F*** the F***ing F***ers - FREE 10FOOT

photos: NoLionsInEngland except Joeppowhere noted


Standby for a bit of a rant at inappropriate sentencing.


Artist unknown - view LARGE


London tagger, bomber and graffiti artist 10FOOT has been sentenced to 26 months in prison for a long list of acts of graffiti, also known as crimes. On release, he has a weird 5 year ASBO stopping him carrying “unset paint, permanent marker pen, shoe dye, permanent ink, grinding stone, glass cutting equipment, glass etching solution or paste” or from entering train yards.

That sentence is crass beyond belief. As balance between punishing a specific individual and deterring the rest, there no doubt 10foot is suffering way beyond what would be reasonably due him. 26 months banged up is just irrational, disproportionate, unjustifiable and quite capable of having a life-destroying impact.


Do you believe society is capable of electing representatives to create laws that are then used fairly by the judiciary? You can't justify believing that when you look at the stupidity of punishments like this.

For bringing it to my attention, cap is doffed to Joeppo and the London Vandal. You can read the full list of 25 acts of “criminal damage” 10FOOT pleaded guilty to, from the BTP press release on London Vandal here.

Looking at the list, not one of the criminal acts involves rape, dangerous driving, assault, theft, fraud, public indecency, threatening behaviour or racism. They are merely making a mark on walls. So some of those marks are on trains and they are private property, that’s a crime and crimes get punished after a “guilty” verdict but there is no way our world is going to be a better place for having 10foot locked up for 26 months.

The vast majority of the acts relate to trackside shit. Now if there ever was a kind of property that the word “marginalised” was invented for, it is on the whole the kind of spots that 10foot has been bombing. The clean up costs cited in the press release have to be fabricated as there is no way that any sane individual would want to spend 31 grand (about 52,000 dollars) creating buff coloured rectangles where 10foot has done his artwork. Quite what goes into those cost estimates (railway overheads?) we’ll never know but you can employ a feck of a lot of painters for that amount.

Why are those costs so high? To make us gasp, to smear some kind of shock factor to wave over the excessive prison sentence handed down. The costs are quoted to the nearest 37p or 24p which is so ludicrous it must be just done for comic effect.

It seems pretty clear that BTP have gone after 10foot motivated by vengeance, by a vandal headhunters blood lust, they must have been burning with a crazed ambition to make a name for themselves (bloody hell, that’s close to graffiti) and to obtain a huge sentence guaranteed to make the press. You can just see them high fiving, funny handshaking and off out celebrating on hearing the sentence.

In the two photos accompanying this post you can see the name Saycell, it’s not difficult to find information on the internet regarding Colin Saysell of the British Transport Police and his obsession with making examples of some high profile graffiti artists. The Fuck the Fuckers piece also rants about “fuck jizz wally” (SIC), Jeremy "Jez" Walley is also BTP and it is he who gloats over the fate of 10FOOT in the press release:

"[the] vandalism was nothing more than wanton damage that costs thousands of pounds to clean up”

Well quite, “nothing more than”, so how does that suggest 26months is the appropriate punishment?


photo Joeppo, aka LDN GRAFFITI


It also seems way over the top to take this crime to Crown Court. This can only have been to add a veneer of apparent gravity to the offences and to give BTP the big stage for their performance.


Did the judge have discretion to impose a more appropriate, less damaging punishment? We don’t know the technical legal answer to that but surely some serious community service perhaps coupled with that ASBO would have been less harmful. That last word is key in our minds, harmful, this punishment is likely to cause great harm to 10foot yet he has not actually caused harm to any individual anywhere.

Do you think the experience of sending 10foot inside is possibly going to “improve” him? 10foot is personable, affable, articulate and socially is not particularly attention seeking. After 2 years inside he is likely to pick up a shit load of new skills and attitudes that may make him a completely different proposition.

Of course, if he signs up for all the basket weaving and art classes the irony is when he is released he won’t be able to buy art materials unless someone else carries it home for him.

