Showing posts with label Dale Grimshaw. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dale Grimshaw. Show all posts

Tuesday 15 March 2022

Extraordinary Portrait Painter Dale Grimshaw’s Street Art

 

Double portrait, 2016
Double portrait, 2016


Street artist Dale Grimshaw featured in a brilliant BBC programme on TV last night so here is a little profile of Dale’s street art pedigree and a huge recommendation that you to catch up with Dale’s moment of TV glory.

free West Papua Dale Grimshaw 2019
Dale Grimshaw work in progress, 2019


In the early years, from about 2009 Dale Grimshaw put paste up street art featuring elaborate dynamic portraits. Motion was a key characteristic, bodies plummeted from the skies, subjects kicked out at us, heads twisted with dizzying speed.

The Fool, Dale Grimshaw, 2009
The Fool, Dale Grimshaw, 2009


Self portrait and raven, 2009
Self portrait and raven, 2009


"Falling Kicking" Dale Grimshaw, 2010
Falling Kicking; 2010


Dale’s involvement in the scene extended to running the Signal Gallery in Shoreditch with his partner. They staged exciting shows by street art luminaries such as Jef Aerosol and C215 and urban art stars including Matt Small and Jaybo, all of whom are predominantly portraiture specialists. Of course there were also several great Grimshaw shows.

C215 Shoeshiners exhibition, Signal gallery, 2009
C215 Shoeshiners exhibition, Signal gallery, 2009


Although Dale did paint murals on permission walls right from the off, his distinctive aboriginal portraits emerged in spraypainted mural form about 10 years ago.

Who's taking who for a ride, Dale Grimshaw, 2009
Who's taking who for a ride, 2009


2 Worlds, Dale Grimshaw, 2013
2 Worlds, 2013


Dale Grimshaw Man and Eagle, 2015
Man and Eagle, 2015


Dale Grimshaw, 2018
Hanbury St, 2017


Portrait paintings have been an indulgence for rulers, kings, religious icons and rich art patrons with the moolah necessary to immortalise their image through portrait commissions. Extraordinary Portraits, presented on the BBC by British rapper Tinie Tempah redresses the balance pairing unsung heroes with artists for a portrait sitting to honour real people and real lives. For this edition Tinie matches up Dale Grimshaw with Patrick Hutchinson who made the front pages world wide in 2020 for his selfless rescue of an isolated white BLM “counter protestor” under attack.

White man rescued by Partick Hutchinson at BLM protest, London, 2020
White man rescued by Partick Hutchinson, London, 2020


After Dale and Patrick’s initial meeting the programme pursues Dale’s commitment to reveal something deeper than the superficially obvious, they meet Patrick’s family, visit his place of work and then of course there is the grand reveal. Fascinating sequences unveil Dale’s photography session, his varied and very detailed painting process and his studio environment. It’s not just about Dale of course, Patrick is an equally heart-warming character and it is quickly apparent that his credentials as a role model for humanity and harmony go way deeper than that one photographed incident.

Dale Grimshaw instagram grab
Dale Grimshaw and Tinie Tempah, Extraordinary Portraits, 2022


What has Dale painted? Will the family like it? To find out track down Extraordinary Portraits Series 1 Episode 3 (link HERE), available on BBC iPlayer until April 2023.

Links:

Dale Grimshaw: instagram

Patrick Hutchinson: instagram

Photos: Dave Stuart except where noted 

Tuesday 31 December 2013

Best of London Street Art Part 2 - The Mural Bites Back



London has witnessed in 2013 a pretty significant growth in the number of large scale street art productions created with permission and indeed it seems, a growth in the number of organisations arranging spots for artists. Whilst Graffoto’s natural tendency is to prefer street art created without permission, we don’t judge just because something is painted without the frission of illegality, which is anyway a over-romanticised notion most of the time when what is really meant is “without explicit permission”.

We review the big, the wild, the bright and the spectacular here in part 2 of our review of 2013’s London street art, part 1 looked at the grittier less house trained stuff done without permission and should be read first HERE 

Words: NoLionsInEngland
Photos: NoLionsInEngland except HowAboutNo where stated.

Moniker Art Fair moved location and changed up a gear in October, attracting a large number of street art galleries and street artists. One of the best consequences was the lads from Souled Out Studios, Bon and Alex Face from Thailand and Mau Mau from the West Country painting this fun composition in which they gave Roa’s iconic bird a leg, which they proceed to barbecue.

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Bon, Mau Mau, Alex Face. Also feat Roa, Martin Ron


Not far away Alex Face and Bon illustrate themselves literally delivering a splash of colour to London’s walls.

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Alex Face, Bon


Dal East played a cunning game with a series of murals, staging a competition based around photographing all his fresh London murals which you could only complete by photographing the final hidden mural revealed at the launch of his London show.

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Dal East


At the same time Faith 47 executed her most spectacular work in London to date, though the timing won’t surprise anyone aware that Dal East and Faith47 are a married couple.

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Faith47


The most stunning project by a mile was spraycan virtuoso Shok-1’s ten part X-Ray Rainbows paintings which commenced in 2012 and concluded in August 2013. Not all of our photographs in this slide show capture the pieces in their best condition as the artist intended, sorry Shok-1 Sir.


All photos: NoLionsInEngland


Miss Van’s last outdoor wall decoration in London was an illegal piece out in Ladbroke Grove, West London which survived until about 2007 so it was nice that she painted this stunning piece in Shoreditch in collaboration with Italian sculptor Ciro Schu.

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Miss Van, Ciro Schu (with Pure Evil mugging in the shot


Cranio visited from Brazil for the second time in just under 12 months and did a mixture of stunning illegal, permissioned and gallery work all based around the theme of the Amazon Indians indulging themselves with the gains from selling off their rainforest.

