Showing posts with label Donk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donk. Show all posts

Friday 12 November 2021

London International Pasteup Festival Review

The history of street art is a complex story whose content varies depending upon author, location, editorial preferences for a “creation” date and people’s differing actual lived experiences. The early phase of its ripping away from graffiti was for many reasons dominated by stencilism and the significant role of the paste-up technique is easily overlooked. Perhaps the London International Paste-Up Festival has addressed that.

LIPF paste-ups
LIPF paste-ups


LIPF was held over the first weekend in November and featured art on paper by 100s of artists who responded to an open call by the organisers and here is a hat tip to Outside The Zone (Trix Mendez) and Art House Project London (Apparan). I had the pleasure of kind of winding up proceedings by leading a street art tour around the spots. This gave me the unexpected joy of meeting some street artists whose work I have loved for many years for the first time as well as renewing acquaintances with familiar artists and friends, I learnt more from the experience than anyone.

LIPF Street Art Tour group led by Dave Stuart
LIPF Street Art Tour group led by Dave Stuart


One reason why paste-ups were so significant was newcomers to street art who were not coming from a graffiti background were not going to spend hours creating, perfecting and refining a spraypainted piece of art under risky illegal circumstance, their art would be prepared at home, in the studio or at school and then pasted up in seconds. The paste-up was the ultimate in risk avoidance yet participants still experienced that buzz, the thrill of being a little bit naughty in a relatively harmless way.

Wild paste-up wall in Shoreditch
Wild paste-up wall in Shoreditch


More than other forms of street art paste-ups have an ability to acquire a history, to evolve. There is a joy in the aging of paper, the savagery of rips and tears, the marker pen additions from passers-by, the possibility that meaning is changed by clever juxtaposition of another piece of art. Some artists regard their art as having an independent life on the walls and indeed even photograph their paste-up to rejoice in those changes.
D7606 Kurt Cobain
D7606 Kurt Cobain

D7606 at LIPF
D7606 at LIPF


The LIPF art was pasted up in Shoreditch over the preceding couple of weekends by a coalition of willing and experienced locally street artists. One of the kind of predictable and I argue welcome consequences of this early installation was other artists subsequently adding their creativity in and around the LIPF displays.

Corrosive8 vs Eartha Kitt Catwoman by Shuby
Corrosive8 vs Eartha Kitt Catwoman by Shuby


Creativity is a word that means different things to different people, beauty being in the eye of the beholder and all that. Here we see WRDSTH explaining how his Winona Forever paste-up was “edited” by artist unknown and subsequently restored by him and he gave a wonderful articulation of his rationale for doing so. For the benefit of readers and those who heard WRDSMTH’s anecdote first-hand, the second picture below shows the redacted artwork.

WRDSMTH presents his art to #LIPF
WRDSMTH presents his art to #LIPF


Subverted WRDSMTH paste-up
Subverted WRDSMTH paste-u


The festival locations facilitated several different presentation styles for the paste up. Two spots highlighted individual artists, Yu_wallart and JD Montaigne in an installation format, reminiscent perhaps of something by Ludo or early Camille Walala when walls were less cluttered! It would be rare these days to see single stand-alone paste ups like this but hey, organisers gotta make use of the spots they have available!

Yu_Wallart
Yu_Wallart


J D Montaigne installation
J D Montaigne installation


In four other spots the team had created massive banners of art pasted onto vinyl which was then tied to what in any other circumstance would be advertising frames. The first one featured below serendipitously referenced the world’s most prolific paste-up artist. Its placement and elevation high up the wall precisely matched a Lenin paste-up placed illegally by Shephard Fairey in 2007.

LIPF Paste-up banner, Bateman’s Row
LIPF Paste-up banner, Bateman’s Row


Shepard Fairy 2007, Chris Stain 2008 below
Shepard Fairy 2007, Chris Stain 2008 below


The two Old Street banners had to be taken down on Sunday evening but the others on Dereham Place and Bateman’s Row (above) could last a few more weeks.

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LIPF Paste-up banners on Old St


LIPF Dereham Place paste-up spot
LIPF Dereham Place paste-up spot


The location the artists referred to as “The Beast” became my favourite as it offered the closest approximation to the layering and direct application of art to the wall that we see in the wild.