We are alarmed to read in the press release that his girlfriend’s house was raided. In the BTP press release they say the raids yielded photos of him fraternising with other known graffiti “vandals”. Well bollocks, Graffoto can be seen fraternising most weeks with some well known graffiti vandals and we’re not aware that that was a crime.

Just going back to the 26 months inside, how can this possibly proportionate or appropriate when a very cursory search on the net yields sentences such as 12 months for multiple stabbing and 24 weeks SUSPENDED for careless driving in the hit and run killing of a cyclist. In the list of headboard notches displayed in BTP's list of press releases there is a case this month of a man sentenced to 1 year imprisonment for raping an 86 year old woman travelling alone in a train carriage. Compare the horror of that crime, the impact on the woman and her family, the heightened fear engendered in her friends and other elderly people and solitary travellers with the nature of 10foot’s campaign of quietly sneaking about and writing his name. There won't be a single individaul who said "my life is perceptibly worse after that piece of graffiti" yet 10Foot is doing twice as much as a rapist. This may be law but it is not justice.

BTP, The crown court, society at large, you should be ashamed of yourselves. FREE 10FOOT.


artist: Robbo; photo: Joeppo, aka LDN GRAFFITI

Selection of 10FOOT graffiti here and here.



After a recount, this is Graffoto’s 200th post and we are proud that it is about such an important and serious matter



Broken Windows Footnote:

As a curiousity, in doing a bit of googling for this post, we came across a statistical analysis in the US which proves there is very little link between incidents of graffiti and incidents of other forms of crime – despite what the authors of the web page say. You can see generally from the graph plots that things are pretty scattered and you’ll be greatly puzzled by the low R-squared coefficients which suggests the correlation between the two graphed parameters is tiny, you need a number close to 1 to indicate a close relationship between occurrence of graffiti and occurrence of other crimes and the values in the plots are no higher than 0.26. And that’s after they removed some data which would have made R squared even lower. Check it out here.

Mantis - Altered State

Lord Napier, Hackney Wick
18 - 20 Nov 2010


photos: NoLionsInEngland except Howaboutno where stated


We like our street artists a bit elusive and few come more enigmatic than Mantis. The mystery revolves around the un-signed socio-political work on the streets and the comparative scarcity of paintings and prints. Mantis is a regular street defacer, his repertoire including epic stencils, defaced road signs and his own installed road signs though he has been known to freehand paint some large figurative pieces by the side of canals.


"All Fall Down", photo HowAboutNo


Quite often attribution to Mantis is process involving “definitely Banksy” followed by “not sure” followed by “not on Bansky’s website” sheepishly concluded with “oh, its on Mantis’ website”. The script goes horribly wrong when pieces are initially attributed to Grafter followed by a consensus that in fact Eelus was the painter


Mantis, not Eelus, nor Grafter



You are here (no exit)


One of Hackney Wick’s particular landmarks is the derelict Lord Napier pub hard by the Hackney Wick overground station.


BUSK


This has been derelict for years and Mantis has chosen its blackened interior to host his first ever solo show.



Painted wall background by Busk


In the first room, a granny’s living room, as comfortable as a slipper, complete with tweeting parrot simulates a world of contemporary modernity denied. A rocking chair provides a cosy perch next to a roaring fire – flames by Busk – in which Granny would sit and contemplate the sepia toned on the wall.




A couple of the finely drawn exercises have been seen out on the streets in stencil form, though it seems unlikely that they are stencils on this occasion.


Hopscotch (Hope Scotched)



The End Was Nigh


Glimpsed through the open door is the parallel exterior world of grim and congested urban landscapes and threatening spooky weirdness. Hanging on dirt streaked un-painted walls are a series of spraypaint and ink drawings on canvas and wood, celebrating a sort of retro modern architecture on one side and playing with life and death on the other.