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Cranio

The permissioned Cranio collaboration with HIN photographed below caused a little upset and mural organiser censorship, not because of the nudity or the suicide bomber or the obscene gestures but seemingly due to the pasted face portraits of evil dictators.

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Cranio, HIN, feat Alex Senna


Roa worked his large scale magic in a couple of London spots, most visibly on the Southbank but to more gory effect in an alley on the way to Hackney.

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ROA


Alex Senna seemed to get to paint lots of spots in the Shoreditch area, this one featured a then topical nod to the new born Prince George.

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Alex Senna


Award for the least appropriate most thoughtless mural goes to the upside down break dancer painted by Martin Ron next to Roa’s bird on Hanbury Street, you might as well try to fit a Jackson Pollock and a Turner on the same canvas for all the relationship and harmony there is between the two subjects on that wall. After Cosmo Sarsen first in Bristol and Above in Shoreditch before him in 2013, did we really need another upside down breakdancer anyway?

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Martin Ron v. Roa, no contest!


During the London Art Fair week RYCA put up a crisp clean Clone troopers paste up collage on the boards erected outside Shoreditch Junk following the McDonalds sponsored buff at that spot.

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RYCA


A particularly wild and wet night saw RYCA's paste up virtually jet blasted off the wall producing an effect RYCA liked so much he repaired the damage by recreating it with paste ups and stencils. As a sort of post script note – the weather over the Christmas break has added real damage to the simulated damage!

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RYCA


Zadok has hit a lot of walls, not all of them necessarily with prior consent we suspect but all superbly realised.

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Dr Zadok


One of our favourite permissioned pieces in 2013 is the wild abstract assault RSH executed on the Lord Napier premises at Hackney Wick just prior to the Hackney Wicked Festival, a stunning visual attack on premises and eyeballs.

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RSH


One of the less fortunate projects realised during the year has been the “rejuvenation” of Hackney’s canal sides. Where once there was un-curated street art and graffiti there is now, in the case of the old sugar factory wall, a huge mural painted by foreign artists (ok..Scottish in one case) and rumour has it then coated with anti graffiti paint, oh the irony. So, that’s the displacement of many local un-curated artists in favour of curated and protected outsiders, not surprising really that feathers have been ruffled in the area. Nevermind, it’ll look nice in the brochure and the Olympic Legacy reports.

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Lyken, Moneyless


A local based artist who has been getting good walls this year is Dale Grimshaw who pulled off a couple of stunning gothic horror portraits, which is a good thing of course.

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Dale Grimshaw


Dan Kitchener got a lot of spraypaint onto walls this year as well, it’s hard to decide whether to favour the underground tracks paintings or the rainy neon nights studies more, he does them both beautifully.

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Dan Kitchener


Jimmy C has a pretty productive year, apparently the first of these images produced a 3D effect when viewed through 3D glasses, which could explain all those weird glasses we see people wearing in the area.

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Jimmy C photos by HowAboutNo


Seems you could hardly walk around Shoreditch this year without seeing a new Lost Souls mural, bloody everywhere!

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Lost Souls feat Captain Kris, SP047, Si Mitchell, Squirl


As usual, all opinions are those of the authors of Graffoto, happy to share ;-)

Happy New Year to all Graffoto readers and may you have a happy and colourful 2014.

Saturday 13 July 2013

Hit Shot Walls June 2013

June was a bumper month for activity around Graffoto towers, not least dry conditions meant casting aside  essential foul weather gear to find something cool but not overly flesh revealing!

All photos: HowAboutNo


Local scene stalwart and Signal Gallery co-owner Dale Grimshaw produced a range of stunning large murals and smaller paste ups.


    DALE GRIMSHAW


Nice to see Narcélio Grud back in London, up alongside the Twombly-esque Sliks, seen partly complete in this shot.

    NARCÉLIO GRUD & SLIKS


The popular and affable RUN, one of London's favourite adopted Italians outside the worlds of football and bunga bunga is no stranger to the Village Underground walls but this cracking swan was epic  in scale, probably the largest painting we have seen from him in this country.

    RUN


Jana and JS returned to London and with a number of permission walls in effect were able to go very large with a couple of self portrait stencil murals but we found the placement of their smaller paste ups stunning.

    JANA & JS


National rag The Guardian has had few weeks getting conspiratorially excited over leaks and revelations courtesy of Mr E Snowden which convince us that the USA's National Security Agency is reading every pithy tweet and bitchy private message, T.WAT came up with this very timely skit on America being all ears.  Then of course we found that the un-authorised snooping in the UK was even more rampant, no surprise there.

    T.WAT & OTHER

Paul Insect continued his highly productive run of paste ups.
    PAUL INSECT


    HiN


Some say this is by Ronzo but we're not convinced.  No reason to say it's not Ronzo, though we'd have expected the baseball cap motif to be a capital R.  Either way, it's a damn fine paste up
    UNKNOWN


A looming wall crisis in Shoreditch is forcing artists with permissioned mural gigs to paint as far away as 10 yards off Brick Lane on smaller and smaller walls.

    BAILON


    KYLE HUGHES-ODGERS


Curious phonetic challenge reading the name on this artist new to our eyes, do you say "Frah" or "Franarchy"? Another artist completely new to us but some of the pure stencil items we located by FR.A are quite stunning.

    .frA
    
   
   .frA

    .frA


    .frA


Blog mucker NoLionsinEngland is familiar with the work of INO from Athens and reports that this little beauty is actually quite modest by INO's standards but its great to see another quality artist coming out of Greece.

    INO

    HiN



    

    BEST EVER