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Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021

Well done 2021 for having the audacity to follow a totally weird year with an equally weird year, way to go!  Although life was not “business as usual” the year did yield some wonderful street art with unexpected and inspired new forms of creativity and a re-evaluation of the significance of paste-ups.  We are delighted once again to share some of the best Shoreditch street art 2021 and we are talking 4 real, none of that “curated from the internet” most writers serve up.  For once there is even a couple of “straight in at number 1” personal favourites moments, the risk being that the day after posting I will change my mind for different number 1 favourite.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Fanakapan anamorphism

So, how did the global pandemic continue to affect street art in 2021?  Most obviously the number of street artists from foreign shores who came to visit London was almost none.  So it was a great pleasure to welcome Stinkfish from Columbia, a regular visitor last spotted around these parts in 2017.  A significant number of his favella child paste-ups appeared but this mural really showcased those graffiti based spraycan skills.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Stinkfish with Fat Cap Sprays

The main opportunities to see overseas artists in Shoreditch came through paste-up art exchanged by overseas mail between artists then pasted up in reciprocal “you here, me there” arrangements.   NY artist City Kitty was quite visible in Shoreditch this year and he is what I describe as a “collaboration machine”.  It was a real delight to find this basketball playing City Kitty collaboration with New York sticker legend Chris RWK aka Robots Will Kill, and just a couple of inches tall.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

RWK City Kitty collab

Neon Savage neatly swerved the lack of locked down screenprinting facilities by improvising a hand finished screenprinting effect using images inkjet printed onto marker pen coloured paper earlier in the year.   Then right on the very last weekend before we descended into an unofficial lockdown-for-all-purposes-except-opening-Treasury-coffers, Neon Savage papered Brick Lane with gorgeous halftone acrylic and screenprinted pasteups.  Printing of this quality and beauty is the kind of cultural treasure street art delivers to those who seek.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Neon Savage

Fat Cap Sprays channels neon in a different way with super cute renderings of popular cartoon characters, popular depending upon which cartoon character era you grew up in of course, I am still waiting for him to do Marine Boy!  Fat Cap Sprays made a big impact in 2021, the growth of his social media following (stay off tik tok folks!) contains a message I am sure about the link between street art and “success”.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Fat Cap Sprays

David Speed continued to hammer out his phenomenal pink neon eye candy portraits.  There is a point at which cats in street art play the cute card a bit too readily but in this case David claimed a spot perfectly framed in the bus stop glass, nice use of street architecture.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

David Speed vs bus shelter

Artistic spats conducted on walls are a constant delight but when David spotted a paid for spraypainted advert in his signature neon pink he really took it out in style, nice one!

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Ed Sheeran advert

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

David Speed vs Ed Sheeran

Although Enigma is not new to our streets, this Japanese artist only came to my attention after his post lockdown return from Japan upon which he embarked on a prodigious outpouring of stunning murals styled as old school woodcuts.  Almost as remarkable as his street art are his garms when painting, smartly attired in a beige raincoat he looks nothing like the stereotypical street artist you might imagine.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Enigma

Dramatic light and shade and classical imagery came to London’s street art through the work of talented painter Alessandro Ioviero.  The Southbank Undercroft location has hosted several Ioviero works, my favourite being this beautiful painting of a contemporary bronze statue by young Ukrainian artist Maksym Haydar.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Alessandro Loviero

Alessandro often finds inspiration in the work of others, often sculptors, which moves him to provide his own painterly interpretation.    A curious dynamic occurred when Ioviero painted a detail of the Alexandre Cabanel’s Fallen Angel in response to Enigma’s rendition of a slightly larger detail just one week earlier on the same wall.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Fallen Angel by Alessandro Ioviero

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Fallen Angel by Enigma

There is a lot to be said for anonymity as a contrast to the self-promotion which seems often to trump actual art as a street art motive.   In the first part of the year reports came in from all over town about strange single line characters with half formed sentence morsels suggesting clues to the character’s mental state.   Street artists and geeks alike were intrigued by the identity of the artist, questions asked went un-answered.   I may have been much later than many smarter people but I only pierced the Why Reuben veil in November when some clues appeared drawing attention to the artist’s part in a group show.  Self-promotion wins every time!

