Festival.

Read all abaht LIPF3 HERE, then enter the competition.

Prize: A voucher for the Shoreditch Street Art Tour for up to 4 humans

Composite image of the front of the former Seven Stars pub on Brick Lane comparing the appearance on two dates about a year apart

Seven Stars, Brick Lane LIPF 2023 vs LIPF 2022

All you have to do is compare the London International Pasteup Festival 2023 v. 2022 images above and count how many different paste ups survived the 11 month and 6 days between LIPF2 and LIPF3. While you’re at it, write down the names of as many of the artists whose worked survived from LIPF2 to LIPF 3 as you can. Then:

sign up to the Shoreditch Street Art Tours newsletter on the tour website
go to our Instagram, comment on this picture and shout out at least one friend
email your count and your list of those enduring artists you identify to our email

SAME SIZE PRINT:

Competition closes midnight 24^th December 2023

Please do not ask for a higher resolution version of this image a rude reply definitely offends

multiples including colour variants of the same piece of art only count as 1

The winner will be the person who meets conditions 1, 2 and 3 above and gets closest to the number of surviving pieces of art the judges count.

In the event of a tie on estimates of the number of surviving pieces, the entry correctly identifying the most artists of enduring art pieces will be the winner.

If that does not produce a clear winner the winner will be determined by a draw.

The judges’ decision is final

Voucher valid for one public Shoreditch Street Art Tour for up to four adults or mix of adults and juniors

Voucher will expire on 31 December 2024 or date of booked tour, whichever is earlier

Winner may change a booking subject to more than 48 hours notice.

no cash alternative.

no entries by tour guides or the LIPF organisation (including paste up team) will be counted

Space Invader Flashing and Flashed

Space Invader last strengthened his invasion of London in 2016 and from a peak of 150 the number of Invaders stationed in London has slowly diminished. Some have been kidnapped and a number of those have been held to ransom on Planet Ebay. Some went dark, contact lost as they simply disappeared. Some deteriorated and decayed with time. The lucky few however returned to their sentry posts restored, refreshed, reinvigorated and reactivated by Space Rescue International. They prefer “Reactivation.”

Space Invader LDN_133 mosaic street art vigilant at Elephant and Castle

Space Invader LDN_133 Reactivated – see also top image

News of recent reactivations prompted a bike ride this morning to wildernesses south of the river where a number have resumed their stealthy monitoring activities.

mosaic space invader street art near waterloo London

Space Invader LDN_84, grumpy so-and-so

LDN_84, perhaps not happy being south of the river

Space Invader LDN_134 mosaic street art through the bushes close up

Space Invader LDN_134 stealthily observes London

Space Invader LDN_133 scrutinises alien craft

Space Invader LDN_131 mosaic street art near Kennington

Space Invader LDN_131 eternally lurking

Space Invader LDN_131 going nowhere

The most far flung was way out in Brixton, its remote location prompted an invader health check with one of the supreme reconnaissance group on the leader board of Invader’s smartphone game “Flash Invader”. This guru advised that LDN_42 had actually been sighted and recently cleaned by another Master of the High Score screen, Mr Steam and as a result, the signal was strong.

Space Invader LDN_42, old school Brixton resident

It’s not about the stats or the ego of soaring up the high score chart but five invader’s inspected, 100 points scored and a huge 678 place rise smashing into the top 40,000 on the leader board made this a very productive hour! It took my flashed London Invaders into treble figures, 101 of 150 mosaics flashed, this is the kind of stats fetish that satisfies the inner nerd.

screengrab Space Invader Flash Invader game high scores

Lost in Space (but getting higher)

LINKS

Read more about the work of the Reactivation Team in our 2016 interview with this highly secretive group of space operatives here.

Space Invader

Reactivation Team

All photos copyright Dave Stuart

London International Pasteup Festival 2023

The 3^rd edition of the London International Pasteup Festival was a magnificent, colourful, creative and chaotic success. Following an open call art came from all over the world including Australia, New Zealand, Italy, France, Germany, Norway, USA, Jordan, Greece, Uruguay and Preston to name just a few places that aren’t London.

The art included every imaginable format capable of being pasted up with the LIPF special blend of wallpaper paste and PVA.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Pasteup Street art on wall on Brick Lane for the London International Pasteup Festival 2023

Soandso PDX, with Vegan Flava (Swe) and others

ACAC All Cops Are Clowns stencil street art pasted up as paste of London International Pasteup Festival 2023

All Cops Are Clowns says Yo Pecador, spraypaint, single layer stencil on party tablecloth paper

In several spots the pasteup crew met with “Concern” from property owners, which kind of adds to the fun. At Fashion Street occupants praised the art, saying they were always delighted when the art on their walls changed.