The Beast wall
The Beast wall


Collaboration is a wonderful aspect of most forms of street art and one beautiful collaboration that emerged in the festival was between Donk and Uberfubs. Donk pasted-up his brilliant “Higher Ground” piece a week before before the main crew got to work with the other paste-ups, the second photo shows the dramatic impact on his monochromatic composition after Donk invited Uberfubs to augment it with her flouro creatures, Natasha Searston also got in on the act.

Donk, Uberfubs, Natasha Searston collab
Donk, Uberfubs, Natasha Searston collab


Donk did his bit to shame the youngsters by getting his Dad’s art pasted up in the festival, a quartet of coppers with appropriate symbolic numbering which represents the acronym ACAB which…..go figure! ACAB by Donks Dad
ACAB by Donks Dad


Some collaborations arise through intentional placement, such as the kitty cat and rat living in perfect harmony with two foxes, others are actually created as single sheet collaborations

City Kitty, a rat, Yaya and DaddyStreetFox
City Kitty, a rat, Yaya and DaddyStreetFox


Perhaps the guiding hand of the installers has had a role in placing a body positivity collaboration between Flakes Store and Planet Selfie adjacent to a Playgirl cover and Sam Fox in a box.

Body positivity collab Flakes_store and Planet Selfie, Samantha Fox by D7606
Body positivity collab Flakes_store and Planet Selfie, Samantha Fox by D7606


The Live and Let Live/Street Art Against Hate project was initiated by the #NoHate family, an awesome group of street artists from Cologne. Artist were invited to support the anti-hate initiative by creating paste-ups adding their art within a circular "Live and Let Live/Street Art Against Hate" message.   A version from Streetart.globe gave me the prompt to explain Sunday's tour group the Street Art Against Hate project and the opportunity to demonstrate the power of collective paste-up messaging with an anecdote about the time I came across their Brick Lane Wall of Love in the company of two parents who had lost a son in an American High School mass murder. Full 2018 story HERE. The impact of the message and the touching affect it had on Patricia and Manuel Oliver in 2018 truly demonstrated something about paste up street art.

Street Art Against Hate repping at LIPF Street Art Against Hate repping at LIPF


As I told the story, street artist Face The Strange handed me two of his versions of the paste-up message, demonstrating perfectly that the project is actually still alive and doing good things.

Street Art Against Hate paste-ups by Face The Strange
Street Art Against Hate paste-ups by Face The Strange


One of the more inventive uses of paste-ups we have witnessed down the years has been Dr Cream’s creation of online stop frame animations using paste-up linoprints. Daisy Riot animation frames by Dr Cream
Daisy Riot animation frames by Dr Cream


He has done loads of these in Shoreditch over more than a decade and something we have never succeeded in doing is to locate all the elements of an animation to have a go at rendering our own, it is nice to think that this game or quest was Dr Cream’s gift to the streets. Finally, courtesy his LIPF installation we have all the frames of a star jumping Daisy Riot animation and I was thrilled to get it to work, though my effort does appear to be a homage to the jumpy animation style of Roobarb and Custard (look it up!).

Dr Cream "Daisy Riot" animation


As the social media flurry around the Festival subsides, I mentioned in my little digital contribution that I had enjoyed leading the Sunday tour and had learned a lot from the guests and artists present. As I pointed out the drama in the layering of Rider’s fluorescent prints against his darker monochromatic background, print artist MeandBlue helpful informed us that the two prints flanking Rider’s display were by David Shand, an artist who was new to me. David focussed on the residue of tears and colours generated by the action of time on flyposters on the streets, a phenomenon paste-ups are beautifully susceptible to. David passed away last year but as I explored his art online this week I got the sense that the spirit and intent of the festival would have chimed with him, it was a pleasure to be introduced to his work through the art on the wall.

Rider flanked by David Shand (RIP)
Rider flanked by David Shand (RIP)


No matter what form a piece of street art takes it will always by elevated by good placement and use of the environment. Wrdsmth scores highly for placing the “Hearts Shatter” message within the shattered glass window, happily no wrists were slashed in the placement of the oversize stencil through the jagged shards.