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Why Reuben

If potty sums up your taste in humour then “I farted in yoga” is guaranteed to bring a smile to your face and is seemingly an alias used by Why Reuben.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Why Reuben/I Farted In Yoga

Ahead of the London International Paste-up Festival I did not anticipate quite what a successful event it would be and my reservations weren’t just concerned with the awkward status battle in the first half of the title. The open call event in early November brought art from all over the world and a lot from artists not seen before in Shoreditch.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Various artists London International Pasteup Festival

Rather than an “Oh wow” at any particular pieces of art my main take-away was a reminder and re-appraisal of the impact paste-ups had in the formative years of street art supporting the emergence of street artists from a non graffiti background with a preference for quicker means of getting up and less beholden to the spraycan, unlike those with a graffiti background who generally preferred stencils.  Full write up HERE.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Various artists London International Pasteup Festival

Someone else who doesn’t need to be anymore brilliant than he already is is ALO, he had a prolific year on the streets crowned of course by a major solo show at the Saatchi Gallery at the year end.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

ALO

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

ALO, feat his good friend Dmintn

The pandemic lockdowns really gave Airborne Mark an opportunity to ramp up his multi-angle multimedia painting and video game.  Most people’s videos are a kind of “ooooooooohhh, look at me and my skills” whereas Airborne Mark’s premise is “This is an experiment and I don’t quite know if it’s going to work”, his videos are like art painting tutorials.  This year’s master spraypainting output included a number of signature origami creatures places on beautifully rendered strips of torn cardboard.   It is well work tracking down the video of him explaining the complexities of painting something as mundane as a torn piece of cardboard and his video of his second attempt to paint origami birds inside a glass jar is genius.  And having seen Mark paint quite a few times the videos are all the more impressive when you realise that its him on his lonesome doing the video, the commentary and the painting, not a video team in sight.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Airborne Mark work in progress

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Airborne Mark, Frog

Dan Kitchener’s Bladerunner-esque rainy Tokyo night scenes morphed recently into an impressionist view of the same through a rain drenched window.  On a small screen such as the one you are using right now, the eyeball resolves more clearly details like the cars in the image, there is no real substitute for seeing a painting like this in the flesh to appreciate its true life beauty.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Dan Kitchener

Wrdsmth, the vowel eschewing scriptwriter, took the dramatic step of moving to London after years of charming us with his mixed media typewriter life affirming mottos on his frequent visits from Hollywood.    Quickly settling into a highly creative run Wrdsmth demonstrated an expanded repertoire including a clever site specific piece as one of several contributions to the London International Paste-up Festival.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Wrdsmth

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Wrdsmth (detail from above)

Covid didn’t feature as much in London’s street art in 2021 but Dr D still points the finger at the Coronavirus for being such a buzzkill.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Dr D

Dr D is always going to bring political satire onto the streets, his conversion of a van into a prison transport van for the conservatives was bang on point for the shit show that developed around the UK’s Prime Minister.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Dr D

We celebrate the innovative, the novel and the inventive and something which ticked multiple such boxes at the end of the year were Perspex living apartments set into walls with missing bricks by Brickflats.  The purpose is to highlight how the outrageous cost of renting in London forces people to cram themselves into tiny boxes by squeezing modern looking perspex flats which take advantage of missing bricks in walls.   Assisted by a fragment of a map I went on a good old fashioned street art treasure hunt and found that all his brickflats were still in situ, a testament to the solidity of their novel installation.   The second installation below is actually a replacement of a missing cobble so you are looking into the flat from above.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Brickflats

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Brickflats

Perspicere also brought a totally different dimension to street art fusing string art with paste-ups in a way that so photorealistic it left you searching for the trick.  Having seen Perspicere creating one live for a street jam I am willing to take an oath and state there is no artifice, the image is created entirely from the intersections of the threads, of which there is north of several miles.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Perspicere

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Perspicere

In many conversations with old school graffiti heads the name Nylon comes up frequently as both a style innovator and a hardcore spot seeker.   New Nylon art is always a blessing and the way each vase can be appear as a pair of tribal faces or as a single cubist face staring us out was particularly clever.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Nylon

A Shoreditch street art year lacks vintage without Ace pasting up some exercises in screen printed iconography.  It’s not just that his art really triggers the right retina receptors, it the sense of continuity that Ace represents, linking the current new wave of paste up artists back to the fumbling fathers of street art which is where Ace come from.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

