Showing posts with label Cans Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cans Festival. Show all posts

Sunday 31 August 2008

Cans2 Recycled Revisited

One of the unique charms of London’s art galleries is their enlightened welcome of members of the public who can add their own enhancements to the displayed works and correct the principal artist’s shortcomings. Actually no but in the case of the Leake Street tunnel there ain’t no stopping anyone with a spray can getting their piece up.

A swift return to the Cans Recycled site just 8 days after it opened revealed a number of large scale additions, a bit of going over and a lot of additions to the all-comers exit ramp area.

Sweetest new piece is undoubtedly this one by Petro

Petro
Petro



The roadworks have been completed since last weekend and the removal of the fenced off holes permits better shots of pieces in that area. It is much easier to see how the head of Conor Harrington’s horse connects to the fire-breathing mouth of AlexOne’s dragon.


Conor Harrington/AlexOne



Xenx’s flora and fauna fantasy land can be captured in all its glory – ultrawide and leaking across the floor.


Xenx




Xenx



Mode2 has also been in town.


Mode2




Mode2



Prize for the most confrontational going over goes to London’s Oker who have sprayed over the crisp piece left by Bristol’s What Crew (Richt, 45RPM).




Will Barras’s car piece was done on cardboard in-fill to the windows, and those bits of cardboard had been signed on the back. That was recklessly mentioned on one website and un-surprisingly it is now a very windy windowless ride. All the other vehicles are beginning to look like some has taken a sledge hammer and angle grinder on their daytrip to Waterloo.

More pictures of these plus other throwies in the flickr set here


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.

Sunday 24 August 2008

Alphabet Soup - The Cans 2 Letter Hunt

I haven't seen any comment anywhere else so I am begining to wonder if I am reading too much into the letters in the tunnel! Anyway, without doubt the Cans tunnel has a Hunt The Thimble game involving each letter of the alphabet, I have only found 23 - could someone return the E, the F and the G please.

[edit: the following comment kindly provided by Copyright on flikr photos: "some of the letters were painted early on, as relatively small peices over old work, as the day went on and more artists turned up, a few of the letters got painted over by bigger pieces."]






The full set of letters (except, dammit, the missing ones) are in this flickr set here

London's legendary and elusive NoNose was obviously in the tunnel today judging by the flotilla of flourescent sputknik potatoes (yes - there is an e in the plural) and the dayglo ciabatta.


More Nonose here

The NoLions brat pack decided that the SweetToof (pic in the post below this one) has one bad tooth and is changing it for a good tooth. Perceptive little blighters, but that won't help them when I send them up the chimneys.


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.

Saturday 23 August 2008

Cans Recycled Opens

Leake Street tunnel re-opened this morning to reveal a lush kaleidoscope of freehand spray graffiti and ensemble of burnt out cars. Crowd control barriers not required this time - no crowds! No ice cream vans, no posters, not even any staff, just a no-fuss “ok, at your leisure look at what we’ve done this time” vibe.


Lucy McLauchlan


Cans 2 presents a teasing little treasure hunt for us…an alphabet “learner” (“A is for ATG”, “K is for Kool Skool) of letters sprayed at various points in various styles. Having identified a mere 15 letters on first visit, the presumption must be the full alphabet is there, ya just got to find ‘em. [update - now up to 23/26. when you have finished enjoying this post (thats an order!) read the subsequent post about the Alphabet hunt here or check out the flickr alphabet soup here]




The original un-missable “Gentrify This” hoarding by Insect has been done over by a wonderful piece of reverse graffiti consisting of torn layers of advertisements, which by the face portrait and technique shouts Vhils, though this needs to be confirmed.


Vhils


The West Country is well represented in the first few yards of the tunnel, with the first of several owls by 45RPM, a pair of Inkie laydies and next to them a Mau Mau bo-peep allegory on the public fear of graffiti (its not the graffiti that makes places scary, it’s the scary people doing it!).


Inkie



Mau Mau


The eerily quiet tunnel is haunted by the ghost of the May bank holiday festival, this time the one name missing appears to be Banksy, there isn’t any particular piece which might make you think of the freehand pre-stencil Banksy from the mid 90s and Walls Of Fire Bristol days. Though of course, this may be wrong. Attribution is a challenge at this early stage of the “reveal” (unless you are an insider with a list or an awesome global graff expert), though we are reasonably confident of the identities attributed in this report, if you go to the related collection of picks on flickr (link below), the names of many artists probably should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Alexone opened a show of new work this week at the Stolen Space Gallery in Brick Lane, some liked it, others were indifferent. Response to Alexone’s new piece in the total must be a unanimous wow! Compositionally Alexone’s firebreathing dragon blends into the adjacent Conor Harrington horse rider thought the join is fudged by an explosion of gold paint. The pair together look gorgeous


Connor Harrington, Alexone


London based Greek and long time favourite The Krah has worked a sinuous organo-robotic piece intertwined with his more recent plague victim aliens. Slightly surprisingly there is no sign of his Athens buddy FORS who by recent evidence on London streets (well, outside The Foundry Bar actually) is known to be around.


The Krah


The only Cans Mk I pieces from the original invited artists which are still in place are the Vihls reverse graffiti pair of faces (hurray!), Banky’s gorilla painter, the Faile wall stencils, and Pobel’s man trapped in shopping trolley. Oh – and all the people’s wall stuff is untouched.


