Best of London Street Art Part 2 - The Mural Bites Back

London has witnessed in 2013 a pretty significant growth in the number of large scale street art productions created with permission and indeed it seems, a growth in the number of organisations arranging spots for artists. Whilst Graffoto’s natural tendency is to prefer street art created without permission, we don’t judge just because something is painted without the frission of illegality, which is anyway a over-romanticised notion most of the time when what is really meant is “without explicit permission”.

We review the big, the wild, the bright and the spectacular here in part 2 of our review of 2013’s London street art, part 1 looked at the grittier less house trained stuff done without permission and should be read first HERE 

Words: NoLionsInEngland
Photos: NoLionsInEngland except HowAboutNo where stated.

Moniker Art Fair moved location and changed up a gear in October, attracting a large number of street art galleries and street artists. One of the best consequences was the lads from Souled Out Studios, Bon and Alex Face from Thailand and Mau Mau from the West Country painting this fun composition in which they gave Roa’s iconic bird a leg, which they proceed to barbecue.


Bon, Mau Mau, Alex Face. Also feat Roa, Martin Ron


Not far away Alex Face and Bon illustrate themselves literally delivering a splash of colour to London’s walls.


Alex Face, Bon


Dal East played a cunning game with a series of murals, staging a competition based around photographing all his fresh London murals which you could only complete by photographing the final hidden mural revealed at the launch of his London show.


Dal East


At the same time Faith 47 executed her most spectacular work in London to date, though the timing won’t surprise anyone aware that Dal East and Faith47 are a married couple.


Faith47


The most stunning project by a mile was spraycan virtuoso Shok-1’s ten part X-Ray Rainbows paintings which commenced in 2012 and concluded in August 2013. Not all of our photographs in this slide show capture the pieces in their best condition as the artist intended, sorry Shok-1 Sir.


All photos: NoLionsInEngland


Miss Van’s last outdoor wall decoration in London was an illegal piece out in Ladbroke Grove, West London which survived until about 2007 so it was nice that she painted this stunning piece in Shoreditch in collaboration with Italian sculptor Ciro Schu.


Miss Van, Ciro Schu (with Pure Evil mugging in the shot


Cranio visited from Brazil for the second time in just under 12 months and did a mixture of stunning illegal, permissioned and gallery work all based around the theme of the Amazon Indians indulging themselves with the gains from selling off their rainforest.


Cranio

The permissioned Cranio collaboration with HIN photographed below caused a little upset and mural organiser censorship, not because of the nudity or the suicide bomber or the obscene gestures but seemingly due to the pasted face portraits of evil dictators.


Cranio, HIN, feat Alex Senna


Roa worked his large scale magic in a couple of London spots, most visibly on the Southbank but to more gory effect in an alley on the way to Hackney.


ROA


Alex Senna seemed to get to paint lots of spots in the Shoreditch area, this one featured a then topical nod to the new born Prince George.


Alex Senna


Award for the least appropriate most thoughtless mural goes to the upside down break dancer painted by Martin Ron next to Roa’s bird on Hanbury Street, you might as well try to fit a Jackson Pollock and a Turner on the same canvas for all the relationship and harmony there is between the two subjects on that wall. After Cosmo Sarsen first in Bristol and Above in Shoreditch before him in 2013, did we really need another upside down breakdancer anyway?


Martin Ron v. Roa, no contest!


During the London Art Fair week RYCA put up a crisp clean Clone troopers paste up collage on the boards erected outside Shoreditch Junk following the McDonalds sponsored buff at that spot.


RYCA


A particularly wild and wet night saw RYCA's paste up virtually jet blasted off the wall producing an effect RYCA liked so much he repaired the damage by recreating it with paste ups and stencils. As a sort of post script note – the weather over the Christmas break has added real damage to the simulated damage!


RYCA


Zadok has hit a lot of walls, not all of them necessarily with prior consent we suspect but all superbly realised.


Dr Zadok


One of our favourite permissioned pieces in 2013 is the wild abstract assault RSH executed on the Lord Napier premises at Hackney Wick just prior to the Hackney Wicked Festival, a stunning visual attack on premises and eyeballs.


RSH


One of the less fortunate projects realised during the year has been the “rejuvenation” of Hackney’s canal sides. Where once there was un-curated street art and graffiti there is now, in the case of the old sugar factory wall, a huge mural painted by foreign artists (ok..Scottish in one case) and rumour has it then coated with anti graffiti paint, oh the irony. So, that’s the displacement of many local un-curated artists in favour of curated and protected outsiders, not surprising really that feathers have been ruffled in the area. Nevermind, it’ll look nice in the brochure and the Olympic Legacy reports.


Lyken, Moneyless


A local based artist who has been getting good walls this year is Dale Grimshaw who pulled off a couple of stunning gothic horror portraits, which is a good thing of course.


Dale Grimshaw


Dan Kitchener got a lot of spraypaint onto walls this year as well, it’s hard to decide whether to favour the underground tracks paintings or the rainy neon nights studies more, he does them both beautifully.




