Tag Archives: Tour

London, Street Art, Tour, Walk, Space Invader, Reactivation, UK Reactivation Team, Art4Space, mosaic

Space Invader Strikes Back!

In our regular street art updates we have talked a couple of times about disappeared ancient Space Invaders reappearing, the so called “Reactivation”.   We were very lucky to secure the first ever interview with the UK Reactivation Team, check my other blog to see how and why these passionate extra terrestrial art restorers are doing what they do.

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LDN_058 Reactivated

Bonus news – back in 2012 I was fortunate to be in a select audience for a one evening only private showing in a London hotel of a 24 minute documentary made by Space Invader.  It was an exciting little movie about his attempt to send one of his Invaders into space and film the result.  This week Invader has finally released the documentary to the public and it is very interesting.

Photos: Dave Stuart

Video: Space Invader


From Shoreditch To Mexico

Over the years walls in Shoreditch have been made to look a little more arty thanks to Mexican street artists.   Some visit, some like Pablo Delgado were long term residents.

London, Shoreditch, Mexico, street art, tour, Notimex, Pablo Delgado

Pablo Delgado, 2011

Pablo’s trademark street art were tiny figures pasted at the bottom of walls with accompanying shadows painted onto the pavement, you really had to keep your eyes peeled to spot these.

London, Shoreditch, Mexico, street art, tour, Notimex, Pablo Delgado

Pablo Delgado, 2013

His characters looked like they lurked secretively in a Borrowers sized world on the fringes of our civilisation of giants.

London, Shoreditch, Mexico, street art, tour, Notimex, Pablo Delgado

Pablo Delgado, 2011

Pablo followed many themes in his characters including pimps and prossies and often arrangements were quite surreal.

London, Shoreditch, Mexico, street art, tour, Notimex, Pablo Delgado

Pablo Delgado, 2013

Another Mexican artist who visited these walls in October 2015 and who’s enduring work still delights the tour is Mazatl.

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Mazatl

Mazatl was accompanied by three other artists from Mexico, Said Dokings, Acuro and Fusca who we see in this piece painting in collaboration with Mazatl.

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Fusca/Mazatl collaboration

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Said Dokins

The flow has been reversed in a curious way by journalist Marcela Gutiérrez Bobadilla who experienced the Shoreditch Street Art Tour a couple of weeks ago. Marcela has written a lovely  article in the Mexican publication Notamex, which can be found here: http://www.cronica.com.mx/notas/2016/992898.html.

 

Marcela also created this very interesting short video clip:

 

Our public tours are conducted in English but if you would like a street art tour in Spanish, drop us a line as we can help you with a private tour (email info@shoreditchstreetarttours.co.uk)

All photos: Dave Stuart


London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, Jonesy, environmental art, awareness, CO2, methane, Skeleton Cardboard, 616, Artista, Fanakapan, Voyder, Airborne Mark, Vibes RT

Bank Holiday Street Art

Some may quibble about this but…..wasn’t the cloud cover lovely on Bank Holiday Monday?  Since finishing a tour in snow last Thursday, tours have been run in sunshine and sunshine, frankly, casts a shadow on street art photography, much rather a bright day with a bit of cloud cover.

Temperatures rising (we are forecast to hit 20 by the end of the week) and no rain also help.  Not that that really mattered in the case of this find of a lovely clutch of Jonesy paintings, as they were under cover.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, Jonesy, environmental art, awareness, CO2, methane

Jonesy – Fossil Fuel Genocide

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, Jonesy, environmental art, awareness, CO2, methane

Jonesy – methane, it’s a pain

We also came across a lovely work-in-progress by Skeleton Cardboard.  Although normally one would be inclined to pass by a set piece “mural on a board for an audience” style  of painting, we love Skeleton Cardboard’s expressionism and bizarre twisted thoughts so paused to dwell on this latest masterpiece.

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Skeleton Cardboard, Box Park

Being a bank holiday for some reason the Seven Stars Car Park was pretty much devoid of cars which meant better views of 616’s multi-layered buttress bombing.

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616, feat Vibes RT

And clear shots of this, featuring Artista, artist unknown, Airborne Mark, Voyder/fanakapan collaboration and Vibes

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, Jonesy, environmental art, awareness, CO2, methane, Skeleton Cardboard, 616, Artista, Fanakapan, Voyder, Airborne Mark, Vibes RT


Free Art by Sean Worrall #43 Project

Artist and gallerist Sean Worrall devoted a huge amount of energy in 2015 to a project he called #365ArtDrops, leaving painted art on found materials on the streets for people to find, keep and treasure. Quite a number of guests over the year had the good fortune to finish the tour clutching a chance find piece of Sean’s art. Today we had an echo of that joy.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, Guests, art, artist, free art, found art, #43

#43 No 1/43 by Sean Worrall

Sean has a new project #43. Sean’s information page says: “#43 will be a new piece from Sean Worrall consisting of 43 parts and revealed somewhere in London on the 43rd day of 2016.”. The 43rd day of 2016 was last Friday, Ingrid and Raja spotted this free art on Brick Lane today, they knew a good thing when they saw it and claimed it immediately.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, Guests, art, artist, free art, found art, #43

Ingrid and her #43

How nice that their piece is number 1 of the 43.

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, Tour, Guests, art, artist, free art, found art, #43

Please Take!

We hoped that Sean would share something of the impact that last year’s #365ArtDrops and in the middle of January Sean wrote the beautiful, moving tale of #365ArtDrops piece 348/365. In his writing Sean speaks of the stories that came back to him of the fate of the artworks, the connections established through email and social media. This taps into a particularly awesome power of street art and is well worth reading

The Moving Tale of The 365ArtDrops Piece Left At Moor Street Railway Station Birmingham

As guests on the Shoreditch Street Art Tour collected Sean’s free art over the passage of the year Sean’s project featured quite often here on the blog, you can share in our reminiscences on those older stories HERE.

all photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland


No Rest For The Wicked

Do you think street artists take a break over Christmas? Not a bit of it, we found some lovely fresh street art on the tour today which all appeared since yesterday.

D7606 was spied around town, for him it’s a pretty long trip to visit London and this time he brought this gorgeous collaboration with City Kitty of New York

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, tour, guide, guided, D7606, paste up, collaboration, collab, pop art

D7606 (UK) & City Kitty (NY)

Several new stencil and paste up multimedia combos from US West Coast WRDSMTH also appeared overnight, this modern world romantic twist was a new one not seen here before:

London, Shoreditch, Street Art, tour, guide, guided, Wrdsmth, paste up, multi media, stencil

WRDSMTH – instagram validation

It’s always good to see street artists seeing out the old year in style, look out for the Shoreditch Street Art Tour annual review appearing in the next few days.

Links:

D7606

WRDSMTH

All photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland


Street Art Needs Dentist

Shoreditch Tour guests will already know that on the tour we like to find evidence of street art evolving as time does its work assisted by other artists.   A lovely piece by HNRX has been cheekily modified by artists unknown:

London, Shoreditch, street art, HRNX, teeth, sausage,purple, red, tour, funny, comedy, humour, augmentation, interaction

Sexy lips

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Dentist required

HNRX has hit Shoreditch hard with a massive sticker campaign.

Sausage sicker

Sausage sicker

You need a sense of humour if you’re going to hitch yourself to the “comic surrealism” waggon, other HNRX artworks have come to light in Shoreditch

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HNRX website

All photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland


London, Shoreditch,Nomadic Community Gardens, Meeting Of Styles, Graffiti, Street art, tour, tours, artist, art

Meeting Of Styles UK 2015

Meeting Of Styles returned to Shoreditch recently for the second Summer on the trot. Over a 2 day period spraycan graffiti writers and street artists from Brazil to Russia via Spain and UK threw a wild ribbon of colour around Shoreditch.

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Tyme (Swe), Adno (Rus), Awone (Swe), DJa’Louz (Fr) and from the UK Jim Vision, Zadok and below them Kak, Ekto and Wisher.

London, Shoreditch,Nomadic Community Gardens, Meeting Of Styles, Graffiti, Street art, tour, tours, artist, art

Meeting Of Styles UK 15

Meeting of Styles is an international and not-for-profit federation of spraycan festivals, this year 22 MoS festivals around the world are responding to the “Mind Above Matter” theme, though not all were as focussed on the theme as Neoh below.

London, Shoreditch,Nomadic Community Gardens, Meeting Of Styles, Graffiti, Street art, tour, tours, artist, art , Neoh, impressionism

Neoh

The focal point for the festival was a dramatically transformed elbow of land trapped between a knot of railway tracks now under new ownership and currently renamed the Nomadic Community Gardens. A primarily Bangladeshi community have transformed the Fleet St Hill end of the gardens with raised beds of allotments while a temporary village of tents, vans and dens of upcycled wood and canvas housed kitchens, bars, decks and admin.

London, Shoreditch,Nomadic Community Gardens, Meeting Of Styles, Graffiti, Street art, tour, tours, artist, art

Nomadic Community Gardens

Wall locations were geographically more wide spread this year, the centre of weight shifted over to the Bethnal Green side of Brick Lane with some painting taking place even further east than the Nomadic Gardens Community Centre.

London, Shoreditch,Nomadic Community Gardens, Meeting Of Styles, Graffiti, Street art, tour, tours, artist, art

Stendec & Soma

Traditional bubble letters and wild style sit happily alongside 3D, abstract, the “post graffiti graffuturism” and calligraphy based graffiti writing. It is not all letter writing though, characters and creatures and even sculpture made an appearance.

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For a lot more photographs and a bit more analysis, check out the Graffoto post of which this is essentially an abstract of highlights.

All photos: NoLionsInEngland


Shoreditch Street Artists Have Spring In Their Steps

When can we be sure Spring has sprung? When muralists flood the streets? When I can do a whole tour without thermals and a heavy jacket? This Easter Bank holiday weekend saw a great uptick in the art being created on the streets. The graffiti legend GARY of MS (Mad Society Kings) crew and letterform princess Lilly Lou found a damn good reason to go out writing on Braithwaite St on Sunday.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, murals, street artists, walk,tour,graffiti, Gary MS, Lilly Lou

NO good REASON – Gary MSK & Lilly Lou

On Saturday afternoon one of our tours had the pleasure of chatting with Shoreditch’s favourite Chilean street art Otto Schade as he painted a complex ribbon figure in the Old Turman Brewery.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, murals, street artists, walk,tour,graffiti, Otto Schade

Otto Schade

An unknown artist created a couple of quite incredible stencils, the accuracy of the stencil cut suggests perhaps laser cutting and the message is certainly one for the geeks.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, murals, street artists, walk,tour,graffiti, unknown

HTML art

Intellectual criticism of a street artists endeavours can be blunt and direct at times, this “feedback” on Friday night on Bambi’s bikini clad figures painted last December pulls no punches.   (more about Bambi’s piece here)

London, Shoreditch, Street art, murals, street artists, walk,tour,graffiti, Bambi, tagger

Bambi critiqued

In keeping with the Easter theme, Horror painted this drippy chick off Brick Lane.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, murals, street artists, walk,tour,graffiti, Horror Crew

Easter Chick

A wonderful tribute to an author whose work we loved appeared on the old Shoreditch Tube Station and Jim Vision’s work received a huge amount of coverage in the press.

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Detail, Terry Pratchett tribute by Jim Vision

London, Shoreditch, Street art, murals, street artists, walk,tour,graffiti, Jim Vision

Detail, Terry Pratchett tribute by Jim Vision

Scale isn’t everything in the world of street art, we loved this tiny mixed media sculpture and sticker piece stuck on a window ledge.

London, Shoreditch, Street art, murals, street artists, walk,tour,graffiti, Cozen art

Cozen art

And it does look like the temperature is climbing into double figures at last so all the signs are that Spring has indeed sprung (but I’m not going to be fooled, warm clothing remains a la mode).


London, Shoreditch, Street art, tours,tour,walk,tripadvisor,reviews,independent

Wow – You Are Awesome (yes you!)

Wow – you guys are awesome! You’ve only gone and written 500 brilliant reviews on Tripadvisor of Shoreditch Street Art Tours. In doing so you have made Shoreditch Street Art Tours the 3rd best thing to do in London out of 1179 activities! For a while your support even made us No. 2, maybe we’ll get back there sometime.

The thing is, these reviews are the independent opinions of guests of Shoreditch Street Art Tours, we can write all the waffle we want on our website but none of it will ever mean as much as your independent feedback, that’s the beauty of Tripadvisor, it is you folks and your brilliant summaries.

So, thank you very much to all of you who have shown unanimous appreciation of the passion and dedication put into making Shoreditch Street Art Tours such a memorable and powerful experience.

There are over 200 super photos taken by guests on the tour have been uploaded to the Shoreditch Street Art Tours Tripadvisor profile and as a tribute to you, we have created brief slideshow of a selection of those pictures. The guests whose photos feature in this selection are acknowledged in the picture captions and of course we thank all other Tripadvisor reviewers who have also uploaded a selection of their photogenic memories of the tour.

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