ACE

Ed Hicks’ tense, doom laden images channelled Victorian apocalypse painters.  This 4 panel landscape is perhaps my single highlight of 2021, you have to pinch yourself to remember that this is done with spraypaint.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Ed Hicks

Remaining with the painterly theme, Only HMZ not only blurred the boundaries between street art and graffiti with his gothic masterpiece fills within his letters, he went on to do crazy panel installations which in the case of the one presented below is mind-blowing for being, I believe, installed without permission.  The first work in progress photo illustrates Only’s letter form.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Only

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Only

There is a further conceptual dimension associated with this installation not apparent in this photo, the trio of lights at the top were solar powered and by some means also people sensing, at night as people walked under the lights each one wold light up in turn from left to right or right to left according to the direction the passer-by was taking.  Perhaps next time it will play a tune!

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Only

An artist who has had a sensational year was Pablo Fiasco.  Pablo sets the bar for stencil art in terms of technical complexity of technique and the art embodied in his concepts and ideas.  Bearing in mind that one of the key attributes of a stencil is speedy repeatability, PF reuses components from a library of stencils assembled over the decades in different combinations yielding completely different images.   Subjects broached in 2021 included rapper tributes, Brexit and a skateboarding ex Federal Reserve Chairman but this Mute8 stencil is the piece de resistance, I don’t recall every seeing stencilism of such complexity before.  The narrative starts top right and broadly speaking turns anti-clockwise.  In a laboratory a subject is to receive a vaccination, the subject mutates, escapes then there is a chase which concludes underwater.  Pablo was quite categorical that this theme of scientific mutation has been in his art for several years and it wasn’t his intention that this necessarily be read as a comment on covid vaccination.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Pablo Fiasco – Mute 8

With unauthorised exhibitions opening all over the globe and people taking advantage (I guess) of copyright loopholes to mint NFTs based on Banksy’s art it is easy to overlook that Banksy pulled off his best wave of actual street art since he did New York for 30 days in October 2013.   East Anglia is just sufficiently close to London to be day trip viable so despite fairly poor location descriptions I was delighted to be able to locate 8 out of 10 new original and authenticated Banksy street pieces in August.   At that time, even before Banksy’s authentication, it was not known that there were actually 10 pieces in the campaign.   Since then they have suffered various indignities including being partially dismantled (3 kids in a boat), covered in perspex, buffed, added to or most unforgivably in the case of both “under the paving stone” and the Banksy tagged model stable, acquired for profitable so-called protection by the usual avaricious gallery owner.   Although lacking any mind-blowing “bar just got set even higher” pieces, the collection displayed characteristic Banksy wit and audacity.

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Banksy

On the whole most of the pieces were looking quite photogenic at the time of my visit and I somehow charmed the Model Village owners to allowing exclusive behind the scenes access to photograph the stable

Best Shoreditch Street Art 2021 review

Banksy

So 2021, to call you a year is perhaps generous but what you lacked in meaningful real world calendar months you compensated for with brilliant art.  Many thanks to all street artists who have provided so much pleasure in their artistic endeavours and we look forward to plenty of new and exciting art in 2022.

All photos: Dave Stuart

 


Paste-Up Street Art Festival in London 2021

The history of street art is a complex story whose content varies depending upon author, location, editorial preferences for a “creation” date and people’s differing actual lived experiences.  Its ripping away from graffiti was for many reasons dominated in the early phase by stencilism, the significant role of the paste-up technique is easily overlooked.  Perhaps the London International Paste-Up Festival has addressed that.

lots of paste-up street art pieces by artists who participated in the London International Paste-up Festival in Shoreditch

LIPF paste-ups

LIPF was held over the first weekend in November and featured art on paper by 100s of artists who responded to an open call by the organisers and here is a hat tip to Outside The Zone (Trix Mendez) and Art House Project London (Apparan).  I had the pleasure of kind of winding up proceedings by leading a street art tour around the spots.  This gave me the unexpected joy of meeting some street artists whose work I have loved for many years for the first time as well as renewing acquaintances with familiar artists and friends, I learnt more from the experience than anyone.

