Showing posts with label Rowdy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rowdy. 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

Friday 18 October 2013

Hit Shot Walls - September 2013

All photos HowAboutNo
Words NoLionsInEngland

We are just over halfway through October so it must be time to reminisce fondly on the street art that appeared on Shoreditch walls back in September. We can also reminisce on the good old days when the part of Graffoto wandering round with a camera would let the part of Graffoto that thumps the keyboard keys know that the pics were ready in the draft box;-)

MJar put up some wonderfully hand coloured and spray finished paste ups then he got round to fighting evil nasties by putting his paste up faces over advertising for a record which was trying to pass itself off as street art.




MJar


Art Is Trash is still around and still looking like the big new thing in street art for 2013. The non conformist anthropomorphised packaging of his installations continue to defy categorisation as domestic refuse (white bin bags) or restuarant waste (black bin bags) and so create a pavement mess for quite a few days! He also takes up cudgels on behalf of the virtuous by assaulting flyposters placed over graffiti, the particular modification below were truly spectacular.


Art Is Trash


Is was nice to see Pablo Delgado back at the bottom of the brick canvas, this particular example of his work being quite epic.

Pablo Delgado


Our favourite Brazilian Cranio rounded off his visit to London with this scorching Mural showing hs friends the rainforest indians enjoying their drugg, pets, iPhones and replica kits in a denuded brown landscape stripped of trees. Sadly the day after he left some toys went to town tagging it.

Cranio


Unknown unknown


We love the cool way Miilo has transformed the Post office logo into a teeshirt design here


Mean strikes a blow for Shoreditch graffing
Mean

Binho brought a delicious characteristic Brazilian style to the streets of Shoreditch
Binho


Saki was pretty busy this month in particular doing some wonderful stuff in the windows and doors of a barred abandoned building but this isn't it.
Saki and Bitches



SP Zero76


It has been quite a while since a street artist provoked such unanimous hostility as 2-Square, perhaps it is the work on the walls, perhaps it is the dippy hippy over the top sheepskin look, I'd like to think it was collective critical horror at their piss poor painting slap next to the Roa Hackney Road rat

2-Square


C3's work has charmed us mainly by dint of appearing in D7606's old phone boxes and vintage TVs so it was nice to find this large size heavy duty one off solo piece of work.

C3


Also making a more than welcome return to Shoreditch's walls was environmentalist Xylo. It has not yet been determined if this tile is referencing the work of sculptor Jacob Epstein or a droid.

Xylo


To finish this look back, this manic cracker on the home turf of HowAboutNo from the cans and brushes of Rowdy and Sweet Toof


Sweet Toof, Rowdy

Saturday 30 June 2012

High Roller Society Teeshirt Printing with Copyem




10 Palmers Rd
London E2 0SY

Sat 30 June & Sun 1 Jul 2012, 1pm - 5 pm

Copyem: Facebook; Tumblr

All photos: NolionsInEngland


This Graffoto scribe has learned a bit about various forms of printing at workshops which run by High Rollers Society gallery in East London.  As the NoLions wardrobe is notably bereft of cool teeshirts, a teeshirt printing workshop looked like too good an opportunity to miss.

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Copyem, master of tee shirt printing, has been printing teeshirts, sweat shirts, hoodies, vests, tote bags as well as vinyl, paper and boxes for a couple of years out of his own  fully equipped studio.  High Rollers bumped into Copyem at Pick Me Up, the contemporary graphic art fair at Somerset House earlier this year and that chance encounter between kindred spirits led to this workshop this weekend.

Copyem brought some screens and some basic teeshirt printing equipment to the gallery.  Not to damn with faint praise but for multicolour printing and larger volumes Copyem uses 8 frame carousels which are not practical to schlep across London to the gallery, hence the basic gear in use today.

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Graffiti Is For Losers - Copyem12


The first step in the process is obviously, create your artwork, which leads onto the second step, burn your screen.   Step 1 was fulfilled by several notable artists and Copyem had already burned the screens back at base.

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Copyem screen


Handy tip alert - Copyem applies an abundance of tape to the screen outside the image area in case there are spots where the photosensitive chemical didn’t harden in the burning process, so the parcel tape prevents un-wanted ink leaking through those spots. The screens are clamped into the screenprinting press with the image centralised.  A light spray of adhesive to prevent the teeshirt from slipping around preceeds the stretching of a teeshirt over the wooden base.   

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Young Master NoLions - Scientists discover lack of can skills is hereditary


The screen is charged with screenprinter ink, though other forms of acrylic and water soluble ink can be used, and the squeegee is used to drag ink across to “flood” the screen.

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Flooding complete, the ace printer makes two or three passes across the screen with the squeegee to force the ink through onto the teeshirt.  We were all ace printers for one afternoon!

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When the image looks solidly printed, the screen is lifted and a heater element placed a couple of inches over the tee to dry the ink off.  Rumours abounded of people popping tees into the oven or under the grill to complete this stage.  

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Hey presto, super cool kid with the hottest teeshirt around.

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At the workshop we saw three different designs being printed , the purple Goldpeg above and  a black on white “Graffiti is for losers" and a pink (ok – fushia) coloured character by Copyem12.   Anyone could have a go at printing the Copyem designs which could be taken away for a fairly nominal donation to the costs.  The Goldpeg and couple of ultra cool multi colour Rowdy and Sweet Toof tees were available to buy from the gallery.   The Sweet Toof tees came with a special screen printed Toof image which looked to have uniquely varied backgrounds.


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Rowdy, Goldpeg, Sweet Toof


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Sweet Toof screenprints (inside the teeshirt packages)


The compact layout of the High Roller Society gallery makes for a very intimate workshop experience, participants not only get to see every aspect of the process close up, the “vibe” lends itself to informal discussion with the expert presented as the workshop progresses and everyone gets to have a crack as well.    If you are reading this on Sat 30 June 2012 or before 5 pm Sunday 1 July then there is  a chance tomorrow (Sunday) for people who couldn’t make today to have a go and (or) to pick up some of those cool teeshirts.  Well worth a quick visit.

Copyem: Facebook; Tumblr

PS - a tiny selection of the cool schiz from the Good Times Roll Show now on at High Rollers- another good reason for heading down to High Roller Society:


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Numskull (Aus)


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Rowdy


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Nylon


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Martin Lea-Brown


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Remi Rough


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Dark Clouds (NY)


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Milo Tchais


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Dark Clouds (NY)

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.