Showing posts with label Elmo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elmo. Show all posts

Saturday 25 May 2019

New Old Banksy Street Art In Shoreditch



Banksy street art hidden for many years has been brought out of limbo in Shoreditch, visible at last to the millions of street art fans new to Banksy’s art since it last doused itself under East London rain. Two images, a huge rat and a TV being chucked rock star style out of a window have lain out of sight under protective wooden sheeting for 12 years though they are perhaps among the more “storied” of Banksy’s street artworks.

Banksy at the Foundry Car Park
Not one but TWO Banksy relics


Banksy frequented the legendary Shoreditch art and drinking establishment The Foundry, pincered between Great Eastern St and Old St and was a good friend of the hosts Tracey and Jonathan Moberly. Tracey told Graffoto that from around 2002 Banksy was very active inside, outside and around the Foundry, in that period he painted genuine masterpieces such as the Have A Nice Day helicopter above the chip shop opposite Foundry and the earliest of the Pulp Fiction pieces that faced the Foundry from the tube station building 100 yards away.

Old Street feat Banksy
Old St feat Banksy's 2nd Pulp Fiction


The Foundry was an amazing melting pot bringing together creative, cultural and cool people and stimulated all kinds of interactions. Courier cyclists were a specific sub-species who made a base at the Foundry and some evenings (particularly warm ones!) the pavement outside the foundry would be a crush of grimy bike couriers. It was a group of cyclists who organised the festival in the unlicensed car park to the rear of the Foundry for which Banksy painted the rat and the TV.

Eine & Banksy
Banksy feat remnant of "Last Days Of Shoreditch", Eine, photo 2019


In 2010, Hackney Council had a pretty hostile attitude to graffiti and was equally intolerant of street art, as the Moberly’s witnessed with the council’s repeated buffing of great art that appeared legally with permission outside the Foundry. The council then turned round and made the preservation of the TV and the rat a condition of the planning consent for the demolition of the existing building and its replacement by what was to be an 18 storey hotel but now has permission for 22 storeys. Should these Banksys have been elevated to heritage status?


Eine, Foundry Car Park
Protect that rat 2019 (clue: underneath that wooden wedge)


The TV out the window stencil, a brilliant rock and roll cliché, looked like it was made for that wall, it’s an image that has to be on the side of a windowless building that looks like it ought to have windows. The image wouldn’t work on say a garden wall or a bridge support.

Banksy at the Foundry Car Park


Inside the Foundry all kinds of crazy things went on and prominent in the bar was a array of flickering TVs, a TV flying out the window from the Foundry seemed entirely plausible.

Foundry Photo Jonathan Moberly, 2010
Foundry 2010: Graffoto, anonymous street artist, Tracey Moberly and a selection of TVs. Photo courtesy Jonathan Moberly


The TV out the window makes an appearance in Banksy’s 2005 book Wall and Piece but is not the Foundry one, the one in the book was up by Angel and by the time I located it the TV had been buffed (higher up the wall above this image) but Banksy’s tag was still visible and Shepard Fairey had visited.

Banksy tag, Shepard Fairey, 2006
Banksy tag, Shepard Fairey, 2006


Not only is the Foundry TV nicely placed and well executed, it has a Banksy tag next to it and they are increasingly rare out in the wild. In fact including this one I can only think of 3 surviving outdoors in London and we must fear for the existence of one of the other two as there is an artist’s impression of a development which shows the surface the tag is on is earmarked to disappear.

Banksy at the Foundry Car Park
Banksy stencil tag


The rat has always been a bit unsatisfactory, the reasons Graffoto criticised the council’s decision to preserve that rat are as valid today as they were back in 2010. It has never been clear what this rat is about, it rejoices in the nickname “Eat the rich” and is often described as a rat with a knife and fork but if you look carefully that is actually a jigsaw blade not a knife and the fork is more like a harpoon or a pitchfork, forks don’t neck down from the handle then widen into the prongs. We don’t know what the rat is doing, why it belongs at this location nor what the red ring around the eye is about and the technique is a bit sloppy. The things that look like fins are probably meant to be bedraggled fur, at least that’s what they look like on other Banksy rats but on this one it looks like a weird dorsal fin or the conning tower on a submarine.

Banksy Rat - Go Back To Bed, photo 2006
Banksy rat - that's what we call bedraggled, photo 2006, Smithfelds


However Banksy’s street art isn’t diminished by poor execution, they were never meant to be superb specimens of perfectly executed art and indeed evidence of haste is perhaps part of the essence of the way Banksy has to create his street art. Banksy’s relationship with the Foundry and the use by the Foundry of that car park to stage events suggests this rat probably wasn’t subject to the usual tensions of illegality, perhaps it could have been better executed, maybe like the ones in Cargo.