The particular fish-eyed perspective of this ink drawing over aerosol spray on wood has the luminosity of Hopper’s Nighthawks combined with a bit of Rushka perspective.


Corner Shop


Mantis’ street work combines humour with social commentary and occasionally the humour surfaces in this show like this crushing of the Warholian legacy. A bin below this painting held a collection of empty Campbells soup tins, replica labels made by Mantis.



Recycle


Several of the paintings explore the future architecture theme, on the end wall the whole planet is covered with skyscraper buildings which chimes with the dire predictions implicit in simple but effective street pieces by Mantis.


Stop Consuming


In one corner a slot machine plays games with our fate, the buttons teasingly invite us to play or not play, the spinning reels indicate life or death and the nudges don’t deliver on the promises the labels make


Grim Reaper optional


Mantis has coyly omitted any sign that the art might be for sale, no drawing labels, no price list, in fact no indication anywhere of even the artist’s name. Self effacement is taken to the limit here. This show is fascinating just for the fact that it is by Mantis and revelatory in the undoubted quality of the drawings. The show runs for just three days and at time of writing closes tomorrow with a party, though we understand the paintings may be removed before the fun begins since it is planned to be a bit of a bop.



Oh, Now I see


Mantis is the kind of artists that delights Graffoto so we are particularly pleased that his debut show should be the subject of Graffoto’s 200th post. Happy 200th something to us - yeeeeeeeeahhhhaaaawwww

More images on flickr here

Swoon Scene in London

Photos: NoLionsInEngland (who is slightly peeved that blogger is trimming the right hand edges of landscape pics so that central elements shift to the right and important info is not visible. Click through landscape pics to see the original image)


Swoon was recently in London combining the installation of her part of the Small Acts of Resistance show at Black Rat Press with leaving a few pieces on the street.

A few years back, Swoon left some stunners on the streets of London.


Coronet St filigree



Girl From Ranoon


Both of those ran for a long long time and for me they never became invisible background, I never ever got bored of seeing them.


In those days the buff was a council employee and he told me one morning that he could see those Swoon pieces were things of beauty, though he had no idea they were “Swoon”, and he said he’d never buff those.


This photographed in late 07 but was definately there in 2006, the grain of the woode hoarding has cut into the paper and lent a gentle curving wash to the art.




This time round Swoon has put up 4 street paste ups, at least, that’s how many we have found. More knowledgable Swoon spotters have opined that these four new images haven’t been seen before which is cool for us locals.

This first one saw her returning to Blackall St, location of the Girl from Rangoon at the top. Blackall Street these days is a noisy battered alleyway with generally mediocre but occasionally adequate paste ups, Swoon’s piece is sort of jostling for elbow room in the crowd and that optical bedlam just doesn’t allow the piece to interact in any meaningful way with its environment, you probably need to know that the boy is gazing at some non-descript two storey offices opposite.


Swoon 2010, Boy from Haiti?


The last piece Graffoto found (well, HowAboutNo) sits in a very nice spot, I love the way the more delicate transluscent sort of paper Swoon has used here allows the colour of the two columns of London brick to seep through. Again he is scrutinising a fairly dull brick built office. Perhaps staring at places of work is the theme for this autumn's street collection.


Swoon 2010






Like the one above, this third one sits in a nice location and has awesome levels of detail within the art.







The final piece sits a little off the beaten track but not too far from Black Rat. The grainy detail pasted to the wall and even in the textures of the brick itself really captures a weathered and ancient face. When you look at the amount of detail in the close-up you can really appreciate the astonishing intricacy of the paper doily, not to mention how tricky it must be to paste that kind of work to the wall. The pipe at the bottom of the wall looks like it is meant to be a meaningful addition to the composition or at least provide some kind of context for the portrait but we just can’t figure out what.





detail


A much more knowledgable Swoon spotter (sorry - can't remember who otherwise they would get a shout here) has said they believe the new images in London haven't been seen on the street before, which is cool for us.


