Hit Shot Walls - August 2013

All photos HowAboutNo except NoLionsInEngland where stated
Words NoLionsInEngland

August, a hot oppresive city, empty workspaces, charged tense atmosphere and tourists.  Yup, on the whole that pretty much sums up this month's Shoredtich Street Art scene except that wall space was actually pretty very full and in one controversial case, pretty badly buffed!

Above did a cool Pole Dancer which in daytime baffles but at night amazes.  Someone - presumably the building owner immediately took steps to "conserve" the work by covering it in pespex but....hang on mate.... you can't sell it, it requires the shadow of the lamp to make sense so it can't be moved, duh:

ABove Photos (kaboom tishhhh):NoLionsinEngland

Otto Schade did his thing with the nuclear sun background again, lushly blended paint work looks beautiful.  Nice to see how self effacing this one is compared to the Hanbury St one which has a tag and TWO osch weblinks:

Small pieces by Fred le Chevalier were in great abundance this month and looking very sweet too, such as this sprinting bearded lover:

Nylon:

The "hate Eine" still raises eyebrows - it's by Eine himself.

Not painted in August, just the first time this photographer found the doors shut!

Saki executed a trio of nicely sized Geishas on plywood, the first time we have seen action from her on the streets in quite a while, I wonder why that would be?....what?....you think there might be a show coming?

French Artist Tian came through and dropped almost 30 pieces on Shoreditch walls.  He loves his Japanese Shunga style, but they are a bit beyond risque so here are three carefully selected images that ARE fit for showing on a family rated blog!

MadC really laid down a maker in the largest Commissioned mural category, dwarfing the adjacent Reka and blinding many an un-prepared tourist not wearing sunglasses.  Not a single Shoreditch hipster was affected.

Alex Senna passed through on a Brazilian art trade mission of some sort painting many fey little murals in black and white.

Pegasus got a titilating multilayer stencil up in a doorway in plenty of time for the group show at Arch 402

Cenz

Spotted opposite swanky new bars opened under Hoxton overground station, not saying beer and weed is solely a Hoxton thing of course.  Artist unknown (MFI?)

Two long standing murals got taken out too this month along the stretch on Redchurch street, probably only a matter of time before this wall is made pretty once more by the hottest new artist wanting a legal wall sooner or later....until then a nice bit of Chrome will do.

So, the end of summer is upon us, traditionally we expect less activity as the weather cools down....but seasonally adjusted longer hours of darkness can lead to more opportunity for illicit decorative activities. Lets see what September has to offer!

Graffoto Round Up of the Year - Part 4

Photos by HowAboutNo and NoLionsInEngland And here we have it folks, part 4 of 4 in the round up of 2011. This final look at the year now covers September all the way through to the end of December. Being that it was mild for the time of year, and there were a shed load of art festivals and paint jams in town, the surrounding areas had a nice smattering too. Street art pastes and stencils seemed to be out of the window for pretty much most of this quarter, and I think that was also a big shift for the year. Good to see more talented artists grafting it at the side of a wall. Also nice to see lots of quick and dirty damage throughout town. Rowdy/Horror, photo HowAboutNo Rusht, photo HowAboutNo Shane ODV, photo HowAboutNo Roid MSK, photo HowAboutNo D*Face in progress outside the Moniker Art Fair, photo HowAboutNo And completed, photo HowAboutNo Various, photo HowAboutNo Gold Peg, photo HowAboutNo A solid year for the machine of graff that is Probs. Think this is my fave piece he has done ever. (photo HowAboutNo) I think we'll see a bit more of JimmyC in 2011 (photo HowAboutNo) Motor, photo HowAboutNo C215, photo HowAboutNo , photo HowAboutNo 2011 was the year Ronzo turned his hand away from sculpted pieces to graff.....and a welcome turn it was. This piece painted with Conor Harrington photo HowAboutNo Evol impressively buggered about with scale this set of blocks making up a mini housing estate complete with Elk, Drax and Shun tags. Read more about his visit here photo HowAboutNo Banksy did quite a few street pieces, all outside Soreitch - consequently I didn't get off my lazy arse to photograph them. No bother, this was my favourite thing he did all year anyway. General and most lovely damage . . . (photo HowAboutNo) Swoon, photo HowAboutNo This superb paste up by Gaia lasted no more than a few days and was fly posted over (photo HowAboutNo). Revok/Roid at the most single hit "legal" spot in Shoreditch (photo HowAboutNo). Don’t believe the nay-sayers saying the scene has tanked, looking back we have been overwhelmed with top quality shit on the streets of London in 2011. Stuff that should have got a mention earlier but just got missed in the admittedly random selection process includes: Phlegm was down several times during the year photo: NoLionsInEngland One of the highlights of the year was the privilege of seeing Sweet Toof and Paul Insect collaborate on this stunning rooftop piece, and in case you missed it, the timelapse is here photo: NoLionsInEngland Elbow Toe photo: NoLionsInEngland This Chu sticker made us chuckle earlier in the year photo: NoLionsInEngland So that's it for Graffoto's round up of the action in 2011. At the beginning and at lots of points throughout the year it did seem like it was stale and not moving anywhere. Part of wanting to look back at the year at the beginning of a new one has shown that it was a busy and colourful year, full of lots of new names and techniques and people to watch in 2012. The shift also seemed to go towards lots more "with permission" spots last year, I guess a big test for those shutters and areas may fall closer to Olympics time, when the council may decide to buff at random for no reason whatsoever. Happy 2012. Fuck The Buff.

