Diggin In The Archives 4

Diggin into the archives bring back lots of mostly good memories but some of these artists have done so much brilliant street art that picking just one or two highlights is cruelly dismissive of their street opus. Another week of suspended animation has rolled past so here we go with the 4th collection of flashbacks trawled up from a long forgotten sector of the hard drive.

Anthony Lister did quite a number of stunning superheroes and faces over a number of years and a number of visits. It was quite easy to miss that Lister was parodying the Banksy in Cargo with this piece. Responding to the Banksy piece Lister declares himself over stencils and certainly now with the advent of muralism and greater tolerance of street art the old fashioned single layer stencil is nothing like as common as in the old days.


Lister, 2012


Industrial revolution superhighway meets imaginative Sweet Toof vandalism. Although not terribly far away, the location was quite different to the usual Shoreditch street art beat.


Sweet Toof, Regents Canal, 2010


Louis Masai has done a phenomenal number of projects and art campaigning in support of species preservation and the environment generally. These two are the earliest Masai artworks I found on the streets, dating from late 2011. This blast from the past surfaced on the annual Earth Day last week. One planet, one love, one chance.



Masai featuring False



Masai


One of my lockdown distractions has been reading JR’s “Can Art Change The World”. The first time I came across his Inside Out project was this large mugshot on Redchurch St in 2011. The idea was that you sent JR a photo, he would print it and send it back to you and you had to paste it up on the wall. You may have had to send a photo of it in situ back to him. The self imortalising person in the photo is Ross T. The juxtaposition of Ross’ #insideout portrait with Ron English’s speech bubble was too good to be mere coincidence. Rock The Mouse was a shutter relic from a 2009 Mickey Mouse by Yan77 from Chrome and Black shop which used to be across the road.


Ross T in JR's Inside Out, 2011


There are many artists whose style, ability and creativity have evolved dramatically over the years such as Airborne Mark, or The Pilot as he was known back in 2009. The first photo comes from a hoarding under the Westway where Garfield Hackett and Mutoid Waste staged One Foot In The Grove in 2009. Looking back through my archives One Foot In The Grove was a stunning event, I pass that location on the tube every time I go to QPR and never fail to peep into the space under the flyover and think of that show.


The Pilot, Acklam Rd, 2009


Airborne Mark was an OG mid 80s graffiti writer, this specimen of his graff was in Leake St back in 2008.


The Pilot, 2008


As a reminder of how far Airborne Mark has come, here's a gorgeous specimen of his origami folds painting style today.


Airborne Mark, Shoreditch, 2019


Sometimes it’s about the beauty, the drama or the politics of the street art; sometimes it’s about being in the right spot at the right moment. Monsieur Qui has visited Shoreditch a few times, leaving just a few tantalising illustrations to hunt down each. Love the art, love the bird nesting in the passerby’s topknot giving extravagant coiffure's to both art and life.


Monsieur Qui, 2011


Saki and Bitches’ voluptuous temptresses appeared in some pretty eyecatching spots. Given Saki’s home country is Japan, the influence of Japanese art and use of Japanese subjects in Saki’s work, the appearance of “Tokyo Rising” alongside this Saki’s sturdy study of feminine charm was pure chance. Saki held down this elevated high street spot for several years.


Saki and Bitches, 2011


I'll try to make time for daily blasts from the past this week but I'm making no promises ok. Check out the previous weekly compendiums: DITA 1, DITA 2 and DITA 3

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

Louis Masai - "Missing"

"Missing"
The Crypt Gallery
St Pancras Church
London

24th - 27th May 2018


“and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” Genesis 1:28 – and thus begineth the issue which vexeth the street artist Louis Masai.


#Save The bees, Masai, Shoreditch, 2014


Louis Masai's environmental campaigns have been waged on walls in London and far afield since about 2010. With stark clarity and beautiful art, Masai raises awareness of the impact mankind has had on all manner of threatened species.

#This Is Now, 2014, 7 out of 10 sparrows disappeared from London 1994 - 2001



Masai has now brought his poignant and thought provoking work indoors for a solo exhibition “Missing”.




