Showing posts with label Horror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Horror. Show all posts

Sunday 10 May 2020

Diggin In The Archives Part 6

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? By the time you read this Boris should have made his “statement” to the nation and one suspects the tunnel will seem to be stretching much much further into the distance. Activities continue to expand to fit the time available and blowing the dust off the photo archive is a good a rabbit hole as any to fall into, so here is this week’s selection of gems from the past.


You wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a snorkeler (snorkelist?) walking down the road with a lion on their shoulders in 2013, it was Shoreditch after all. Twisted surrealism from Dal East.

Dal East, 2013
Dal East, 2013


ACE is full OG London, his comic and pop art influenced collage screen prints were pasted up all over Shoreditch from the beginning. They still appear although nothing close to the quantity he used to put out. One of my all time favourite paste up artists. And there's Skewville , yet again, he keeps popping up in the archive photos. 2011.

ACE, 2011
ACE, 2011


In 2009 Graffoto founder HowAboutNo and I wandered Shoreditch and beyond on our lunchbreaks, chatting shit and shooting crap. Daytime street art creation was quite rare in those days and one lunch time we spied an artist in act of pasting up some big faces. He scarpered. Brummie Tempo33 told me a while later they had thought we were cops! Not many people wandered round in office garms photographing street art those days.

Tempo, 2012
Tempo33, 2012


As I started to develop a little bit of an interest in street art I had a conceptual difficulty with stickers;,that fact that anyone could have put them up challenged their authenticity. Then I started to get my head around “Representation”. It would be very easy to upload a photo of a stunning mural by D*face, rightly they are appreciated worldwide but his stickers are in my humble opinion are way more significant to his street presence.

Liskbot’s hand finished stickers and paste ups go back a decade, still prolific!

The unknown sticker looks and feels like a corporate logo.

D*Face, Liskbot 2011
D*Face, Liskbot 2011


East London in 2011 was full of Malarky cartoons. Superficially they had the characteristics of children’s illustrations but close inspection revealed a real darkness. Often painted with compadres #Billy, Mr Penfold and Sweet Toof. These old Hanbury Street gates used to host art by great artists such as Donk , Stik, a Saki and Bitches and Macay collab, a Mau Mau and Alex Face collab and an Otto Schade "Creation Of Adam” masterpiece. And Curly ;-)

Malarky, 2011
Malarky, 2011


In the next pair, the elevated elevation behind the grey gantry is the old Shoreditch Tube Station, closed in 2006. The first picture is from October 2011 and features a Rowdy creature and a piece by fellow Burning Candy crewmate Horror. The second picture dates from July 2012. The difference is the Olympics buff. One of these pics cost me a gorgeous Colnago Road bike, stolen by some Tower Hamlets low life cunt as I climbed up on the wall to get the pic

I am sure you don't need reminding, #fuckthebuff

Rowdy, Horror 2011
Rowdy, Horror 2011


The Olympics Buff, 2012
The Olympics Buff, 2012


When its good, Street Art can be very “of the moment”. The flip side is that years later the context or relevance of a piece of art may be forgotten. This Teddy Baden multi layered stencil features Mandeville, one of two mascots for London’s 2012 Olympics. Mandeville was named after Stoke Mandeville Hospital, the world famous spinal injuries hospital that organised the first games festival for injured people, seen as a precursor to the Paralympics. The orange flash represented a London taxi hire light. Mandeville was much maligned in the press, there will always be some mirthless killjoy. He didn’t have a good feeling about Teddy’s feline either.

I enjoyed the privilege for many years of submitting a selection of street art photos to the VNA guys for their quarterly zine. The vast majority of them went unpublished, there were far better photos from far better photographers to chose from. This is one of the unchosen. . . .

Taddy Baden, 2012
Teddy Baden, 2012


I took the liberty of visit to Shoreditch on my bike this morning, first time in over 2 months. Very little had changed, street artists have been socially distancing from the walls.  Notwithstanding whatever guff we get from Boris this evening I suspect there may well be more sucking from cess pit of my street art photos this week, catch them daily on my Instagram or facebook

Check out the previous weekly compendiums: DITA 1, DITA 2, DITA 3, DITA 4 and DITA 5

Art credits and links are by each photo. All photos: Dave Stuart

Sunday 8 January 2012

Graffoto Round Up of the Year - Part 4

Photos by HowAboutNo and NoLionsInEngland And here we have it folks, part 4 of 4 in the round up of 2011. This final look at the year now covers September all the way through to the end of December. Being that it was mild for the time of year, and there were a shed load of art festivals and paint jams in town, the surrounding areas had a nice smattering too. Street art pastes and stencils seemed to be out of the window for pretty much most of this quarter, and I think that was also a big shift for the year. Good to see more talented artists grafting it at the side of a wall. Also nice to see lots of quick and dirty damage throughout town. Rowdy Rowdy/Horror, photo HowAboutNo Brick Lane Rusht, photo HowAboutNo Shane Shane ODV, photo HowAboutNo Roid MSK Roid MSK, photo HowAboutNo D*Face D*Face in progress outside the Moniker Art Fair, photo HowAboutNo D*Face And completed, photo HowAboutNo Various, photo HowAboutNo Occupy Gold Peg, photo HowAboutNo Probs A solid year for the machine of graff that is Probs. Think this is my fave piece he has done ever. (photo HowAboutNo) Jimmy C @ Lounge Lover I think we'll see a bit more of JimmyC in 2011 (photo HowAboutNo) Motor Motor, photo HowAboutNo C215 C215, photo HowAboutNo Ronzo & Conor Harrington, photo HowAboutNo 2011 was the year Ronzo turned his hand away from sculpted pieces to graff.....and a welcome turn it was. This piece painted with Conor Harrington Evol photo HowAboutNo Evol impressively buggered about with scale this set of blocks making up a mini housing estate complete with Elk, Drax and Shun tags. Read more about his visit here P.O.W photo HowAboutNo Banksy did quite a few street pieces, all outside Soreitch - consequently I didn't get off my lazy arse to photograph them. No bother, this was my favourite thing he did all year anyway. Damáge General and most lovely damage . . . (photo HowAboutNo) Swoon Swoon, photo HowAboutNo Gaia This superb paste up by Gaia lasted no more than a few days and was fly posted over (photo HowAboutNo). Revok Roid Revok/Roid at the most single hit "legal" spot in Shoreditch (photo HowAboutNo). Don’t believe the nay-sayers saying the scene has tanked, looking back we have been overwhelmed with top quality shit on the streets of London in 2011. Stuff that should have got a mention earlier but just got missed in the admittedly random selection process includes: Phlegm was down several times during the year Phlegm photo: NoLionsInEngland One of the highlights of the year was the privilege of seeing Sweet Toof and Paul Insect collaborate on this stunning rooftop piece, and in case you missed it, the timelapse is here Sweet Toof, Paul Insect, London Rooftop photo: NoLionsInEngland Elbow Toe Elbow Toe - This Too Shall Pass photo: NoLionsInEngland This Chu sticker made us chuckle earlier in the year CHU - Smoking's fine photo: NoLionsInEngland So that's it for Graffoto's round up of the action in 2011. At the beginning and at lots of points throughout the year it did seem like it was stale and not moving anywhere. Part of wanting to look back at the year at the beginning of a new one has shown that it was a busy and colourful year, full of lots of new names and techniques and people to watch in 2012. The shift also seemed to go towards lots more "with permission" spots last year, I guess a big test for those shutters and areas may fall closer to Olympics time, when the council may decide to buff at random for no reason whatsoever. Happy 2012. Fuck The Buff.