Street Art Tour group led by David Stuart, tour guide with Shoreditch Street Art Tours posing in front of London International Paste-up Festival spot

Artist rich group on the London International Paste-Up Festival free tour led by our guide Dave. Features artists Meandblue, DaddyStreetFox, Subdude, FaceTheStrange, SweetheartStreetArt, Mypenleaks, Wrdsmth, Deko,

One reason why paste-ups were so significant was newcomers to street art who were not coming from a graffiti background were not going to spend hours creating, perfecting and refining a spraypainted piece of art under risky illegal circumstance, their art would be prepared at home, in the studio or at school and then pasted up in seconds. The paste-up was the ultimate in risk avoidance yet participants still experienced that buzz, the thrill of being a little bit naughty in a relatively harmless way.

An uncurated street art wall with massive collection of street art paste-ps by artists from London and abroad

Wild paste-up wall in Shoreditch

More than other forms of street art paste-ups have an ability to acquire a history, to evolve. There is a joy in the aging of paper, the savagery of rips and tears, the marker pen additions from passers-by, the possibility that meaning is changed by clever juxtaposition of another piece of art. Some artists regard their art as having an independent life on the walls and indeed even photograph their paste-up to rejoice in those changes.

Paste-up Stree tart showing pop art coloured multiple British phone boxes with Kurt Cobain from Nirvana playing guitar inside

D7606 Kurt Cobain in the wild

Kurt Cobain plays in 3 pop art coloured phone boxes by street artist D7606 at London International Paste-up Festival

D7606 at LIPF

The LIPF art was pasted up in Shoreditch over the preceding couple of weekends by a coalition of willing and experienced locally street artists.  One of the kind of predictable and I argue welcome consequences of this early installation was other artists subsequently adding their creativity in and around the LIPF displays.

paste-up installation by street artist Shuby for London International paste-up Festival

Corrosive8 vs Eartha Kitt Catwoman by Shuby

Creativity is a word that means different things to different people, beauty being in the eye of the beholder and all that.  Here we see WRDSTH explaining how his Winona Forever paste-up was “edited” by artist unknown and subsequently restored by him and he gave a wonderful articulation of his rationale for doing so.  For the benefit of readers and those who heard WRDSMTH’s anecdote first-hand, the second picture below shows the redacted artwork.

street artist WRDSMTH presents his paste-up art to a tour group led by Dave Stuart, Shoreditch Street Art Tours

WRDSMTH presents his art to #LIPF

Modified subverted paste-up street art by Wrdsmth, augmented by artist unknown

Subverted WRDSMTH paste-up

The festival locations facilitated several different presentation styles for the paste up.  Two spots highlighted individual artists, Yu_wallart and JD Montaigne in an installation format, reminiscent perhaps of something by Ludo or early Camille Walala when walls were less cluttered!  It would be rare these days to see single stand-alone paste ups like this but hey, organisers gotta make use of the spots they have available!

paste-up installation by street artist Yu-wallart for London International paste-up Festival

Yu_Wallart

Street artist J D Montaigne installation seen on the street art tour led by tour guide Dave Stuart

J D Montaigne installation

In four other spots the team had created massive banners of art pasted onto vinyl which was then tied to what in any other circumstance would be advertising frames.  The first one featured below serendipitously referenced the world’s most prolific paste-up artist.  Its placement and elevation high up the wall precisely matched a Lenin paste-up placed illegally by Shephard Fairey in 2007.

paste-up installation featuring many street artists for London International paste-up Festival

LIPF Paste-up banner, Bateman’s Row

Old photo of a Shepard Fairey paste up in Shoreditch in 2007 with a later Chris Stain paste-up from 2008

Shepard Fairy 2007, Chris Stain 2008 below

The two Old Street banners had to be taken down on Sunday evening but the others on Dereham Place and Bateman’s Row (above) could last a few more weeks.

Banner of pate-up street art by international collection of street artists in Old Street Shoreditch

Paste-Up Banners on Old Street Shoreditch

The Paste-up sppot on Derehman Place with lots of paste-up street art pieces by artists who participated in the London International Paste-up Festival in Shoreditch

LIPF Dereham Place paste-up spot

The location the artists referred to as “The Beast” became my favourite as it offered the closest approximation to the layering and direct application of art to the wall that we see in the wild.

the wall the London International Paste-up Festival crew called The Beast

The Beast wall

Collaboration is a wonderful aspect of most forms of street art and one beautiful collaboration that emerged in the festival was between Donk and Uberfubs.   Donk pasted-up his brilliant “Higher Ground” piece a week before before the main crew got to work with the other paste-ups, the second photo shows the dramatic impact on his monochromatic composition after Donk invited Uberfubs to augment it with her flouro creatures, Natasha Searston also got in on the act.