The Black Rat Press group show is constructed around the theme of how substantial change can be created by individual un-sung and small scale acts of protest or activism. With each of the artists there really was a sense that the despair, isolation and suppressed individual was fully explored but little sense of what they could or would achieve through individual action, on the whole they look like they remain oppressed. Other than Peter Kennard whose wall looked like the kind of high altitude panorama shot we used to see on the news from a camera mounted in the nose of a ship-to-shore missile.


Swoon, Know Hope, Armsrock, Matt Small, Peter Kennard, Dotmaster


Swoon’s top-to-bottom whole wall piece starts promisingly enough on the left with a single child sitting on land with a blasted tree and wooden hut in the background, the scene pans across a set of steps, with a distant village in the background, is he being invited up the steps? The image just sort of petters out to the right into indecipherable contemporary box buildings, broken signage and pieces of pasted paper. It seems to speak of the plight of orphaned children following the earthquake in Haiti, it's not too clear.




Close up the layers of newsprint paper build up into the background and the image of the child is beautiful but the sense remains that we are not seeing Swoon at her gallery best.




Previous show outings in London include her favella contribution in BRP’s launch show Heaped in 2007 with David Ellis and Monica Canilao, followed later by a significant, beautiful and cleverly staged train carriage panorama at Leonard St’s Urban Sprawl show


Swoon, Urban Sprawl, 2007


Photographs of Swoon shows from New York and elsewhere show that Swoon can transform spaces and create stunning wonderlands of filigree and portraits. Her work in her London shows has tended to leave us feeling a little short changed, fingers crossed that sometime we get a fully fledged solo show fit to blow our socks off.


Show continues at BRP until 30 November 2010 - update errrr, the BRP artist bios at the show says 30th, a BRP emails says 26th. They ought to know or perhaps just like to keep you guessing

Cept, Sweet Toof - Backyard Colouring

all photos: NoLionsInEngland


Graffoto went out hunting Swoons yesterday lunchtime, Boris Bikes for transport, cameras for the kill, separating and meeting again to cover more of the East London concrete jungle. Diddley squat, nada, nothing new, just the three recent pieces already located.

However, at the last rendezvous HowAboutNo excitedly reported that a known Burning Candy wall had been updated and the pelmet over a nearby raised shutter showed evidence of a new CEPT. Howaboutno being the less thick element of Graffoto came up with the genius suggestion that NoLions might find both the shutter down AND no parked cars blocking the garage wall if he swung past on his bike first thing in the morning.


Old - Before Colouring


And so it came to pass, there were no cars and shutters were down.


Cept, Sweet Toof


The CEPT lady is absolutely stunning, and borrows from the Black and white illusions CEPT has created in the past and a face portrait seen previously on CEPT prints (www.spradio.com – “Fly Wonder”).

CEPT has even painted the lamppost and the weird booby trapped water butt thing, though I found the optimum viewing point a little low giving a poor overall perspective. Doh.




The characters on the right are all by Sweet Toof.


Sweet Toof


The shutter nearby continues a long Cept saga of ambiguous loves won and loves lost.


CEPT


Then exploring a nearby rarely travelled lane we spotted the tips of an instantly recognisable CEPT painting and a pair of Sweet Toof teef opposite. A peep through a tiny hole confirmed a hidden secret graff art treasure trove.

Returning at lunchtime, the challenge was to find out which property the yard belonged to and could we get in. The people behind the new CEPT shutter said they could see it but it wasn’t theirs, they directed us around the corner. We pressed voice entry phone buzzers, CCTV cameras swivelled but no one answered (chiselled features, statuesque physiques and a tendency to be found at crime scenes leads to Graffoto often being accused of being five-oh). On a hunch we skirted round the whole block and came across a previously un-known art gallery. On the pretext of admiring the art, we tried the back door and it gave out onto the holy grail.