Hell's Half Acre - Lazarides Group show

Leake St,
Waterloo
London
12 – 17 October 2010


All photos: nolionsinengland


Hells Half Acre promises to be a Halloween-ish subterranean wandering loosely based upon Dantes’s inferno.

You enter off Leake Street, now one of London’s premier graffiti halls of fame and therefore generally only worked by visiting writers from Prague and New Zealand. The transition from graffiti assault to Circles of Hell central you enter through a short brick lined cave where Dave Choe has been let loose directly on the walls. (er - perhaps i got the wrong impression, just hold on a mo...)


David Choe


Top highlight inside is the art taxidermist Poly Morgan’s almost luminous explosive cluster of stuffed pigeons. In a more radical and interesting world, this would be available in Ikea.


Poly Morgan


Conor Harrington has a set of 5 huge canvasses hung in the arc of a circle like something you might chance upon at night in a wood clearing just when you were beginning to believe you had passed the “virgins sacrificed here copse”. Harrington’s work is just made to be shown in this kind of moody The moody dank cellar vibe sets off the lush tones of Harrington’s work to vibrant effect, as usual.


Conor Harrington


Ian Francis’ work comes on in leaps and bounds, though I would now struggle to tell the Chloe Early from your Ian Francis in an “eyes-wide-open-but-labels-covered” test.


Ian Francis


Laz is your consummate leveller with none of the usual “don’t breath/ don’t photograph” preciousness, the website promises “Interaction with the works will be encouraged as part of this multi-sensory experience” though the only interaction I can recall was getting Lady NoLions’ camera wet in a drizzle installation across the width of one of the caverns. Apparently from a certain angle with the wind in the right direction it captures the light and splits it into its spectrum components though, as a visiting gallerist assured me, “it’s quite difficult making rainbows”. No photo.


Sphere with hypodermics – possibly Paul Insect?


Anthony Micallef’s work is getting more impressionist and darker with the increasing affinity for charcoal, like the Harrington the utilitarian backdrop really allowed the work to pop.


Anthony Micallef (fairly certain)


With a decent art show the experience is the objective dear boy, not the art education. So it’s a pleasure to confess that I couldn’t pin down a large number of the installations to an artists and then reading the blurb after the show, couldn’t identify half the artists’ names on the sheet.



(I thought this was Charles Kraft – but he’s not on the list) - UPDATE - Anthony Micallef - thanks "anonymous"


Mark Jenkins hanging humanoid chrysalis artefacts passed me by, they need pretext or context, are we looking into a human battery incubator or the pantry of some vampirish food preserver, dunno.


Mark Jenkins


Jonathon Yeo’s infamy rests on portraits collaged from clippings from porn mags. On this occasion he has pulled of a trompe d’oeil consisting of several layers of perspex with collaged nude clippings on each layer which for a person of a particular height, viewing from a particular point dead ahead combine and resolve into a pair of praying nude females. Tapping into lust as one of Dante’s circles this piece is amusing and delightful, if just a tad gimmicky.


Jonathan Yeo

There were many video installations in various terminal offshoots from the circles of hell, the one which captured the eye and the theme of death, torment and decay was a trio of what appeared to be back projected petris dishes with writhing maggots. You feel like standing there egging the buggers on to hatch.


Unknown (to me)


This is the hedonistic green shoots of the London art week, the week where bedlam meets capitalism in the name of decoration. The anointed PV’ers were a phenomenal clash. Italian suit-wearing suave faintly Mediterranean guys and their willowy black dress wearing Tasmins rubbed shoulders with un-shaven artists and the usual suspect forumite Laz fetishists. Graffoto – the blog that is proud to be plus 1! (thank you dear friend and “invitor”, you know who you are).


Vhils


The curation and staging of this show is superb, as you would expect from Lazarides. I was reminded of the Faile Lost in Glimmering Shadows show in that old school or Paul Insect's Poison in the old Kings Coss baths. Dwell on the quality of the work and the dream-like nature of the staging as overall I think this show may actually not live up to the hype, the creation of false expectations. This is an “experience” event and the experience is probably a bit conventional and tame when something more fiendish and macabre seemed to be promised by the allusions to Hades, not to mention the dire warnings that under 13s are going to need adult comfort and counselling. I suspect my kids would prefer to go to the London Dungeons.

More photos here


Vhils