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Hearts Shatter, mixed media by Wrdsmth


The festival concept had a few minor and unavoidable aspects in which it deviates from the nature of paste-up street art in the wild. Pasting all the art up at one point in time denies the “patina” of a good street art spot that comes from artworks going over eachother, from the tearing, the layering, the decay and aging at different rates from different moments in history. Seeing the artists own particular eye and mind controlling placement and juxtaposition is often desirable. On the other hand paste-up street art actually facilitates collaboration, sharing and representation by mailing paper or digital art to friends in other locations and letting them get on with it.

London International Pasteup Festival LIPF
Shuby, Uberfubs, Art.tits and Carl Stimpson


Something rather less obvious from the participation in the LIPF was the gender balance. The art world is notorious for its discrimination on many basis especially gender. A crude assessment based on identification of artists in a sample of 155 photographs suggested a ratio of male to female artists of 5:3. It’s not great, it’s not perfect but it is likely to be better than the perceived state of play in the in gallery world.

Did the paste-up festival work? It got huge numbers of artists’ work visible on the streets, it introduced the art of many artists from overseas that we had not seen here before, it brought new artists to outdoor walls who have never displayed in public this way and it gave huge visibility to this under-sung street art genre.  It was a success.

Tuesday 24 November 2020

Ezra St Paste Up Frenzy

Shoreditch is full of little corners where street art survives and accumulates in layers, like a busy kitchen pinboard.  Last week one such canvas near Columbia road was transformed by, in no particular order, Donk, Skeleton Cardboard, Rider and Tommy Fiendish into this beautiful paste up collage. 

Donk, Rider, Tommy Fiendish, Skeleton Cardboard 

Donk, Rider, Tommy Fiendish, Skeleton Cardboard 

 

Skeleton Cardboard 2020 

Skeleton Cardboard 2020 

 

Rider, Donk L-R Rider, Donk Skeleton Cardboard 

 

L-R Rider, Tommy Fiendish, Skeleton Cardboard L-R Rider, Tommy Fiendish, Skeleton Cardboard 

 

Whether neglect or tolerance is the reason why the property owner has allowed street art to accumulate, mutate and flourish on this canvas is a matter for another day but it is interesting to look at just a few examples of how the patina of this door’s surface has evolved down the years.

A year ago in November 2019 the door looked like this: 

Ezra St 2019: Feat Anne-laure Maison, Donk, Arrex Skulls, Subdude, Fosh, Citty Kitty, Shuby, Noriaki, Silvio Alino, D7606 Feat Anne-laure Maison, Donk, Arrex Skulls, Subdude, Fosh, Citty Kitty, Shuby, Noriaki, Silvio Alino, D7606 

 

Just a week ago a fair portion of the art present in 2019 was showing a steely determination to cling on in spite of tempest and subsequent creatives. 

Ezra St Nov 2020 Nov 2020: Feat DaddyStreetFox vs Anne-laure Maison, Donk, Subdude, Fosh, Citty Kitty, Shuby, Noriaki, Silvio Alino, Bento Ghoul, Voxx Romana, Pyramid Oracle, D7606 

Nov 2020: Feat DaddyStreetFox vs Anne-laure Maison, Donk, Subdude, Fosh, Citty Kitty, Shuby, Noriaki, Silvio Alino, Bento Ghoul, Voxx Romana, Pyramid Oracle, D7606. 

 

The Pyramid Oracle paste up still visible in parts in 2019 and 2020 has already lasted since 2015, thanks mainly to its height.

 Ezra St 2015 2015: Pyramid Oracle, also feat Sweet Toof, Donk, Voxx Romana, Noriaki, Anna Laurini, Ema, D7606 

2015: Pyramid Oracle, also feat Sweet Toof, Donk, Voxx Romana, Noriaki, Anna Laurini, Ema, D7606 

 

HIN was busy around Shoreditch 2012 - 2014 and if you looked at the bottom of the door in 2013 you would see a HIN character with an Aida face created from her infamous "East End Still Sucks" response to the Hackney Olympics.  That originally started out as a "go vegan" collaboration as shown in the following shot and the HIN body was still visible last week! 