Sweet Toof


Hopefully this link might allow you see see this image LARGE(ER) (pls email if it doesn't work because I prob would need to tweak "rights")

Arch 402 is brand new, only opened last night. The gallerists know nothing about street art or graffiti and had actually been asked if they were going to “deal” with the growing amounts around the Cramer St garage. They enquired at the garage who the artists were, and let the garage mechanics know they liked the stuff on the walls and wanted more of it. Well and truly dealt with then.


CEPT


Those garage mechanics have previously featured in Graffoto reports for their resistance against the council who issued a written demand to remove the graffiti on the walls. So, a few days later, presumably about the time Sweet Toof and Cept went back to the garage wall, the gallery found it was now the proud host of one of the most stunning Sweet Toof/Cept collabs ever.

The interesting question arises – with 8 characters on the truck and one horse, which of the 9 strong Burning Candy crew is the mule and which one is the driver?


Name That Crew Member


If you travel the new East London line you are assailed by throws and pieces by Burning Candy types in the few hundred yards just south of Hoxton station, Mighty Mo and Gold Peg have running riot across the roof tops eye level with the trains whilst these two spectacular sites are immediately opposite eachother either side of the track.


Any number of street art gallerists would give their right one to have a private mural of this calibre on their walls. They’re parting question to us: “are they any good?”!!!


Sweet Toof


There you have it, Graffoto shares another lunch break with the World and Sweet Toof and Cept get a mention as well. Big Celebrations.

(ps - the bit about often being asked/accused of being cops is true – thing is, when someone wanders up to someone taking photos on skanky back lanes and says “are you a cop?” what happens next if the answer really is “yes”? The other one, really flattering...”are you a photographer?”]

Underbelly Project - NY subway art

Photos as credited by: Luna Park, Ian Cox aka Wallkandy,RemiRough,
James Garrett

Sources - Sunday Times, New York Times


The duty of the street artist shall be to create art taking risks, pushing boundaries and exploring territories so that the more risk averse among us may vicariously thrill and admire. Note for once the curious omission of the word “public”. Writing in today’s Sunday Times (UK) magazine (31 Oct 2010) and the online NY Times, Jasper Rees reveals a secret project in which about 100 artists have created an illegal and in-accessible gallery of graffiti and street art to re-affirm a fans belief in the spirit of (errr)”street art”.

In a nutshell, two people going by the pseudonyms Workhorse and Pac have been spent 18 months escorting a selection of graffiti and street artists into a dis-used hidden underground station on the NY Metro to create and leave a single piece of original art on the walls.


Underbelly - Photo: Emile Souris via The Sunday Times


The artists mentioned in the article are undoubtedly of the highest calibre. Whilst you may criticise a book for its curation when it seeks to preach about the top 1,000 street artists, I guess in this case the selection process depends a little on who the project dudes know and can trust, who the folk they know know, who they can cold call and interest in the project and so on in a sort of viral spiral selection process. It would be interesting to know who said no. Banksy is identified for one ("thou shalt not publish a street art article in the mainstream press witout mentioning Banksy". Opps - and in a blog ;-) ) .

Graffoto spoke to one of the artists identified in the Sunday Times. He was invited to come to new York for a painting event and took a lot of persuasion, principally as the flimsy information he was given was unlikely to convince his wife that he wasn’t just swanning off to NY for a lads’ weekend. Things became a little clearer after committing to travel but even the day he went into the station he had little idea of the brick canvas on which he would be placing his work.

“I met at Workhorse’s place for a rather limited briefing about what we could expect, they showed us a filmed walk through of the access so we’d be prepared for the risks involved and they had allocated a spot which they thought would work. “

Anyone slightest familiar with painting in train tunnels will know the most common access involves walking off the end of platforms, after first checking for public, workers, CCTV and other detectors. Our friend confirms in essence that was how the march to the abandoned station commenced, though the trek itself was longer and more convoluted than the Sunday Times article would lead you to believe.

