Tag Archives: street artist

Summer Is Here – Oops Maybe Not

Sitting at my keyboard, fresh in from a perma-drizzle that looks set for the day it is a little difficult to remember that London has had two” Summers” already this year. Twice, barely a fortnight apart, we enjoyed temperatures over 25 degrees and boy did the street artists love that! Lots of new street art has been appearing daily so here is a little update of some of the fresh street art that has caught our eye over the past fortnight. At the top of the page, Shok-1 produced another of his superb X-Ray images.

Ben Wilson aka Chewing Gum Man has been particularly prolific just recently in Shoreditch and he delighted me with the story behind the two characters featured in a new chewing gum pic outside the Bricklayers Arms. Two deliverymen, Lee and Bryan were hefting barrels up from the pub cellar, Ben had a chat with them and concluded, as recorded on the chewing gum, that Lee and Bryan should be paid more!

Shoreditch, London, Street art, Street artist, tour, Ben Wilson, Chewing Gum Man, Jean Peut etre, Jonesy, Howl Owl, Keef, JXC, Travel Mag

Lee and Bryan, Draymen, by Ben Wilson

Ben Wilson explains …

Not far away from that spot is another one of those chewing gum pics where Ben paints the view, no prizes for recognising Rivington Street:

Rivington St Chewing Gum Art by Ben Wilson

Rivington Street

Last week Jean Peut Etre caused much excitement when he was spied by a tour group collaging his pasted images and letterpress prints in several Shoreditch locations seeming always just a few moments ahead of the group.

Jean Peut Etre Collage

One of the greatest pleasures a fan of street art can enjoy is to discover an unexpected piece by a favourite artist and this came to pass the other day. Wandering around Shoreditch on a so-called day off, armed with a proper camera photographing loads of great street art the other day I spotted a fantastic new Jonesy I had not noticed before, an absolutely stunning cast bronze piece. The casting shows what appears to be a vulture nestling in a roundel of blasted twigs, themselves surreally mounted on the leg of a bird.

Jonesy

A subsequent peek on Jonesy’s facebook account revealed that this had actually been in situ since last September, a full 7 months ago. Just goes to show that even when your eye is constantly scanning high and low for new visual disruptions it is always possible to overlook the beauty hiding in plain sight on the streets. This next bronze casting, believed to be more recent was something I was specifically hunting for.

Jonesy

Howl Owl is a regular visitor to these shores and the cute little owls are packed with personality and get up to all kinds of mischief. A veritable parliament of owls came to roost in Shoreditch this week and this particular group set up a sub committee with a clowder of Keef’s cats on a stinky sewage pipe, looking like they contemplating setting off in a pea green boat.

Shoreditch, London, Street art, Street artist, tour,Howl Owl, Keef

Howl Owl and Keef collaboration

We mustn’t forget that some street art is done with permission, the weekend before last JXC painted this quality image of Judge Dredd taking out Mickey!

Mickey Mouse justice Judge Dredd style

Finally, it was lovely to receive a link to an article on the Travel Mag online where they select their 7 favourite walking tours in London and kindly featured Shoreditch Street Art Tours, we are honoured and thank them, check out the best in London here.

LINKS

Shok-1 Instagram

Jean Peut-Etre Instagram

Jonesy Facebook

Howl Owl Instagram

Sad Keef Instagram

JXC Instagram

all photos: Dave Stuart

Cartoonneros In London

A few weeks ago a fresh collection of stencilled portraits by Argentinian street artist Cartoonneros of the lead singer of Radiohead appeared in Shoreditch. The memorable thing about this collection was that in going over existing artwork by King Headswim, the underlying naïve expressionist portrait with its compelling blue eyes radiated through Cartnoonneros’ work in a way not visible to the naked eye.

Stencil, street art, street artist, Cartoonneros, Pure Evil, Pure Evil Gallery, Shoreditch, London

Thom Yorke by Cartoonneros over King Headswim

Around the corner were more multi coloured stencilled portraits, similarly executed over someone else’s existing artwork as opposed to a prepared background. The three characters depicted are the artist Keith Haring, David Bowie and the Pink Floyd musician Syd Barrett.

Keith Haring, David Bowie, Syd Barrett by Cartoonneros

A day later I had the pleasure of bumping into Cartoonneros on the streets whipping up some more stencils, this time the images included Vincent Van Gogh and Kate Moss.