Fashion Street London before the London International Pasteup Festival updated the street art

Fashion Street Before LIPF3 – including survivors Mowcka, Toastoro, RX Skulls, Quint, Neon Savage

Fashion Street London after the London International Pasteup Festival refreshed the street art

Fashion Street After LIPF3. So and So PDX, Zelda Bomba, Doodlher, Wrdsmth, UltramarineDream, Emzo, Sincanvas, Planet Selfie, Catscult, Paddywaggon, Oddo, Jola, Jace, D7606, Coloquix, Diva Dog LA, Number Six Prints, Amore, Art Tits

Check out a short clip of the pasteup team in action on a few of the walls here on the Shoreditch Street Art Tours Instagram

Eight locations benefitted from comprehensive LIPF3 makeovers and several of the LIPF2 locations received minor tarting up.

Fashion St London pasteup street art for the 3rd London International Pasteup Festival

Fashion St, the big picture

Blackall Street London pasteup street art for the 3rd London International Pasteup Festival

One part of Blackall Street: Yo Pecador, RX Skulls (2022), Vegan Flava, Easyone, Orrible (pre festival), The Ass Cream, Did by Rua, Slow Shrug, My Pen Leaks, Jane and Rik, Pixelpunk, Mnky, Doodlher, Paddywaggon, Blackligma

Puma Court detail: Katrine Beth Reigstad, Koko Bayer, Toastoro, Apparan, Goldloxe, Nudehead, PInk Boneyard, Neftnik, RX Skulls. Voxx Romana

Buxton St London pasteup street art for the 3rd London International Pasteup Festival

Buxton St: feat. Yo Pecador, Pmntowl, Jola, My Pen Leaks, Sincanvas, d7606, Visionox, Mort art, Subdude, Wrdsmth, tweet_streetart, tanzt_die_orange, Lidia Lidia, number six prints

Pasteup Street art on wall on Seven Stars yard, Brick Lane for the London International Pasteup Festival 2023

Seven Stars Yard fragment (see top image for full wall): Tweet_street art, TV Head ATX, Toastoro, Scrapyard Specs, Mkny, Jace, Did by Rua, D7606, Banga Street Art, Perishable Rush, blackligma; also David Guest, Brocolli Man, Raddington Falls

Grimsby St London pasteup street art for the 3rd London International Pasteup Festival

Grimsby St, the big picture

Small portion of Grimsby St walls: Apparan, Creative-Electric, Subdude, Raf Urban, Diva Dog LA, Bento Ghoul, Streetvulven, Visionox, Jace, Wrdsmth, Tripsandpieces, Jace, Briliant_gr, Jola, Lidia Lidia, Homo Riot

Calvin St London pasteup street art for the 3rd London International Pasteup Festival

Calvin St: City Kitty, Greatboxers, Green Taxonomy, Nasty, Briliant_Gr, D7606, The Artful Fro, Mowcka, Lidia Lidia, Eduard Dinic, Toastoro, Fra Quendo, Pre LIPF: Darkevil Arts,Neon Savage, Boxitrixi, Donk, Corrosive8

It took a revolving gang of paste flingers led by the artists and principal organisers Apparan and Subdude 4 long days of action to paste up the art prior to the festival.

several Street artists adding art to a wall on Brick Lane for the London International Pasteup Festival 2023

sunny days pasting art at Grimsby Street

The festival included fundraising, a paste up workshop run by the legend Mowcka and a pop up art shop at the notorious and popular Monty’s on Brick Lane.

People making art for the London International Pasteup Festival Pasteup Workshop

LIPF3 Pasteup Workshop . Photo: Apparan

LIPF3 marked a further development in the organiser’s approach to arranging the walls. In 2021 LIPF1 (review here) involved placing the art on walls with permission and in several locations the art was pasted onto vinyl tarpaulins which were tied to permission walls. LIPF2 (review here) in 2022 saw the team focus on pasteup halls of fame with tacit approval or tolerance, except one location where an occupant took extreme umbrage with the pasters and a cake slice to the walls. The absence of permission and the placement on existing pasteups gave the display a more authentic feel, something closer to the true spirit of pasteup street art.

This time, LIPF3, the team extended the number of walls decorated and worked around and with existing pasteup art, retaining large amounts of art already on the wall so that a spectrum of paper art from different stages of the street art life span could be seen. This meant that rather than a uniform brand new appearance of art all the same age, there was rips, textures and elements of the natural aging process present.

Seven Stars Yard

The pasteup team take great pains to try to avoid the walls looking like formal gallery hang arrangements, Uberfubs contributed significantly to the overall aesthetic adding her colourful circles to break up the depressing tyranny of the long straight edge.

Colourful circles by Uberfubs connect and break up art by many street artists at The London International Pasteup Festival

Uberfubs between Doodhler, ODDO, Fra Quendo, Jola, D7606, Toastoro, Nasty, Tweet_streetart, Katsukai Collective, Subdude, DaddyStreetFox

The paste up crew didn’t just retain existing art, they even repaired some beautiful pieces that were on the verge of giving up the ghost. No charge 😉

The next video is a homage to the London International Pasteup festival featuring close to 70 shots of the art displayed on a number of the walls around Shoreditch.