“The place was pitch black, I could see very little work done by the other artists, I saw a Lucy MacLauchlan, the only light down in the place was the small amount of floodlighting on the spot I was painting. The organisers hastily rigged the lights and set up their time lapse cameras for documenting the work”.

The place was un-nerving, fear of detection by the authorities blended with legends telling of angry subterranean dwellers, mutant rats and tunnel prowling crocodiles easily spooked out of towners. According to the emerging stories, the station is one of many which were built by the ambitious and pre Great Crash NY authorities in the 20s to meet the grand aspiration of a station every 200 yards.

The process of entering and painting is recalled by our contact as “cloak and dagger yet incredibly intense”. The most gratifying aspect for this artist wasn’t the clandestine operation or the awesome collection of work coming together, it was getting to paint in New York, home turf for the 1970s NY graffiti legends which led the young artist to pick up a can many ago.
“Painting in New York has a strong resonance, I have been there nine times and this was the first time I had actually painted there” he said.


ROA - Photo: Luna Park


The organisers guided over 100 (UK Sunday Times), i.e. 103 (NY Times) artistes into the spot at various intervals over the past 18 months. NY policy don’t pussy around when they catch illegal art being created on the steets, never mind on MTA property so the stakes were incredibly high in this illegal undertaking. Meticulous planning and execution of each visit was required to minimise the risk of detection. Artists were only allowed 3-4 hours to complete their work. Due to the incredibly limited light available and very restricted amount of time allowed underground, our friend the artist regrets that he actually only saw a fraction of the work which had been completed.

The roster of artists drawn to the project by the organisers is very impressive. From the various “authorised” sources, we can identify: Boxi, Ethos, London Police, SheOne, Remi Rough, Stormie Mills, Damon Ginandes, Lucy MacLauchlan, Swoon, Logan Hicks, Aiko, Faile, Ron English, Flying Fortress, Imminent Disaster, Dan Witz, Elbow Toe, Ripo, Paru Ana Ana Peru, Michael De Feo, WK Interact, Roa, Specter, Demer, Momo, Posterchild, Saber, Trusto Corp, Sinboy, Cash4, Rone Nick Walker, Revok, Ceaze, Know Hope, L’Atlas, M-City, Mark Jenkins, Meggs, Kid Acne, Lister, Jeff Soto, Smith/Sane, Gaia, Noh J Coley and a long list of names new to Graffoto including Jim Darling, Thundercut, Daryll Peirce, Surge, Spazmat, Ema, Joe Lurato, Guilerme, JMR, Asylum, Gould, Indigo, Jeff Stark, Bigfoot, Kid Zoom, Strafe.

There is a website for Underbelly which went live yesterday, at present it is a single page with a tantalising underground photograph and a blurred out list of artists. More material is promised soon.


Damon Ginades - photo James Garrett via The Sunday Times


Graffoto is Olympic qualifying standard at interpreting the blurry appearance art acquires towards the tail end of a good lap of Thursday night openings in London, it may be wishful thinking to imagine that in the blurry list on the Underbelly website we can make out other names which may be Judith Supine, Chris Stain, Dick Chicken, Jon Burgerman, Skewville.

One effect of Cans Festival was to bring a number of the participants to much greater public awareness and one suspects that the interest in this project will be huge and that some participating artists will experience a similar ascendance.

Curiously, the two mainstream newspaper articles give sufficient information to make a reasonably intelligent guess at identifying who Workhorse is, which is certainly not Underbelly’s preference.


Revok/Ceaze - photo Luna Park


The newspaper articles are worth reading for the first hand reports from some of the artists and the direct quotes of the organiser Workhorse. I don’t begrudge street artists or graffiti artists making money from their skills. I do detest them wringing their hands about the commercial corruption of the scene. Rees quotes Workhorse as saying “We finally had a space in the world [which] collectors couldn’t contaminate. A space that couldn’t be bought”. This lamenting about the good ol days when they did what they did for themselves and the buzz and because they had time and if someone else liked it that was a bonus is all a bit self indulgent. Don’t give us this bullshit about us how evil we are for participating in a market that sustains you. You did this for the thrill and I hope the artistic satisfaction, not because “we” forced you to desperate lengths to protect your non commercial activity.