Van Gogh by Cartoonneros

Kate Moss by Cartoonneros

Cartoonneros explained that he usually employed three stencilled layers in his street art but that he would often spray different colours in different parts of the stencil, meaning that a single layer could be used to render multiple colours. In this next photo you can actually see the three different stencil layers used for the Van Gogh portrait are in position and each card bears the spraypainted remnants of the various colours from previous uses of the stencil.

Van Gogh 3 layer stencil

Cartoonneros is also a sticker artist, several of his quite small stickers have been found lurking nearby.

Cartoonneros Sticker

Cartoonneros then nipped to Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin but the lure of Shoreditch was too great and he returned last night to co-host “Wordplay” with Pure Evil, an evening of art and music. The simple idea was all were welcome to spray stencilled words over a background pre- sprayed by Cartoonneros with a collection of multicoloured stencilled turtle and Keith Haring images.

Love Keith Haring

Evil Passion at The Pure Evil Gallery

The evening involved an overseas street artist previously virtually unknown on these shores exhibiting in the Pure Evil Gallery and creating beautiful mayhem on the streets, quintessential Pure Evil. A fuller description of the event is on the Graffoto blog.

LINKS:

Cartoonneros Instagram

Pure Evil Gallery website

King Headswim Instagram

All photos Dave Stuart

New Sweet Toof Street Art

Sweet Toof is an East London street art legend, the ubiquitous teeth and pink gums were all over London. Just before Christmas a new mural and several shutters painted by Sweet Toof appeared in Dalston, just up the road from Shoreditch.

These coincided with the opening of Sweet Toof’s first show in London for close to five years, a joint show with Swedish artist and graffiti writer Rolf Carl Werner, held at BSMT Gallery in Dalston.

Cut and Run Flyer courtesy BSMT Gallery

A full review of the show appears on sister blog Graffoto (same author!), including lots of historic photos of long lost Sweet Toof street art with a particular look at some of the many times he has collaborated on the streets with other artists.

The show runs until this Sunday (14^th January 2018), visiting the show could be the perfect complement to the Shoreditch Street Art Tour over the coming weekend.

All photos Dave Stuart except gallery flyer courtesy BSMT Gallery

Shoreditch: Full Of Characters

It’s not long since Jace last featured on the Shoreditch Street Art Tours blog but when a fresh crop of small faces has appeared this week we felt we had to share the news. We suspect there may be 7 new ones and today we came cross 6.

Jace has recently visited India and some of the characters have an undeniably Indian appearance.

One appears barely inches above an existing pair next to the “Stik tribute” on Princelet St.

Other fresh faces on the block in Shoreditch that we found (so far) include this lumpen faced trio:

The little collage at the top was inspired by a comment made by virginie.f24 on instagram yesterday, the top two rows are the 6 characters found today, the bottom row shows previous installations.

Much as the new army of faces are wonderful my favourite by dint of its site specific placement remains the pair next to Stik, as featured previously on the blog.

Never it it be said that Shoreditch lacks characters.

Link: J.Ace instagram

Stik Sticks Around

One of the most popular works of street art on the Shoreditch Street Art Tour is the couple holding hands by artist Stik from London. In fact this particular piece of street art proved generally so popular that in a survey it was identified as the UK’s 17^th favourite piece of art. And we don’t just mean street art, we mean all art.

Visiting artist Falko from South Africa was in the country a few weeks back and Falko added a tiny elephant to Stik’s iconic piece, quite a bold move for someone whose art we don’t recall seeing on these shores before. In an interview with Graffoto Stik generously described Falko’s intervention as a forced enhancement. Stik knows how the game plays with street art, nothing is sacred (no pun intended) so he hasn’t flounced down to Princelet St in a fit of pique to make good the additions, though it will happen eventually.

Street art, Shoreditch, London, Stik, Falko, Falko1, street artist, street art tour, guide, couple holding hands, brick lane, interracial harmony

Stik with Falko1

Falko’s addition provokes curious thoughts: is there a religious significance the elephant? Well an elephant would be considered Haram under Islamic principals so the elephant is not going to be eaten for sure, it must be some kind of pet elephant albeit a bloody small one. The simple leash Falko has added binds the elephant to the couple, without that it would just be a small elephant superimposed on a couple holding hands so the lead is very important. At the tip of the elephant’s trunk it looks like the elephant might be holding a marker pen, even pet elephants getting up on doors these days, though perhaps the elephant is colouring in the background to Stik’s work, in a way signalling to us that Falko did actually to the restoration work this time around. Clever that.