Exhibitions by street artists need to strike a balance between the excitement and everyman appeal of the art on the streets and the commercial and intellectual imperatives of an art world machine that operates on money. For novelty, Masai has found a great location for an exhibition, the crypt under St Pancras Church. Brick lined tunnels, dust and cobwebs, graveyard detritus and curious vaulted spaces provide an intriguing backdrop quite different to the typical contemporary white cube art space, this is certainly not your typical retail art box.




In various subterranean cross passages, “Missing” posters for endangered species have been pinned to tree trunks in mimicry of neighbourhood “anyone seen my goldfish?” poster appeals, hence the “Missing” of the show title.


Missing



Missing: Walrus


The first and probably most impressive sequence of work to greet the visitor are a series of acrylic and bitumen paintings on reclaimed wood in which endangered animals are rendered in a colourful patchwork which is being repaired by a bee bearing a needle and thread. The bee as an agent of repair is a motif that recurs in many guises in this exhibition.




"Last Two Hundred And Fifty"; Species Arabian Leopard


A clue to understanding Masai’s perspective comes perhaps from a moment in a film produced by Masai on his travels in which a commentator laments the failure of the orthodox red flag waving approach to environmental awareness: “everything is going to die; we are all doomed; stop stop STOP!!” The solution is to replace this with messages of positivity, to motivate people into action in the belief that their actions can have an effect. It IS possible to have a positive effect through change, it is not too late, the harm can be repaired if we heed the necessary lessons. Hence the bees, whose plight – death due to pesticides - has now for years been used as the benchmark for the forthcoming environmental apocalypse are now seen as potentially the agents of repair and restoration.


"Ossie Fossils"; Species: Tasmanian Devil


Masai's use of colourful patchwork paintings of endangered species springs from the idea that once the creatures are gone all that will be left will be the toys.


Pangolin






Pangolin (detail)


In a series of small catacomb spaces Masai has combined sculpture, wood and dead matter to create quite stunning tableau of environmental harm and endangered species crisis. One of Louis’ oft repeated messages from his Save The Bees campaign, “when we DIE we are taking You with us” looms over an absolute charnel house of real dead bees, about 24,000 apparently. By day 2 these were emitting a quite detectable odour. Oh the hum-anity.


When We DIE We Are Taking YOU With Us



"Can you imagine what 37 million dead bees looks like"





Consistent with the theme of positivity, change and salvation all visitors to the show receive a small pack of recycled cards and sachets of bee friendly seeds, each of the cards has on the face a detail of an animal painted by Louis and on the reverse, a description of the issue and a “call to action”. The call to action is incentivised by an offer of a free print to the first 23 people to join and donate to one of the environmental organisations on each of the cards.



On the opening night a large proportion of the wall was taken up by a large collection of prints, all with quilted penguins, some with bees and some with cartoon character penguins, notice the bees are all hand finished variations.








A rather curious decision was made to remove the prints from the walls by lunchtime on day 2, which stripped the vault of a noticeable proportion of the art on display. Having seen the space the night before, things looked noticeably thinner the following day.  Noot Noot! as Pingu might say.






It is exciting to see an artist noted for painting walls seize the opportunity to expand into installations and sculpture and indeed some involved the sound (as well as the smell) of the hive.





Shell hell





"No Strings Attached"; Honey Bee (electro plated copper)


Missing misses nothing, Louis Masai has created a solo show which pulls out all the stops: a great location, activist art, multi media, amazing production values and a fundamental that is sometimes forgotten – really good art or, as Bob Dylan put, “Behind every beautiful thing, there’s some kind of pain”.


"No Strings Attached"; Species Honey Bee, mosaic



"No Strings Attached"; Species Honey Bee, mosaic (detail)








"100 A Day Keeps The Poachers Away" African Elephant (100 elephants a day shot)
 
All photos: Dave Stuart

Meeting Of Styles UK 2015

Shoreditch, London
10 - 12 July 2015

all photos: NoLionsInEngland


Meeting Of Styles returned to Shoreditch last week for the second Summer on the trot. Over a 2 day period spraycan graffiti writers and street artists from Brazil to Russia via Spain and UK threw a wild ribbon of colour around Shoreditch.

