Hit Shot Walls - November 2013

Words: NoLionsInEngland
Photos: HowAboutNo and NoLionsInEngland as stated


You didn't seriously think that cold weather would put Shoreditch Street Art into hibernation did you? Fresh colour and frantic activity sustain the rotating uncurated hang of energetic street art for which this area is reknown and we count ourselves lucky to have been able to capture some of it with our various cameras.


A.CE has been out placing paste up collages images left, right and centre and we can't pass up this opportunity to point out that Shoreditch Street Art Tours has a competition this month to win art by A.CE.

photo: HowAboutNo


Making a mark on Shoreditch surfaces for the first time was Borondo who is something of a star on the Spanish street art scene. Mark making is the appropriate term for Borondo’s craft which involves scratching paint off windows with a thick toothed comb. This was his first time painting UK walls but he hopes to return in the New Year.

photo: HowAboutNo



Guess which graffiti cubist had a new show opening in London during the month! Yup - Hunto, seen here collaborating on a mural with Millo who.... has a show coming up this month, who'd have thought?

photo: HowAboutNo


Parlee - Essex Rockers, daubed a Global Street Art mural hoarding which panel by panel is getting smaller with each passing day it seems as the building being built behind the hoarding approaches completion. Grimsby St will be a considerable duller place with those hoardings gone and it will be interesting to see if the current tolerance of the un-curated street art on the opposite wall survives whatever new businesses and residents move into that new building.

photo: HowAboutNo

Captain Kris enjoying a brief moment up on the same hoardings but round the corner on Brick Lane, this wall caused lots of amusement with the daily dismantling and rebuilding of the hoarding as the workers enjoyed a game of surreal jigsaw puzzle solving with the art on the panels.

photo: HowAboutNo


Stripy tights and stilettos usually means just one artist – INSA, however, we're not sure this poor unfortunate fashion victim seemingly stuck with a bit of Ben Wilson art work on their platform stilettos is by INSA.  TBC.

photo: HowAboutNo


It has been satisfying to see a couple of mural walls getting quite wildly dogged in the past month and CERN has taken this opportunity to pen a note-to-self alongside a nice fat dub.

photo: HowAboutNo

This month sees the long serving NoLions SLR being dry docked for urgent and hideously expensive repairs and we are taking advantage of the someone elses marketing budget to road test a Nokia Lumia 1020 smartphone, the phone Lady Nolions describes as way smarter than me. It certainly does justice to this luscious and huge Dan Kitchener tube layup mural.


photo: NoLionsInEngland


STRA cuts a pretty mean stencil and was quick to respond to the rantings of comic motor-mouth Russell Brand on Newsnight last month


photo: NoLionsInEngland


Ben Naz had a very busy month slapping single layer stencil street art all over Shoreditch, including this reverse stencil of young punked up Madge doing a Miley Cyrus tongue job.


photo: NoLionsInEngland


This year Mr Fan HC has painted some awesomeJeff Koons style inflatable animals and it's great to see him get up first with the yuletide references in this reindeer and santa scorching through the night skies piece. Fan has made a very interesting decision to retain Odeith's fox from the previous painting though quite what it does in the compostion beats me.


photo: NoLionsInEngland


Lily Mixe has established her trademark with intricately cut paper sea life paste ups and in case the size of these isn’t apparent from the surrounding stickers and tags, that piece is about 3 foot high and 5 foot wide which represents a mammoth Swoon-esque amount of paper cutting.


photo: NoLionsInEngland

Hunto - The Graffiti Cubist

The Rag Factory
Heneage St, London
19 – 22 Nov 2009

all photos: Howaboutno (where noted) and NoLionsInEngland

Nothing really prepares you for the colourful orgy contained in the world of Hunto – The Graffiti Cubist. Internet searching doesn’t reveal much evidence of street style, Howaboutno among others captured this rare London piece in the Wick.


Hackney Wick with Twesh, Pharos, Saro (not in shot); Photo stolen from HowAboutno


Hailing from Italy, Hunto often paints with Heavy Artillery’s Italian representative Mr Wany, the London piece above was painted in the company of Twesh, also of Heavy Artillery. As a graffiti artist Hunto is a character man rather than a letterform purist.

A Rag Factory booking cock-up has forced the Hunto show to a utilitarian white cube about 100 yards further down Heneage St from the main Rag Factory site but at least the lighting is slightly better than the typical graff art cow-shed/dungeon/on-the-stairwell-down-to-the-pub-toilets space.


Hunto – The Graffiti Cubist


Hunto is showing a collection of canvasses, a mixed media painted-wall-plus-props installation and a beguiling set of screenprinted line drawings. His basic form involves character canvasses in lurid colours, cubist style with views from different angles collapsed onto a single plane (as opposed to intersecting flat planes and shapes).


The Hug


The first cursory glance will take in a collection of cubist faces with multiple viewing angles of various portrait figures. Closer inspection heightens the tension when erections and penetrated orifices become apparent. Finally, the penny drops when what at first looked like “urban art” splashes and dribbles are found to represent milky cum shots. All over the place!


Happy Time (7 pieces)


Hunto celebrates the joy of sexual abandon, multiple couplings and the erotic first crack, the moment when the budding relationship is consummated. The Bride is splattered with an excess of man juice, either she has had a traditional hen party or perhaps the catholic and horny Italian groom has been forced to wait until the first night.


The Bride


On these canvasses Hunto has used spraypaint almost exclusively, colours are generally flat, bright and blocky with just the occasional fade.


Eve


A corner installation features an amorous couple preserving their dignity by daintily discarding their underwear while they fumble around eachother’s bodies in that excited state brought on by the “your bedsit or mine” one night stand.


Hunto Installation


The bright and bold canvasses make the most immediate impact but the line drawings really show Hunto’s artistic skills. He certainly has the eye for rendering dynamic sex, passion, excitement and groups of bodies in a flat cubist style though the composition is more analytical and detailed than the relatively simple canvasses.


On The Bed



The party


One pair of canvasses stand out for being stylistically different, Hunto adopts a Basquiat style use of scratchy lines to outline the cubist subject which unsurprisingly is what newpaper reports would refer to as “a sex act”, done over a fractal colour layer.


First Meeting


Hunto seems to comment on contemporary casual sex in which a woman’s sexual favours are now cheap currency, evident in the Break in which the woman indifferently flits between a cigarette and a cock, we see a cityscape behind her perhaps signifying that she is so un-concerned she can’t be bothered to draw the curtains.



Break


This show is a treat for the eyes and a stimulant to the loins. I like the fact that Hunto has not forsaken his basic graffiti tool but he has confidence in his art and doesn’t feel any need to yell “I’m graffiti”, there are no references to his graffiti roots such as contrived dots or tags. The whole show has a strong style and a strikingly clear and consistent theme. The canvasses are brash and skillful but for me the drawings are among the best new work seen this year.


Title unknown dippy hippy line drawing


The art may be a little saucy for display in a family home but then again, it was the Italians who made nudity commonplace with their renaissance. It’s amusing to find that even in the hands of a cubist (f’naar) the masculine member still comes out looking like a toilet door graffiti cock.



It's not porn darling, It's art: pics here