Falko1 Elephant

On my other blog I have written a sister to this piece which includes a look back at the original creation of the couple holding hands by Stik and it also looks at a lot of the other temporary changes made to the art piece since it was painted back in 2010.

Links:

Stik Website

Falko1 Instagram

Graffoto post

All photos: Dave Stuart

Trash Sculpture Wants To Break Free

This morning one of our favourite trash sculpture street artists Sell Out created a hugely amusing street art sculpture paying homage to rock legend Freddie Mercury, the late lead singer of Queen. In a classic rock video Freddie and fellow Queen band members appear in drag living in domestic drudgery with Freddie swanning around scandalously dressed in a tight pink top, short leather mini skirt and suspenders proclaiming “I want to break free” as she vacuums and dusts around their congested living room.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, Street artist, Freddie Mercury, Queen

Freddie Mercury: Screen Grab from official Queen video

Sell Out has recreated Freddie at his provocative cross dressing best complete with upright hoover. A swarm of his trademark cut out paper butterflies swarm around Freddie’s head.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, Street artist, Freddie Mercury, Queen, Trash sculpture, Alex Arnell, Sell Out

I Want To Break Free

This video scandalized America’s bible belt, radio stations deleted Queen from their playlists, MTV banned the video and it put Queen’s US commercial career on ice. Europe LOVED it.

The song appeared on Queen’s album The Works which Wikipedia says was released on 27 February 1984, 22 years ago almost to the day. Damn tune was going through my head for the rest of this morning’s tour.

This isn’t Sell Out’s only rock star tribute, a few weeks ago while the world made a shrine of a pointilist portrait in Brixton by Jimmy C, David Bowie appeared immortalised in trash by Sell Out in Shoreditch.

Photo: Alex Arnell

Links: Alex Arnell (Sell Out) Facebook: Alex’s photo shows the trash sculpture without the …errr..trash

ALex has featured many times on previous Shoreditch Street Art Tours blog updates, click here

Photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland except where noted

Small Perfectly Formed Street Art

A biblical downpour, ice cold hailstones and a hurricane 15 minutes before the start of this afternoon’s tour may have turned me on my bike into a mobile icicle but it didn’t deter a hardy group of tour guests.

We found a tiny piece of art on a wall, a mother, her child with some beautiful hand stitched embroidery acting as a shawl, the whole thing about 6 inches from top to bottom. It was beautiful, it is poignant and the artist is anonymous.

Shoreditch, Street Art, Street artist, unknown, paste up, hand stitched, embroidery, colourful, threads, mother, child

The placement of this work is intriguing, the juxtaposition against a pair of faded Betty Page images, part of a D7606 “post box” piece bring together two power images of the roles of women.

This next specimen, clearly from the same artist, photographed earlier this week a few hundred yards further up Brick Lane had already succumbed to light fingered art collectors!

Shoreditch, Street Art, Street artist, unknown, paste up, hand stitched, embroidery, colourful, threads, mother, child

Street art – it’s temporary and it’s not just about the large murals, the permissioned artwork and the international household name street artists.

A little “ps”, here is the D7606 mailbox photographed in its early days in June 2014, and yes, it is just a paste up, that’s not a real postbox.

Shoreditch, Street Art, Street artist, unknown, paste up,colourful, threads, mother, child, D7606, Betty page, Pop art

D7606, Jun 2014, feat Betty Page

All photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland

Caution Clet Abraham Overhead

A new haul of Clet Abraham traffic sign stickers has appeared overnight on Brick Lane. Clet Abraham is always a favourite on the street art tour with a number of his stickers dating from 2013 surviving. Clet Abraham’s stickers have appeared on previous visits in many parts of London including Shoreditch (of course), Soho, Putney and even that well known street art hotspot Belgravia.

This set of 8 stickers were all spotted close to the location of Moniker Art Fair, the urban art satellite fair taking place this weekend as part of London’s art week. I have seen only one of this set before in London, it’s always a delight to find a new clutch from this talented street artist.

Clet Abraham has work on the Graffik Gallery stand at Moniker Art Fair, details of which were mentioned in a blog post a couple of days ago.

Graffik Gallery have announced today what they curiously describe as an official party to take place at Graffik’s premises in Portobello Road on Saturday 17^th October, 7pm – 11pm. No prizes for guessing where Clet Abraham might be this evening adding his humorous intervention to traffic signs.

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Clet Abraham flashbacks;

London 2103

By The River, Putney 2013

Graffik Gallery,

284 Portobello Road, London W10 5TE

Moniker Art Fair

Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London E1 6QL

hasty “walk by” photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland