Thursday 3 July 2008

It's All Greek To Me: Athens Pt 1

Over many years as London’s ambassador to Athen’s tavernas and bars, I have had the pleasure of observing quite a large amount of graffti, regrettably nearly always from the windows of taxis (when Athens taxis are moving it’s best to keep your eyes closed, thankfully they also spend a lot of time stationary). On my most recent visit at the beginning of June (08) I managed to carve out a few hours from my lotus eating schedule to jump on the back of a Vespa driven by my friend Alex-The-Greek and tour around creating havoc on the streets (and pavements) and photograph Greek graff.


unknown – indecipherable tag

Aided by an Athens map embellished by a bunch of loose fluid tentacle strokes courtesy of The Krah, it proved easy to locate several deep warrens of single track back streets, alley ways and bazaars crammed full of spray work.



Athens is sliced, diced and surrounded by a network of pedestrian-hostile highways, the deep walls holding back the embankments have proved an irresistible canvas for taggers and artists who generally need not fear passing foot traffic.



Captain Hook


I’d been seeing lots of swarms of evil grinning bees along most of these main routes, some of them even had psychedelic don’t mess with me colours.





Athens artist b. who has graced quite a few London walls over the past year or so but in his natural habitat, this is b.


b., Norjin

And these,


Hit, b.


b. and ?

And for good measure there is a lot more b. here

(where The Krah has helped with identification, that is 100% accurate; some of the attributions are my guess and may well be wrong – apologies in advance).

One artist whose stuff I have admired on flikr but never actually seen in real life is Joad. Her pieces proved to be a bit more elusive that I had hoped but the few I found were treasures.


Joad


Actually, I had come across a Joad last Autumn near the hotel I usually stay at, un-expectedly it was a plain but crisp block but look closely and the trademark whispy lines are present.


Joad, more here
ons in her comment - its a beauty:

Joad, Icnoc


The second installment of this Greek adventure will follow in a few days or so but if you can't wait or simply can't take any more words, then by all means just take a look at the pictures here.

Update: check out part II here

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

hey!

thanks for all your nice words in your post about my art. Truth is I've not been that active lately (guess "real" life is catching up with me and leaving me spent by nightfall, when I should normally get ready for painting)

In any case, thanks for the feature, although the second pic you've posted, the one withe the golden triangles is not mine, a girl that had never touched spraypaint before and she happened to come by a festival we had last year. Strange you didnt see my pieces right above this, with Icnoc.

take care