Banksy at the Foundry Car Park


More significantly, Banksy hated the rat! Tracey whispered to Graffoto last year that Banksy thought the rat was a piece of shit. Furthermore, when asked to comment on the closure of the Foundry in a 2010 BBC news broadcast, Banksy contributed via one of his classic emails saying

“No one ever went there for the beer-it was always a bit warm and flat. I would appeal to the developers not to keep my graffiti. It’s a bit like demolishing the Tate and preserving the ice cream van out the front.” 
Banksy, Newsnight email 4 Feb 2010”



There you have it, the artist Banksy does not wish the art to be preserved so the council’s 2010 decision is morally dubious to say the least. Note also the explicit confirmation that the artwork is a genuine Banksy, assuming of course that the BBC weren’t being spoofed.


Preservation of these Banksy pieces began before the planning decision though. The protective sheeting enclosing the TV and rat was erected in 2007, perhaps the idea of incorporating the Banksys on the Foundry site into the new hotel had already formed in the owners’ and operator’s minds at that time.  An early painting of that slanting façade was by Burning Candy members Sweet Toof and Cyclops, wittily captioning their creation Rat Trap.

Burning Candy
Sweet Toof, Cyclops BC 2008


The immediate future for the rat and the TV is that metal frames are going to be constructed around them and after separating the wall from the rest of the building structure and dismantling the walls above the art by hand, a massive crane is going to be used to lift the two wall segments separately over the building where they will be stored covered up at the front of the building site. The developers have not made their ultimate intention clear, their obligation is to provide free viewing access to the public of these two Banksys either within the hotel or somewhere else within the Borough. The developer is known to have planned to include 6 other Banksys from the Foundry building within the so-called Art’otel development but none of the other 6 survive.

00456961 optimised extract copy
First, skin your rat


A few weeks ago Graffoto got an exclusive opportunity to watch the sheeting came down and the TV and rat were seen again for the first time in 12 years. As the sheets came off the first thing that appeared was the top parts of the old fire extinguisher ATG tag and it was immediately apparent that he paint had survived in pretty good condition.

ATG Fire Extinguisher Graff; EINE


After barely an hour of watching other people do real work, the TV and the rat were revealed in all their glory

Banksy at the Foundry Car Park
Banksy Rat (detail) 2019


For the meantime, make the most of the brief period visibility of those two Banksys before they lose whatever sense of context they may have had in their original location and ponder the puzzle of why the council decided to preserve this rubbishy rat against the artist’s own wishes yet remain oblivious to some real masterpieces that appeared on the Foundry building before and since.


Elmo, Tango ATG & Banksy
Elmo lean-over, Tango ATG - and Banksy. You decide!


Elmo, ATG
Elmo ATG, Goldpeg, Sweet Toof & the buff 2011


Elmo, Milo Tchais, Zezao, Tek 33
Elmo, Milo Tchais, Zezao, Tek 33; Feb 2011


tn_DSC_4082-001
ROA, 2011 (okay, it's a different elevation but its too good not to include as art that the council has not protected)


Elmo, Masker, Milo Tchais, Run, Zezao, Gerard Gademann
Elmo, Masker, Milo Tchais, Run, Zezao, Gerard Gademann; May 2011


Elmo, Mr Wany, Masker, Zezao
Elmo, Mr Wany, Masker, Zezao 2012


Mr Wany
Mr Wany, desecrated by an advert, 2012


Jo Peel
Jo Peel animation, 2013


Fintan Magee
Fintan Magee (detail) 2014, also feat Eine, Pez, ALO, Borondo


Phlegm
Phlegm, 2015


Eine last days of shoreditch
Eine, 2016

Related Posts:

2010: Hackney Council insists on rat/TV preservation Graffoto post

2018: Foundry/Red Gallery Building closes Graffoto post

All photos: Dave Stuart except Jonathan Moberly where noted      

Friday 25 April 2008

Ahead of The Git

Stopped on my bike on the way home this evening to snap some rooftop stuff. It has been there for ages, its on a pretty fast and hectic stretch of road, the Euston Road just before the underpass.






Scientific measurements by journalists last year proved this is the shittiest, most polluted bit of road in England.

Its easy to spot this stuff on my way in to work, but I am usually late and it is also on the other side of the road. Tonight, as I came up the underpass I thought hah - lets do it. So I pulled over onto the derelict un-trodden paving that separates the 2 lanes of the westbound underpass from two lanes merging from Tottenham Court Road.


(this mauvey looking building is RASA, one of the best indians in London. Used to be the home of Ghurkas 20 years ago, a great Nepalese restuarant and student staple).

I'd grabbed a few pictures when a silver Porsche pulled to a stop on the outside lane of the slip road. The driver wound his window down and snarled "Don't stand there, you look like a policeman" (I was wearing a cycling top which retains its luminescence despite being 14 years old). I walked over and got a bit Churchillian right in his face, and he hit the pedal and fled.

Since when was a policeman putting the fear of the law into penis-mobile drivers a bad thing?



In case you were wondering, ATG, look above the restuarant rooftop, stands for the Ahead Of The Game crew which includes errrrrrrr... Elmo, flyboy, Mighty Mo, Panik, Asure, Getsy. possibly some or all London Frontline members, possibly they are one and the same, I dunno. But thats what it stands for and thats why the title.