Ekto & friends


Meeting of Styles is an international and not-for-profit federation of spraycan festivals, this year 22 MoS festivals around the world are responding to the “Mind Above Matter” theme

Brick Canvas Central if we can call it that was a dramatically transformed elbow of land trapped between a knot of railway tracks now under new ownership and currently renamed the Nomadic Community Gardens.

A primarily Bangladeshi community has transformed the Fleet St Hill end of the gardens with raised beds of allotments while a temporary village of tents, vans and dens of upcycled wood and canvas housed kitchens, bars, decks and admin.

The set piece featured wall on the Fleet Hill Arch was this year tackled by a multinational crew on Mind Above Matter theme (last year: men and beasts), artists making appearances on this huge collaboration are: Tyme (Swe), Adno (Rus), Awone (Swe), DJa’Louz (Fr) and from the UK Jim Vision, Zadok and below them Kak, Ekto and Wisher. You have to get close this year to the wall to appreciate the letter mastery and intricate details in the background, which wasn't the case at MOS UK 2014 when the grafftiti writers rolled a lot more images into the composition.

Wall locations were geographically more wide spread this year, the centre of weight shifted over to the Bethnal Green side of Brick Lane with some painting taking place even further east than the Nomadic Community Gardens. The walk from Nomadic Gardens yields awesome examples of 3D lettering included these pieces by Ebee, Zase and OG Hush.

Ebee

OG Hush

Zase


Up on Redchurch Street, OTwo and Andrrea Riot entertained the crowds with their abstract background and calligraphic “graffuturism”. That background is awesome, the calligraffiti reads Wizard Kings. Or perhaps Wizard Kinggs. Or maybe something else completely different.

Continuing the graffuturist or “post graffiti” theme, Stendec from the wilderness north of the wall and Soma painted this amazing piece east of the Nomadic Community Gardens

Stendec / Soma


It is very easy and actually common for those close to the culture to see Meeting Of Styles as a letterform based graffiti shindig but it actually has always aimed to be wider and all embracing. Traditional bubble letters and wild style sit happily alongside the abstract and the calligraphy based. Signwriting fonts converse with characters. No stencils though, no surprise there!

Auto 1

Morgazmik / FPLO


If you happened to park your van somewhere and returned to find it defaced by Masai and Airborne Mark like this you would have to have a heart of lead not to be excited.

Masai

Airborne Mark


Neoh continues to create work raising awareness of mental health issues, this is believed to be first example of pure face portraiture rather than figurative beauties from Neoh. Given the nudity that has crept into his figures recently it was probably a good call location to focus just on faces in this community!

Neoh (Ldn)


There was even sculpture from Joel Dean from Ireland though some of the improvised seating, shelter and indeed cooking arrangements also took on the appearance of sculpture.

Joel Dean (Odisy in background)

It is proper to give a salute to visiting international artists who trekked to Shoreditch to participate in this London edition of MoS.

Fumero (NYC)


Jotace is from Barcelona and found space alongside Morgazmik and the awesomely productive FPLO from Brazil.

Jotace

Polish born now London based Ewelina Koszykowska threw a veil over this female figure.

Ewelinak

Quite a few of the Meeting of Styles artists took advantage of being in London to go a bit off piste with other walls away from the organised Meeting of Styles locations. FPLO from Brazil popped up in a couple of locations.

FPLO (Bra)

FPLO (Bra)


Adno found time to pull off this beauty on a gate just off Brick Lane.

ADNO (Rus)


The festival ranges beyond the multiplicity of painting styles to include hip hop and beatboxing, street food, soul food and have-a-go workshops.

Unknown B-Boxer


There was actually genuinely something for everyone and the whole event was accompanied by a wonderfully chilled and relaxed vibe. Apart from the amazing painting by the Meeting OF Styles artists, this plot of land is well worth visiting to see how the community have transformed it with their collective urban agriculture spirit.

Just for fun to end with, some "work-in-progress" action shots from the Sunday:

Auto 1

Gent 48 (Birmingham)