Dan Kitchener


Jimmy C has a pretty productive year, apparently the first of these images produced a 3D effect when viewed through 3D glasses, which could explain all those weird glasses we see people wearing in the area.





Jimmy C photos by HowAboutNo


Seems you could hardly walk around Shoreditch this year without seeing a new Lost Souls mural, bloody everywhere!


Lost Souls feat Captain Kris, SP047, Si Mitchell, Squirl


As usual, all opinions are those of the authors of Graffoto, happy to share ;-)

Happy New Year to all Graffoto readers and may you have a happy and colourful 2014.

Hit Shot Walls May 2013

All photos: NoLionsInEngland


May was a busy month for street artists and photographers of street art. London has been blessed by visits from a plethora of overseas street art stars, let’s start with a few shots of work by an artist new to us, Dede who is reported to come from Israel. Dede’s paste ups were all nice, original and well placed but specially noteworthy were the huge quantity of evidently handmade (screenprinted?) individual stickers


DEDE



DEDE


Also from Israel, regular recent visitors Unga and Tant of Broken Fingerz crew popped back to Shoreditch recently to paint some naked chicks on bikes with big handle bars stuff. It’s what decaying disused doorways are for really.


BROKEN FINGAZ


The international invasion turned intergalactic with the arrival of Space Invader, whose Earth base is in France.


SPACE INVADER


SPACE INVADER


London always welcomes Belgian artist ROA and this month he obliged with two of his finest large scale murals. One located on South Bank must by dint of the nature of the tourist spot and also the heavy traffic on passing railway lines be in with a shout of being his most eyeballed ever, while the other in a grim alleyway is far from the beaten track for anyone other than winos, junkies and street art photographers.


ROA



ROA (detail)


DALeast and Mrs DALeast, herself more commonly known as Faith47, arrived to decorate various walls around Shoreditch. DALeast ran a cheeky little competition for the first 50 people to photograph all 7 pieces he did in London, the twist being the 7th one is located on private property behind locked doors and I can testify that a polite knock earns a frosty reception, so no image here of that particular holy grail.


DALeast



FAITH47


Yola is another artist previously unheard of who visited London and put up some large scale paste-up. Whilst this particular wall has been running for far longer that is healthy in an active street art scene, we weren’t impressed with the lack of respect in papering over this DScreet/Cept collab on Bacon St. On the other hand, this may possibly be a symptom of the pressure on space these days with so many spots reserved for curated/permissioned street art.


YOLA over Dscreet



YOLA


South Coast native Shuby visited London and revealed a complete potty-mouthed approach to letterpress paste ups though frankly who’s surprised, surely you remember the “knickers” portraits from a couple of years ago?


SHUBY


Early in the month we located a cluster of Lad stickers by The London Police but the star find were these custom kicks done in “get your chems here” boots over the telephone wires style.


THE LONDON POLICE


Not all invasions were intergalactic, Kid Acne brought a fresh wave of his Bouddica referencing Stabby Women to various front doors.


KID ACNE


At some point local hero Benjamin Murphy did this stab through the heart though we only found it in May so it qualifies for this months’ HSW.


BENJAMIN MURPHY (artist formerly known as AD/SO?)


An all too infrequent visit to Hackney Wick for a whistlestop shutter clicking frenzy yielded a cluster of ballerinas by spraycan impressionist and rude tagger Neoh.


NEOH



NEOH

Many London graff photographers have got used to popping in to the Kings Court car park to photograph the high spec spraycan artistry available there on a fairly good turnover. However, about 6 months ago the moody bastard on the gate who I always made a point of checking in with said "no photographs on weekdays, punters don’t like it; weekends only”. More recently this became "no photographers at all", a point reinforced with a laminated notice displayed at the gate. You can take spray paint into the car park but not camera lenses???? Cue our community’s applause and general mirth at Malabrocca’s huge fuck-off notice directly opposite. Apart from the dig at the car park proprietor’s, there is of course the irony that documenting the art breaches its prohibition, ho ho.


MALABROCCA


MALABROCCA


We have been hugely impressed with Jonesy’s use of street art to promote environmental awareness and score political points. This seemingly unique piece appears to show an over-furry figure with a stunted tree growing out of his head squatting behind a begging bowl, so while we like the art its meaning has us a little baffled.



JONESY

Aida’s fluorescent cheebra’s, half zebra, half cheetahs have been popping up in a few locations, curiously they always seem to yield good photo opportunities which reflects good placement.


AIDA


I mentioned this was a busy month for photographers what with 2 street art photography shows and a debate on the nature of the incestuous relationship between street art and photography, there is also the small matter of the Street Art Photography Workshops which I want to brazenly plug here. The essence of the idea is spending about an hour talking through tips, hints and ideas for photographing street art with the aid of a slide show then to go out onto the Shoreditch streets to play with the wide range of opportunities for street art phototgraphy. The feedback has been pretty awesome and the workshops continue. Check HERE for updated news and schedule. Plug over. For this time.