Showing posts with label Ben Slow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ben Slow. Show all posts

Monday 10 March 2014

Hit Shot Wall - a wet month!


All photos: NoLionsInEngland (HowAboutNo pretending there were no trains all month from the South Coast, that's 4 x 5 = 20 days working from home, yeah!)


February has been a month of unrelenting street art activity by street artists clad mainly in anoraks and wellington boots. Going to kick our look back this month, a month where the elements really tested the longevity of paper based art, with a sculptural slant.

Love Piepenbrinck placed several new fancy dress piggies out on the streets and has teased us with a photo on Facebook captioned “Most Hidden Piggy – almost impossible to even photograph”, which we haven’t seen hide nor hair of.

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“Lay Off My Blue Suede Shoes”


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Camouflage Piggy


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Para Piggy

French street artists delight in showing us how it should be done, Nemi Uhu has placed a series of beautiful painted tiles on the Shoreditch streets.

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Nemi Uhu


Another French artist who really got up on a lot of walls was Gregos, over in connection with the Vitry Ville Street Art book signing. He does these cast selfies, they supposedly show his emotional condition each day and a lot of the London ones are poking their tongue out at us, bloody French!

Gregos
Gregos


One of the weirdest bit of street art we have seen in a long while is this space hopper stuck up in a tree by 616. Not so much referencing its context as totally subverting its environment, or perhaps is it actually meant to look like an oversize orange?

616 Space Hopper
616


Alex Arnell believes in giving away street art and places hundreds of hand cut and painted paper butterflies on walls. With the volume of rain we had in the month of February, Alex seems to have decided that the last place butterflies would want to hang out is down the drains and here a flock seem to be fleeing out of a manhole.

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Alex Arnell aka "Sell Out"


Without doubt one of the cleverest and most exciting things we have seen this month, perhaps this year, has been Borondo’s face by the canal on Hackney Wick, already drooled over on this Borondo Hits London Graffoto blog post.

Borondo
Borondo

Dee One’s Heavenly Rejects have been a delightful presence on the Shoreditch streets for about a year, his minature pieces such as devils painted on acorns is often easy to pass by. One of his most pleasing and most difficult to spot is this aquatic scene.

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Dee One


Don has been out painting the wall in February and we caught him in action one afternoon painting this girl cuddling her pet goat, once again Don comes up as about the most adventurous and detailed British stencil street artist active on outdoor walls.

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Don


This skateboarder by Unify is defying the no skateboarding prohibition as all good skateboarders must, though if you look closely maybe not is all as it seems with the sign! With the mooted demise of the Undercroft at its current location, I wonder if Unify has dropped this one just outside the skatepark? It's begging for it.

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Unify


Ben Slow created this portrait in support of Depaul, the message is don't let their story end on the street. http://www.depauluk.org/

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Ben Slow


One of the most impressive and photogenic paintings in February was this little beauty by C215, over for a show (now closed) at StolenSpace.

C215 at night
C215

K-Guy has been busy on the streets recently, his original Tr*ash fag packet paste ups were a delight back in the early days of my love for street art and he has now revived them with this reflection on the latest health demon – high sugar levels in food.

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K-Guy


Mr Cenz has also had a highly productive month painting letters and portraits, perish the presence of all the cars in this, errrr, car park.

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Mr Cenz


I can’t be sure when Mobstr painted this stencil but I only found it February, so because I love the humour and the ironic fun at the expense of social media obsessed street art fans, it counts as February in my time-warped calendar.

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Mobstr


Bit late this month and a bit rushed but fun as always.

Monday 22 June 2009

Royal Albert Hall - LOAD


The Wonderland Collective
The Royal Albert Hall, London
22 June 2009 – only!


The Royal Albert Hall has an almost un-paralleled status in the history of high-brow entertainment and in its’ 138 years has hosted some of the truely iconic performers. And my kids did a percussion workshop and this is the story of how a troupe of stencil based urban artists came to together to pay tribute to them.

Under the Albert Hall is one of those backstage areas most of us never get to see, a place where artic lorries transport huge stage sets and overblown egos, also known as a loading bay. The Wonderland Collective were commissioned to create an enormous freize in the loading bay, hence the title of the opening, as tribute to the hall’s own history and today the fruits of their squirts were on show to the public for one day only.


Load


The beauty of this work is that the real legends, those icons from the pioneering days when British bands ruled the world and American torch singers and balladeers found their audience in the UK remain legends to many generations. Their famous poses and celebrate moments from the archives still have the power to thrill.


Bob, Elton and The Bolshoi Ballet


The installation splits into four distinct elements. There is the Icon wall featuring a montage of giants and Jay Z. Painters on this wall included Grafter and Eyesaw.


Roger Daltry, Muhammed Ali, Noel, Shirley, Jimi, Jay Z, Pavrotti and Frank


Opposite this curve piece is an elongated timeline featuring luminaries such as Paul Weller, Elton John, Jimi, Mick, The Beatles, Eric Clapton and Einstein, the last somewhat out of context but apparently he spoke at the Albert Hall before the outbreak of World War II.


The Beatles, Albert Einstein, Eric Clapton


The third wall looks somewhat spartan, with a collection of translucent Union flags arranged either side of a silhouette of Henry Wood conducting the BBC Proms under a large RAH motif and some popular classical musicians.


Vanessa Mae, Andre Previn


Apart from the stars from the entertainment business, the mural also pays homage to the many others who have used the RAH either temporarily as a passing moment in history or routinely as a local albeit remarkably specialised amenity – the suffragettes, majorettes and brass band competitors, children and ....er.... sumo wrestlers.




The turnout was impressive and varied, opening a behind the scenes space in a location like the Royal Albert Hall to show new paintings of everyone’s heroes draws a fresh crowd considerably different to that found slumped in the gutters in Shoreditch after a Pure Evil opening on a Thursday night.


Naomi, Mick, Winston Churchill, Basket players, Bob and The Bolshoi


The illuminations were a tribute to the fact that one of the first displays of electric lighting was held at the Royal Albert Hall and also explain the eery bluish tint in the pics.

The work will remain on the walls for ever, locked behind the private doors and out of sight from the public. You have to envy the sense of historic achievement The Wonderland Collective must enjoy, they have created something that is destined to last, something to be viewed for decades and decades by generations of roadies and drivers.



For the record, street/urban artists who contributed to this wall, the members of The Wonderland Collective (and possibly some friends) were: Ben Slow, Snik, Blam, Finbarr DAC, Grafter, Eyesaw, DanK, DBO and Babel.