Collaborative street art paste-up piece from the London International Paste-up Festival with street artists Donk, Uberfubs and Natasha Searston

Donk, Uberfubs, Natasha Searston collab

Donk did his bit to shame the youngsters by getting his Dad’s art pasted up in the festival, a quartet of coppers with appropriate symbolic numbering which represents the acronym ACAB which means…..go figure!

Paste-up street art showing images of 4 policemen on copies of the Metro newspaper with a numerical representation of the acronym ACAB

ACAB by Donk’s Dad

Some collaborations arise through intentional placement, such as the kitty cat and rat living in perfect harmony with two foxes, others are actually created as single sheet collaborations

Animals getting on toeether in a group of paste-ups include a kitty cat, a rat and two foxes

City Kitty, a rat, Yaya and DaddyStreetFox

Perhaps the guiding hand of the installers has had a role in placing a body positivity collaboration between Flakes Store and Planet Selfie adjacent to a Playgirl cover and Sam Fox in a box.

paste-up installation by street artist FLakes_store and Planet Selfiefor London International paste-up Festival

Body positivity collab Flakes_store and Planet Selfie, Samantha Fox by D7606

The Live and Let Live/Street Art Against Hate project was initiated by the #NoHate family, an awesome group of street artists from Cologne. Artist were invited to support the anti-hate initiative by creating paste-ups adding their art within a circular “Live and Let Live/Street Art Against Hate” message.   A version from Streetart.globe gave me the prompt to explain Sunday’s tour group the Street Art Against Hate project and the opportunity to demonstrate the power of collective paste-up messaging with an anecdote about the time I came across their Brick Lane Wall of Love in the company of two parents who had lost a son in an American High School mass murder. Full 2018 story HERE. The impact of the message and the touching affect it had on Patricia and Manuel Oliver in 2018 truly demonstrated something about paste up street art.

Street Art Against Hate repping at LIPF

As I told the story, street artist Face The Strange handed me two of his versions of the paste-up message demonstrating perfectly that the project is actually still alive and doing good things.

Street Art Against Hate paste-ups demonstrated by Shoreditch Street Art Tour Guide Dave

Street Art Against Hate paste-ups by Face The Strange, photographer’s preferred credit “a street art observer”

One of the more inventive uses of paste-ups we have witnessed down the years has been Dr Cream’s creation of online stop frame animations using paste-up linoprints.

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

Daisy Riot animation frames by Dr Cream

He has done loads of these in Shoreditch over more than a decade and something we have never succeeded in doing is to locate all the elements of an animation to have a go at rendering our own, it is nice to think that this game or quest was Dr Cream’s gift to the streets.  Finally, courtesy his LIPF installation we have all the frames of a star jumping Daisy Riot animation and I was thrilled to get it to work, though my effort does appear to be a homage to the jumpy animation style of Roobarb and Custard (look it up!)

As the social media flurry around the Festival subsides, I mentioned in my little digital contribution that I had enjoyed leading the Sunday tour and had learned a lot from the guests and artists present.  As I pointed out the drama in the layering of Rider’s fluorescent prints against his darker monochromatic background, MeandBlue helpful informed us that the two prints flanking Rider’s display were by David Shand, an artist who was new to me.  David focussed on the residue of tears and colours generated by time acting adverts on the streets, a phenomenon paste-up are beautifully susceptible to.  David passed away last year but as I explored his art online this week I got the sense that the spirit and intent of the festival would have chimed with him, it was lovely to be introduced to his work through the art on the wall.

very flouro paste-up princes by street artist Rider with prints by deceased print artist David Shand on either side

Rider flanked by David Shand (RIP)

No matter what form a piece of street art takes it will always by elevated by good placement and use of the environment.  Wrdsmth scores highly for matching the “Hearts Shatter” text with the shattered glass, happily no wrists were slashed in the placement of the oversize stencil through the jagged shards.

mixed media stencil and paste-up installation by street artist Wrdsmth for London International paste-up Festival

Hearts Shatter, mixed media by Wrdsmth

The festival concept had a few minor and unavoidable aspects in which it deviates from the nature of paste-up street art in the wild.  Pasting all the art up at one point in time denies the “patina” of a good street art spot that comes from artworks going over eachother, from the tearing, the layering, the decay and aging at different rates from different moments in history.  Seeing the artists own particular eye and mind controlling placement and juxtaposition is often desirable.  On the other hand paste-up street art actually facilitates collaboration, sharing and representation by mailing paper or digital art to friends in other locations and letting them get on with it.