London International Pasteup Festival was held on the weekend of 16th and 17th of September. The display survives but diminishes over time as new art goes over old.

The London International Pasteup Festival are congratulated on doing such a fabulous job at keeping this often overlooked and dismissed element of street art culture alive and relevant, as well as producing a wonderful update to a large number of walls around Shoreditch (and beyond through related projects)

As is the case with all street art except murals, participants in LIPF3 were not required to identify as artists, anyone could send in paper art and that could be you next time! Follow the London International Pasteup Festival for future news of further opportunities to join in the fun.

Click for LIPF3 Locations Map

London International Pasteup Festival Instagram

All Photos: Dave Stuart except workshop photos courtesy Apparan

Street artist Brickflats Interview

“Foreigners own £55bm of London homes as buying spree set to climb” was the somewhat xenophobic headline in last night’s Evening Standard. The real issue is that demand continues to exceed supply, politicians setting newbuild target but fail to walk the walk and for every homeless person in the UK there are multiple empty residential properties. These circumstances spark the explosive property rental market which sees the lifeblood of the metropolis living in stupidly expensive boxes with long commutes to work and ridiculous proportions of disposal income sinking into accommodation costs. So what’s this to do with Brickflats?

Brickflats

In 2021 I stumbled literally on the art of Brickflats embedded in a Shoreditch pavement. It was original, unique and as I discovered it was expressing social concern regarding London’s housing situation. Brickflats talks in this interview about his background as a creative, the concept behind his wall interventions and a fascinating insight into his process and installation techniques.

Film by Dave Stuart

Brickflats instagram (includes locations map)

Manchester Street Art

A couple of weeks ago I made a trip to Manchester to explore that city’s street art. Manchester has great architecture, a distinct exciting personality adn plenty of locations where stencils, stickers, paste ups and graffiti flourishes. There are also some impressive murals.

This next gallery is a sample of the roughly 800 photographs taken over a 2 day exploration.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Space Invader aficionados will doubtless be aware of the Manchester invasion that took place in 2004, 47 street mosaics were left lurking and without too much effort 31 of them were located and dutifully “flashed”.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

These are just a small number of the photographic highlights, this is a SHOREDITCH blog after all!! The full write up can be found on the Graffoto blog.

All photos Dave Stuart

Beyond The Streets Exclusive Intervew

Beyond The Streets, a huge public exhibition dedicated to the history of graffiti, street art and related cultures related has arrived in London after previously showing in New York and LA.

The exhibition is epic in scale and wide ranging in content and features art and installations from many household names from the urban art realm. Yesterday, the day before the official opening to the public, we manage to put together a taster video and we grabbed an exclusive moment with the curator Roger Gastman, if you have seen Banksy’s Exit Through The gift Shop he was the Zvengali saviour parachuted in by Banksy to wave his “make-shit-happen” wand over the chaos of Mr Brainwash’s LA debut show.

One burning question is why no Banksy? The elephant is not in the room. Yet. We have a sneaky feeling that these guys could still have something up their sleeve.

Our full review will follow eventually, there’s no rush!

Beyond The Streets

“Beyond The Streets”

Feb 17th – May 9th

Saatchi Gallery, Duke Of Yorks HQ, King’s Road, London SW3 4RY

Street Artist Cartoonneros Surviving England On Ten Pounds

Argentinian stencil artist Cartoonneros is in town again, this is hard to miss if you are paying attention in Shoreditch.

image of Cartoonneros street art to illustrate how it relates to his art in his exhibition at Pure Evil Gallery in Jan 2023

Kurt Cobain, Jean Michel Basquiat by Cartoonneros, also feat Tizer

Frida Kahlo and Van Gogh portraits by Cartoonneros

A few days ago I had the honour of visiting a posh west end gallery (private, appointment only!) with Cartoonneros and after that visit, rather than go for a coffee as I had anticipated, our stencil hero said “stick with me, I got something to do in Piccadilly”. So, trying not to cramp his style, I followed at a discreet distance and captured a few additions to the chaos and colour that surrounds Anteros and he/him/his errant arrow. Enjoy the vid, sorry about the sound.

Most importantly, Cartoonneros has his third show at The Pure Evil Gallery with an opening event this Thursday. No excuses.

Kurt Cobain by Cartoonneros; also 2Rise

Frida Kahlo and Van Gogh portraits by Cartoonneros

Cartoonneros putting Putin in the bin

Mona Lisa street stencil reproductions by Cartoonneros

Esto ne es un stencil (except when its in Piccadilly)

Cartoonneros: “Surviving England On Ten Pounds”

Thursday 26th Jan 2023, 6-9pm

Pure Evil Gallery

98 Leonard Street,

Shoreditch

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.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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.