Cans Festival - One More Sniff

Remember how news of the Cans Festival broke to us common plebs last May? Some posters, a list of artists too incredible to believe? In just 5 days time? Well, now we have a new mystery:

What could it be? Some have talked of something fresh, some have talked of The Grand Buff (actually I just made that up), as there is nothing concrete to go on and it case it is all about to disappear I thought I'd make one more trip to Leake Street this evening, just a month or so since my last visit.

Unlike some other graffiti festival sites I have been to where either the graff was taken away or the site remained sterile and un-touched since the event, Leake Street has generated a steady trickle of fresh stencil updates as well as territorial assault from graff crews. And based on some horror stories I have heard, some of those youngsters are quite viperous thugs.

A recent visitor has been Sickboy, adding a temple into Boris Johnson's gob and a collab with Spanish artist Zosen.

Sickboy and Zosen Fight The Power

It is good to see writers getting handy with the cans, personally I don't feel like its heresy for them to go over old stencil, its a force of nature.

Tizer - I put this one first because unusually I could read a bit of wild

That one above is HOT

"Google Codex Alimentarius". And to save you the trouble, this is what the website says: "The Codex Alimentarius Commission was created in 1963 by FAO and WHO to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme." Sounds as exciting as the EU's efforts to standardize the shape of bananas.

Ckeck the fate of Bansky's Caveman buff. Tags appear all over the cave drawings and the "buffed" area in Banksy's composition but none has covered the sprayer or Banksy's tag. It like no matter how hardcore or aggressive the writers want to appear, they're really convention abiding pussycats who can't actually write over an image of a human and have too much respect for the cool might of the Banksy brandname.

Tristan Manco has written in a recent art mag that some 651 un-invited artists signed up to have a go at stenciling over the first Cans weekend. Well many many more have turned up to add their un-regulated shit Among the loads of fresh stencils, one that caught my eye for good cutting, nice image and great colours was this, tagged "Onelegout".

Onelegout

So, is there a fresh wall of frame going up, is it the grand buff, is the site returning to Eurostar or is it just a minor clean up to make it look like it did that May bank holiday weekend? Lets see what Saturday morning brings.

Quite a lot more pics from this visit here, pics from the "official invited" artists at the opening here and for earlier relevant blog blurts see Cans Festival, Let Us Spray and diary of a toy at Cans aka "Banksy, NoLions, Eelus Group Show (or, Banksy - You Created A Monster)"

POST SCRIPT:

Cans Festival proved to be something Graffoto had to devote far more than this post to, here is the full set of related posts:

Cans Festival - the first preview night visit
Cans Festival - Let Us Spray - what went on in Banksy's pet project, the public access spray zone
Banksy, No Lions, Eelus Group Show - Banksy wanted anyone apart from artists to take up stencilling, we accepted the challenge
Cans Festival - One More Sniff - How the Cans wall art evolved in the first month or so after the event
Cans Recycled - First Peek - An un-scheduled sneak peek at the second version of Cans Festival when the tunnel was closed for a few days.
Cans Recycled Opens - Like it says on the tin
Alphabet Soup - The Cans 2 Letter Hunt - A Rarekind of letter game played at Cans Recycled
Cans2 Recycled Revisited - more.