Shuby, Uberfubs, Art.tits, Carl Stimpson

Something rather less obvious from the participation in the LIPF was the gender balance.  The art world is notorious for its discrimination on many basis especially gender.  A crude assessment based on identification of artists in a sample of 155 photographs suggested a ratio of male to female artists of 5:3.  It’s not great, it’s not perfect but it is likely to be better than the perceived state of play in the in gallery world.

Did the paste-up festival work? It got huge numbers of artists’ work visible on the streets, it introduced the art of many artists from overseas that we had not seen here before, it brought new artists to outdoor walls who have never displayed in public this way and it gave huge visibility to this under-sung street art genre.  It was a success.

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All photos Dave Stuart except where noted

London, Shoreditch, Streetart, streetarttour, tourguide, LondonInternationalPasteupFestival, LIPF, pasteups


Photo of back of the old Seven Stars pub showing huge white flowers painted by ThisOne on back of pub, along with wall panels painted by Get Busy, Agony, Attai and Tizer

Virtual Tour Triple Truffle

Approaching half term we are bringing a trio of street art nuggets to the world of Virtual street art pleasure.

“Just enjoyed a fantastic virtual street art tour with Dave. …. He did a wonderful job, and though we physically did not see the works in place, we were able to see many more, because of the format. …. Dave was extremely knowledgeable and had an engaging format. Highly recommend. “ Tripadvisor, Jan 2021

Shoreditch Street Art Virtual Tour

First up, Wednesday 3rd February we debut a new presentation highlighting current street art in Shoreditch, most of it created within the past month.  Think of it as something like the closest to what we’d look at if we did a real street art right now (hold that thought – ahhhhhhhh).  There has been some amazing art created in Shoreditch since we had to suspend real world tours at the beginning of December but Shoreditch Street Art Tours has been using its daily exercise period to record the latest art updates

Photo montage of street art created in Shoreditch in past 3 months featuring David Speed, Daeh, Pablo Fiasco, Get Busy, Tom Blackford and Attai

Shoreditch Street Art featuring David Speed, Daeh, Pablo Fiasco, Get Busy, Tom Blackford and Attai

Book the “Shoreditch Street Art Today (Feb 2021)” here


Banksy – The London Chronicle

Next up on Wednesday 10th February the ever popular Banksy – The London Chronicle is back again.  Looking at Banksy’s rise to fame through the prism of his London street art career, featuring nearly 100 Banksy artworks and 150 photos.

Book “Banksy – The London Chronicle” here

Photo montage, larger image is a stencilled rat with a paw dripping red paint and graffiti which says “If Graffiti changed anything it would be illegal”, second image is a Banksy stencil of a horse riding highwayman rearing back on its hind legs

Banksy – The London Chronicle


Political Street Art

Finally, yet another new presentation makes its debut, “Political Street Art”, a photographic review of political street art in London over the past 15 years.   I say “new” but the nucleus of “Political Street Art” has its origins as a segment included in some private virtual tours for schools and higher academic institutions.

Photo montage, larger image is a two painted portraits of children with very colourful clothing, the faces were sprayed by  street artist Zabou, the colourful striped clothing was made from fabric and wool by Mexican street artist Victoria Villasanna.  The smaller image is a stencil by the street artist Bambi which has the image of Emma Stone joyfully dancing with Ryan Gosling in the film La La Land but their heads have been replaced by Theresa May and Donald Trump and the caption changed to Lie Lie Land

Child Free Labour by Zabou and Victoria Villasanna, 2016; Lie Lie Land by Bambi, 2017

Book “Political Street Art” here


Go LARGE!

Discounted “combination” tickets for more than one presentation can be acquired by email info@shoreditchstreetarttours.co.uk direct.  Each individual “tour” costs £10; any 2 tours £18, all three tours £24.  Combination tickets will be issued manually, just tell us in an email which combination you would like and you will be sent a paypal invoice to pay by paypal or credit/debit card.


