Diggin In The Archives 3

Four weeks of Lockdown now, most sensible countries have extended their lockdown period for a few more weeks but don’t worry, the archive isn’t going to be running on fumes any time soon.

The relationship between impact and size is not at all clear in street art. Isaac Cordal's forlorn concrete figures were found in nooks and cranies in London over several years from 2010. Spotting them was difficult, how the artist installed them at their illegal elevated perches was inspiring. A few survive to this day.


Issac Cordal, 2010


As a great fan of stickers it is a bit remiss not to have looked back at some great stickers of times past. PS, or "Public Spirit" was an amazing sticker artist, the examples here date from 2010 and 2011. PS was comfortable with a range of styles from fantasy illustration to op art via pure abstract geometeric but always in a very distinctive teardrop style. The first sticker in this series has a little clue how to look for the initials PS embedded in the swirling shape of the art - other than the purely symmetrical ones (so far as I can see anyway).

At least one PS sticker dating from that period survives in Shoreditch.



















Fake stencil. Fake Street artist K-Guy. Fake photo from 2017. K-Guy has total authority.


K-Guy, 2017


Burning Candy represented by Cept, Sweet Toof, Tek 33 and DScreet had the first spot on lockdown for many years. The Garage owner received a council enforcement notice demanding the piece be buffed but flatly refused. Garage now rolled over by development.


Cept, Sweet Toof, Tek 33 and Dscreet


Burning Candy at its largest grew to 9 members, the next photo features two of London's hottest #rooftop kings of that time, MightyMo and Goldpeg


Mighty Mo, Goldpeg, 2010


Otto Schade painted very intricate musing on human emotions using a stencil technique, symbolically connecting the emotions and the nervous system to external stimuli. This was one of his earliest ribbon paintings on the street, the owners buffed this very shortly after Otto finished it.


Otto Schade, 2010


Stewy Stencils populated Shoreditch and Norf London with a menagerie of animals, reaching a zenith with the size of this horse. The horse appears to be tethered and getting fed, not sure if that was Stewy or a clever augmentation by someone else. Either way its great when there is a little more to the stencil than just a spot where there was no cctv. Then virgin wall, now a hotel stands on the property opposite the Pure Evil Gallery. A version of this horse closer to Brick Lane was brilliantly augmented by Saki, might have to dig that pic out later but let’s hope we aren't in Lockdown that long.


Stewy Stencils, 2012


From the days when artists did find virgin unpainted derelict walls in Shoreditch. "Plastic Bones" Best Ever v. Deadleg


Best Ever v. Deadleg, 2011


Next week, same time same place yeah?  Check out Part 1 and Part 2

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

Hit Shot Walls June 2013

June was a bumper month for activity around Graffoto towers, not least dry conditions meant casting aside  essential foul weather gear to find something cool but not overly flesh revealing!

All photos: HowAboutNo

Local scene stalwart and Signal Gallery co-owner Dale Grimshaw produced a range of stunning large murals and smaller paste ups.

    DALE GRIMSHAW

Nice to see Narcélio Grud back in London, up alongside the Twombly-esque Sliks, seen partly complete in this shot.

    NARCÉLIO GRUD & SLIKS

The popular and affable RUN, one of London's favourite adopted Italians outside the worlds of football and bunga bunga is no stranger to the Village Underground walls but this cracking swan was epic  in scale, probably the largest painting we have seen from him in this country.

    RUN

Jana and JS returned to London and with a number of permission walls in effect were able to go very large with a couple of self portrait stencil murals but we found the placement of their smaller paste ups stunning.

    JANA & JS

National rag The Guardian has had few weeks getting conspiratorially excited over leaks and revelations courtesy of Mr E Snowden which convince us that the USA's National Security Agency is reading every pithy tweet and bitchy private message, T.WAT came up with this very timely skit on America being all ears.  Then of course we found that the un-authorised snooping in the UK was even more rampant, no surprise there.

    T.WAT & OTHER

Paul Insect continued his highly productive run of paste ups.

    PAUL INSECT

    HiN

Some say this is by Ronzo but we're not convinced.  No reason to say it's not Ronzo, though we'd have expected the baseball cap motif to be a capital R.  Either way, it's a damn fine paste up

    UNKNOWN

A looming wall crisis in Shoreditch is forcing artists with permissioned mural gigs to paint as far away as 10 yards off Brick Lane on smaller and smaller walls.

    BAILON

    KYLE HUGHES-ODGERS

Curious phonetic challenge reading the name on this artist new to our eyes, do you say "Frah" or "Franarchy"? Another artist completely new to us but some of the pure stencil items we located by FR.A are quite stunning.

    .frA

    

   

   .frA

    .frA

    .frA

Blog mucker NoLionsinEngland is familiar with the work of INO from Athens and reports that this little beauty is actually quite modest by INO's standards but its great to see another quality artist coming out of Greece.

    INO

    HiN

    

    BEST EVER