I Wonder


The honour of vandalising the car wrecks this time is shared by Lucy McLauchlan, ATG Crew, Zeus and Dotmasters among others (ie. – no idea who they are). ATG play with the taxi, a shady looking passenger with his feet up gets driven around by a masked bandit, both by Alex One, whilst on the other side they reprise the “ATG love Ldn” piece seen earlier this year on the End Of The Line wall in Shoreditch. Lucy McLauchlan attacks the car with more abandon and dash than is usually seen in her characteristic crisply painted face-scapes, the characters present sterner, less alluring faces than her usual svelte pristine beauties, and there are no birds.


Lucy McLauchlan


ATG, hardcore graff crew that they are, live up to their rooftop portfolio, popping up all over the tunnel up in the eaves and high above other pieces, fostering in the imagination an indifference to the control of the organisers which is true to the spirit of graff writing.



”A Is For ATG”, Asure (ATG Crew)


WordToMother has a piece with the painter character sitting in front of a modern city of towers with smoke belching cooling towers in the foreground. Opposite that, rather than conventionally declare his love for a maiden, WTM boasts the maiden loves him (though it could also be a homage to his actual mother!).


WordToMother


Pure Evil brings the sprit of rebellion to the show with the stolen slogans of Thomas Jefferson and even climbing into the roadworks to spray “I am so underground” in the excavation. Naughty puppy.


Pure Evil


Busk has taken over those two slanted walls previously hosting the luscious Logan Hicks pieces and done some really tight photo realistic portraits.


Busk


An enormous cloudscape with birds and infinitely tall trees is instantly recognisable as pure Xenz.


Xenz


One piece we love but have no idea (yet) who it’s by is this smaller piece incorporating a trio of figures, a woman with some kind of gas machine or gun perhaps, a superhero and a fleeing woman/child, can hardly make head or tail of what it might be about but it looks delicious.


update: Will Barras


Near the Lower Marsh exit, two of London’s cutest vandals get their space in the spotlight. SweetToof, possibly in a collaboration, and possibly with Cyclops has done a very large face with pink gums as usual but clothes pegs instead of teeth! The character extends an arm over the roof of the tunnel and clasps another clothes peg whilst the other hand works a peg loose from the gums, some kind of nightmare self administered dentistry. Again, the static ambiguity means this creature could be filling his gums with improvised clothes peg teeth. CEPT has declared his love for spray paint in the morning (presumably meaning the 3am type morning rather than cornflakes and toast time).


SweetToof



Cept


Copyright’s curious absence from the initial line up at Cans Festival is corrected this time with a lush but ambiguously captioned Love War with three gun toting maiden with practise targets marked on their torsos.


Copyright


This piece with a pair of skeletons weeping over a scary eagle based animal whilst handing over diamonds (US exploitation of third world resources? – a always this is a complete guess) which is awesome for both the symbolism and the execution.


I-Lib, Dead By Thirty


A very coarse count suggests somewhere between 80 and 100 new pieces or work by possibly 40 or 50 artists. It’s a huge show, incredible that on the whole it was put up in two days. Beyond the sample of pieces shown or mentioned here is an awesome selection of top quality pieces, check out the much much bigger set of pictures on the link below.


L Is For London + Panik (ATG Crew)


What is the point? Well there’s loads. First simply is a response to the feeling that graffiti guys have no talent and can are at the limit of their abilities using stencils, well have a look now at what good street artists can do freehand armed with spray cans on rough walls. Second is to present an array of superb domestic and international graffiti and street art talents. Another is to enjoy, do it.



Get yer Cans 2 pics ere

Friday 22 August 2008

Cans Recycled - First Peek

Off the back of a bogus tip off on one of the more decidely dodgy streetart forums this morning, myself and nolions hot footed over the Lower Marsh for a "Banksy print release"...... no surprise that it turned out to be complete and utter bollocks, we at least got a sneaky peak over the barriers and can share these exclusive pictures with you






So clear presence from Part2ism, the on of the long shot of the tunnel looks like a Cept on the orange background from what I could see, but lets wait and see!
EDIT: Here ya go HAN, a few more of my snaps
Cept
SweetToof
Inkie, Sickboy + Zosen, ATG Crew, M-City
Such a beautiful word:


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.

Wednesday 20 August 2008

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.

Monday 5 May 2008

Cans Festival - Let Us Spray

Popped down to the third and final day of Cans Festival, this time with a mission to get past the security and get some photos on the exit ramp where all the un-billed artists could rock up and spray. Conning my way past with a few stencils in my mitts, the results of this mass participation spray-a-thon are pretty awesome.

Known names seen in the spray-it-yourself area included Jef Aerosol, The Krah, K-Guy, TEK13, Mr Brain-washed (but he was everywhere), Snub, Hush, Hutch, C215, Asboluv. These regular practising crims were jostling shoulder to shoulder with a horde of enthusiastic stencilists from the beginner (I’d never sprayed a can in my life before) to the staggeringly accomplished. Here’s a selection of some of the highlights.

In the main drag, Blek had passed through, dropping a few very familiar Blek images. A number of other artists had either escaped my attention on previous visits or had done their shit since Saturday lunchtime. A sand artist had set up in the sandpit area, for a fiver you could get your picture taken sitting on his sand sofa. The staggering liberty here was his sofa totally covered Banksy’s tag leopard which would deny one of the best pieces of the show from all today’s visitors. Get out of it!


Reports of carnage - unfounded




unknowns – love the linking of the toddler and the rocket


This lad must have been about 12-14, great stencilling and impressive images:


Tonch



Regular graffoto fav The Krah



Focus



SPQR



great bat placement - unknown



Well worked – AME72



What a pile of shit. Suspect Dicky and Smif (D*Face hackers) [update: Not Dicky & Smif. and everything else written is made up as well.]



The whole event was worth running!

More pictures from the access all vandals area here:

Write up of the main artists area in the previous blog entry, and pictures from the main artists here


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.