SUPPORT THE NHS – THANKS TO NHS HEROES

In gratitude for the huge effort our NHS heroes are putting in for our welfare and safety, a limited number of free tickets for each presentation are available to NHS staff on request by email.

Image by Banksy done in either charcoal or pencil of a boy in dungarees playing with a small doll which is a nurse in uniform rather than a caped superhero

Banksy Supports the NHS (canvas donated to Southampton General Hospital, June 2020), image courtesy Banksy.co.uk


Please remember the email address you signed up to this virtual tour with, use that to sign into Zoom. If you or anyone else using your device has previously signed into zoom and the “Remember User” box was checked it might be a good idea to sign out of Zoom first before clicking the Eventbrite “Join Now” button.

all photos: Dave Stuart


London, Graffiti, Robbo, Banksy, wallpaperer, Regents Canal, feud,art,street art

New Information On Banksy Robbo Feud

One of the biggest feuds in art-world history, street artist Banksy v graffiti writer Robbo is revealed to have rumbled on much longer than fans and art historians previously thought.

In December 2009 street artist Banksy created 4 illegal pieces of stencil art on the sides of a canal in Camden, London.  One of the pieces, the Banksy Wallpaperer revived an ancient feud between the street artist Banksy and the then retired but still famous London graffiti writer known as Robbo.

By re-imagining a very old relic of Robbo graffiti dating from 1985 into a stencilled worker applying that graffiti as wallpaper, Banksy appeared to be suggesting that graffiti piece was perhaps just forgettable mass produced background rubbish.

Robbo and Banksy then engaged in a prolonged  tit-for-tat exchange of insults by re-working those four art pieces in Camden, starting with Robbo turning the wallpaper into “King Robbo” on Christmas Day 2010 as first reported on Graffoto.

Street Art, review, 2010, Graffoto.co.uk, street art tours, tour guide

Banksy v Robbo, 25th December 2009, photo Dave Stuart

Many articles record that Banksy insulted Robbo at a party in the late 90s, Robbo assaulted Banksy and Banksy had nurtured the grudge ever since until his attack on the Robbo relic at the turn of the decade.

In a virtual presentation last week on Banksy’s London street art, street art tour guide and long term writer, photographer and Banksy fan Dave Stuart played a re-discovered and never before reported snippet of an exclusive interview with Robbo in which he says that Banksy had been attacking Robbo graffiti years before the Camden 2009 takeover.

In the interview, asked if he had been attacking Banksy art before 2009 Robbo laughingly replies

“………. before the King Robbo? No, he’s dogged [gone over] me before that has happened, I can show you a picture, it’s in one of his books. “

Banksy stencil of a Smiley Copper in Shoreditch over Robbo, amended

Smiley Copper, Banksy, Shoreditch photo Dave Stuart

The picture Robbo refers to is the Smiley Copper in Wall and Piece (2005).  Robbo then confirms that the feud started in the Dragon Bar in Shoreditch in the 90s before going on to say

“And after that happened, there was a full name throw up [graffiti] of mine, “Robbo” and he decided to put the grim reaper or the smiley face over the top of it and at the time, I thought if that’s the best he can do … “

Examination of the Smiley Copper indeed shows the capital R of a piece of graffiti Robbo says was his has been squarely hit by the Smiley Copper which unusually has a huge Banksy tag across the centre of the artwork, leaving the intended recipient of the message in now doubt as to who has gone over him.  In the world of graffiti there is no point in making a timid little mark over someone else, if you intend to insult someone you go big and bold.

Banksy stencil of a Smiley Copper in Shoreditch over Robbo, amended

Banksy Smiley Copper (amended), photo Dave Stuart

The Smiley Copper is believe to date from 2003 which indicates Banksy was picking the scab on that wound long before 2009 as previously thought.

Sadly Robbo had a terrible accident in 2011 which left him in a coma until his passing in 2014, rest in peace King Robbo.

The virtual online presentation “Banksy – The London Chronicle” is to be repeated this coming weekend at 10pm GMT on Saturday 9th January and 12 noon GMT on Sunday 10th January, times deliberately selected for convenience of Banksy fans in Latin America and North America and those in Asia and the Far East.

All photos: Dave Stuart

Dave Stuart will appear as an Expert Judge on TV art show Next Big Thing coming on London Live in the Spring, details to follow