Ezra St 2013: Sweet Toof, Aida, Kid Acne, Ema, Donk, Angry Face, HIN 

2013: Sweet Toof, Aida, Kid Acne, Ema, Donk, Angry Face, HIN 

 

 tn_DSC_7365 copy 2012: HIN, Aida collab 

 

Finally, back in 2012  this canvas was one of many to host the Sweet Toof/Paul Insect street group show.  This photo also features a framed print by New York street artist Gaia in a walk on part!  

Ezra St 2012 2012: Sweet Toof, Paul Insect, Aida, Hin & Aida collab, Kid Acne, Ema; print by Gaia 2012: Sweet Toof, Paul Insect, Aida, Hin & Aida collab, Kid Acne, Ema; print by Gaia 

 

As always the beauty of the art process here is the absence of the selective and restrictive eye of a curator, an organiser.

A few years ago a permissioned wall on Hanbury Street triggered a similar “longitudinal” review of the changes time wrought on that particular canvas, click here

Finally, if you have enjoyed this look back through a street art time machine why not put an end to that lockdown stir crazy feeling by joining the author on a tour of Shoreditch’s street art, click here 

All photos: Dave Stuart

Monday 25 May 2020

Diggin In The Archives Pt 8

This week in spite of the latest official guidance to follow unofficial interpretations of the law, there have been no trips to Durham. I have followed my instinct to remain at home to see what scum is floating on the surface of the street art photography archive.

Ludo first put his art on London streets in 2009 and right from the off his Nature’s Revenge project dealt with man vs nature, weaponry, deception and death. Ludo’s work always had scale and awesome eye-catching placement. This weaponised orchid dates from 2011.

Ludo, 2011
Ludo, 2011


Street artist and gallerist Rae visited London in 2013 and left an impressive range of paste ups, stickers, painted surfaces and this wacky sculpture which lasted all of 24 hours.

Rae, 2013
Rae, 2013


Rae, 2013
Rae, 2013


The Battle Of Fashion St pitted Ronzo’s monster, looking very much exactly like a medical diagram of a virus against studio stablemate Conor Harrington’s faceless soldier. Like most of Conor’s art this one lasted a long time.

The battle Of Fashion St, Ronzo and Conor Harrington, 2011
The battle Of Fashion St, Ronzo and Conor Harrington, 2011


Graff snapping mate for many years Joe Epstein aka LDN Graffiti, author of street art book “London Graffiti and Street Art” has teamed up with 9 great street artists to raise funds for Great Ormond St Hospital. Each artist has created a special version of the book by hand painting the cover, so that’s 9 unique versions of the book.

LDN GOSH Lottery


For more images, details and a link to how to support the fund raiser and maybe win one of these fantastic prizes in the LDN GOSH Charity Lottery, click here


One of the featured artists in the LDN GOSH fundraiser is Pure Evil, he doesn’t so much redecorate the book cover as subject it to extreme abuse and reconfiguration, it’s bonkers but brilliant. In 2012 Pure Evil imagined the Hackney Olympics looting squad making off with some Olympics booty, as seen on this Redchurch Street shutter.

Pure Evil 2012
Pure Evil 2012


LDN GOSH Charity Book with Pure Evil art
Pure Evil's LDN GOSH Charity Book


In the happy days when I had a kind of job thing, I did one of my Street Art Photography Workshops in Hackney. I only found out this week thanks to Inspiring City’s Art Related Noise podcast interview that this stencil piece is “Lee P” by Findac. Lee P is otherwise known as street artist Eelus. The second shot was the idea of the photo - to show what Lee P was looking at

Findac, 2013
Findac, 2013


Findac, 2013
Findac, 2013


More than a decade of pasting up street art has left no doubt that Donk has an awesome approach to impressive installations created from his own original photos. It would be very easy to dredge up one of Donk’s huge crowd pleaser paste up images like the Fashion St fence (with the tassels), the Willow Street horse facing POW or the ghetto blaster on Sclater St but with no slight on any of those, sometimes his montages of smaller images show his versatility better. From 2013 this is a selection of hand finished unique Humble Magnificent and B Brave Indian images featuring Donk jr as model. Donk’s paste up’s typically decayed beautifully.