That’s merely to quibble with a description of the motive, the actual project itself is un-questionably mind-blowing. A photographer who has been down there spoke to Graffoto about the sensations and dangers of being down in the subway station

“I could see the dust in the air, it was like you were under water and disturbed the seabed.”

The hazardous nature of the dust is graphically illustrated by what the photographer found emerging from the subway.

“The torch I had had a magnet on the back so you could stick it on metal things, when I came out of there, the bottom of my torch was cake in dust particles, specifically on the magnet so the dust had a very high metal content, evidence of brake dust and rail dust coming up.”

The privileged journalist writing in the papers says that the occasion he witnessed was the last visit by the Underbelly organisers. He says that on exit they destroyed the means of access. Graffoto has seen photos of subway tunnel graffiti in places such as NY’s Freedom tunnel and In Paris and many other cities it is possible but incredibly dangerous to explore catacombs, underground storm drains (beware – the most lethal) and sewage systems, we are willing to predict a resurgence in extreme urban tourism, the hunt for the space shall commence!


Sane/Smith - Photo: Ian Cox


This project would have the Graffoto glands secreting, Jasper Rees hopefully appreciates how lucky he is to have got the gig, guess we’ll never know how but there’s a shitload of documenter envy heading in the direction of that dude.


Stormie/RemiRough - photo RemiRough


The project really captures the essence of street art and graffti, where risk is paramount and commercial considerations secondary (merely secondary in this case,not absent, Graffoto would need some persuading that it didn’t occur to anyone that the big reveal might, just might, stimulate a blizzard of beneficial publicity). Reading this Graffoto post is no substitute for visiting the various anointed sources. Firstly, the two Jasper Rees accounts are at The Sunday Times (subscription required) and New York Times. In substance the accounts are the same but the anecdotes in each come from UK and NY artists respectively. The NY version has a slideshow of far more images than the other sources.

Secondly source must be the Underbelly site. As Graffoto understands, there may possibly be further videos or timelapse clips of work to go up there some time in the future, roll on!

Photos taken by Luna Park have been posted on her blog and hats off to her, she has clearly had a fantastic experience, her own personal private Cans Festival and has taken some stunning photos under extreme conditions (no light!). Don’t bother with subscriptions or whatever, head over to Luna Park’s post here.

Luna Park’s UK’s equivalent prince of street art photography, Mr Ian Cox aka Wallkandy also had the privilege of a visit to the Underbelly project. His equally awestruck account and amazing photographs are on his Wallkandy blog.

RJ of Vandalog has also been down there, his account speaks of someone who can barely contain his excitement.

UPDATE (4 Nov 2010) = Reactions to this project have been mixed and polar; strong enethusiasm (Graffoto!) and deeply hostile. In the latter camp would be many Urbex aficionados and it is clear why this disclosure would offend their usual modus operendi, plus others critical of the "not intended for commercial gain" stance whilst creating a storm of publicity in the "reveal" (also Graffoto). News has broken that within three days of the articles appearing in the press, a lot of the works have been dogged. see pics here.

Graffoto is fortunate that it had no inkling that there was any such project underway so when the sunday magazine fell open on the right page, from zero awareness to instantaneous full impact was a delicious sensation. Shame if you happened to be vaguely aware about it before hand ;-)

UNRELATED BUT IMPORTANT NEWS: readers of Graffoto may be interested to know that the Wallkandy Forum has re-opened, head over there for more mature pontificating on street art, urban art and graffiti than one or two other forums that we won't mention. Note that the old www.wallkandy.net doesn't appear to work, you have to use the www.subversiveart.proboards.com. Enjoy, participate and play friendly.