Donk 2013
Donk 2013


Claudia Walde aka MadC is a graffiti writer and book author. She is also another of the artists to have created a unique painting on a book being auctioned to raised funds for Great Ormond St Hospital, details as above.


In culture with such a huge gender imbalance MadC is a rare example of an internationally regarded graffiti writer. In 2011 the Pure Evil Gallery hosted MadC’s first solo exhibition and graffiti writers came from all over to check out her top notch can skills and brilliant colour palette. Her 2013 abstract mural on Chance St in Shoreditch is well known and still running. Less known perhaps is this stunning 2011 graffiti on the old Micawber St launderette, look closely and you can pick out her name in there. It was huge though this is nowhere near the biggest piece of graffiti MadC ever did.

MadC, 2011
MadC, 2011


Mad C LDN Graffiti book cover
Mad C LDN Graffiti book cover


If you are interested in seeing previous DITAs, you can start with the first weekly compilation of the daily DITA uploads of HERE,

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




Thursday 1 January 2015

New Years Eve? Never Too Late For Street Art


All photos: NoLionsInEngland

We’ve done our 2014 review ,twice, already but we just fancy signing off 2014 doing our favourite things..taking photos and spouting shite. All these photos were taken mid afternoon on New Years Eve and we believe the art to have been put up in the preceding 24 hours.

Donk had an epic 2014 and signed off with a major mission on the past 24 hours. How on earth did I forgot in the Graffoto 2014 Review that Donk did two of the most awesome paste ups in 2014 both placed without permission? He has put out a curious new image in the past month or so featuring a dude in a whisky bottle holding a whisky bottle which contains ..a dude..holding a whisky bottle. Here is a small medley of some of his (eve of?) New Years Eve hits.

Donk
Donk


The fragile translucence of this tissue paper must make the printing and pasting of this a very delicate process.

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Donk


This could also be a new addition to the DONK oeuvre, I don’t recall seeing it before.

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Donk


This is like a hall of fame featuring three of our favourite street artists ACE, Mr.Farenheit and Donk though we can’t be sure that any of those pieces were put up in the past 24 hours.

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clockwise from top left: Mr.Farenheit (x2), Donk, Ace

A couple of weeks ago we spotted a guy very verrrryyyyyyyyy carefully lifting a Donk print from its street gallery display; this morning in an alleyway we spied a pair of Donk screen prints pasted onto a sticker battered unloved window but when we returned mid afternoon wafting a camera in the general direction of anything street arty, lo – that pair of Donk screenprints had gone. Also, speaking of the ephemeral existence of the best street art, another of Donk’s paste ups had already been gone over this morning by a repeat of a Paisley image imprinted with rubbings of old Republic of Ireland coinage. The image is by Belfast artist TLO, apparently critiquing the cult of Ian Paisley.

Ian Paisley by TLO
TLO

A number of other paste ups appeared wishing “evolutionary Greetings From Ireland”. These may also be by TLO given the coincidence of the timing of their appearance, the fact that both these and the paisley posters were printed over multiple sheets of A4 paper and both touch on “The Irish Question”.  It’s hard to be certain what the Ikea logo juxtaposed with terrorists is about, something to do with modern corporate colonialism perhaps. Artist unknown (TLO is a guess).

TLO
Artist Unknown


Last but definitely not least, The Rolling People rang in 2014 with a big piece on the Sclater St wall and they signed off 2014 doing what they did quite often throughout 2014, taking over that wall with a fresh new blockbuster. Cap doffed to Karim too who hadn’t finished on a spot next to TRP.

BRK, Snoe and Kev ring in the new
BRK, SNOE, KEV


tn_DSC_0454
SNOE TRP

So, you get a feel here for what we love and little impromptu wanders like this New Years Eve perambulation reinforce why we love this art. Thanks again to all the artists who made 2014 a fantastic year, many of you were just plain forgotten on the reviews I wrote and for that I am humbly sorry but HowAboutNo, Shellshock & I wish you and all the audience for the blog, our photographs and everyone involved in so many ways in this culture a peaceful/successful/exciting/prosperous (pick as many as you wish) 2015.