Diggin In The Archives Part 6

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? By the time you read this Boris should have made his “statement” to the nation and one suspects the tunnel will seem to be stretching much much further into the distance. Activities continue to expand to fit the time available and blowing the dust off the photo archive is a good a rabbit hole as any to fall into, so here is this week’s selection of gems from the past.


You wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a snorkeler (snorkelist?) walking down the road with a lion on their shoulders in 2013, it was Shoreditch after all. Twisted surrealism from Dal East.


Dal East, 2013


ACE is full OG London, his comic and pop art influenced collage screen prints were pasted up all over Shoreditch from the beginning. They still appear although nothing close to the quantity he used to put out. One of my all time favourite paste up artists. And there's Skewville , yet again, he keeps popping up in the archive photos. 2011.


ACE, 2011


In 2009 Graffoto founder HowAboutNo and I wandered Shoreditch and beyond on our lunchbreaks, chatting shit and shooting crap. Daytime street art creation was quite rare in those days and one lunch time we spied an artist in act of pasting up some big faces. He scarpered. Brummie Tempo33 told me a while later they had thought we were cops! Not many people wandered round in office garms photographing street art those days.


Tempo33, 2012


As I started to develop a little bit of an interest in street art I had a conceptual difficulty with stickers;,that fact that anyone could have put them up challenged their authenticity. Then I started to get my head around “Representation”. It would be very easy to upload a photo of a stunning mural by D*face, rightly they are appreciated worldwide but his stickers are in my humble opinion are way more significant to his street presence.

Liskbot’s hand finished stickers and paste ups go back a decade, still prolific!

The unknown sticker looks and feels like a corporate logo.


D*Face, Liskbot 2011


East London in 2011 was full of Malarky cartoons. Superficially they had the characteristics of children’s illustrations but close inspection revealed a real darkness. Often painted with compadres #Billy, Mr Penfold and Sweet Toof. These old Hanbury Street gates used to host art by great artists such as Donk , Stik, a Saki and Bitches and Macay collab, a Mau Mau and Alex Face collab and an Otto Schade "Creation Of Adam” masterpiece. And Curly ;-)


Malarky, 2011


In the next pair, the elevated elevation behind the grey gantry is the old Shoreditch Tube Station, closed in 2006. The first picture is from October 2011 and features a Rowdy creature and a piece by fellow Burning Candy crewmate Horror. The second picture dates from July 2012. The difference is the Olympics buff. One of these pics cost me a gorgeous Colnago Road bike, stolen by some Tower Hamlets low life cunt as I climbed up on the wall to get the pic

I am sure you don't need reminding, #fuckthebuff


Rowdy, Horror 2011



The Olympics Buff, 2012


When its good, Street Art can be very “of the moment”. The flip side is that years later the context or relevance of a piece of art may be forgotten. This Teddy Baden multi layered stencil features Mandeville, one of two mascots for London’s 2012 Olympics. Mandeville was named after Stoke Mandeville Hospital, the world famous spinal injuries hospital that organised the first games festival for injured people, seen as a precursor to the Paralympics. The orange flash represented a London taxi hire light. Mandeville was much maligned in the press, there will always be some mirthless killjoy. He didn’t have a good feeling about Teddy’s feline either.

I enjoyed the privilege for many years of submitting a selection of street art photos to the VNA guys for their quarterly zine. The vast majority of them went unpublished, there were far better photos from far better photographers to chose from. This is one of the unchosen. . . .


Teddy Baden, 2012


I took the liberty of visit to Shoreditch on my bike this morning, first time in over 2 months. Very little had changed, street artists have been socially distancing from the walls.  Notwithstanding whatever guff we get from Boris this evening I suspect there may well be more sucking from cess pit of my street art photos this week, catch them daily on my Instagram or facebook

Check out the previous weekly compendiums: DITA 1, DITA 2, DITA 3, DITA 4 and DITA 5

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

Word On The Streets Is....

All photos: NolionsInEngland


Fate conspired to stop me pressing the shutter release on any camera for 9 whole days until yesterday lunchtime. It was nothing in particular, nothing special, just a bundle of things from the normal routine of life that cuts perpendicular across a passion for street art and graff. Yesterday lunchtime every surface seemed to throw up a splash of colour and artistic intervention begging to be memorised. Though Graffoto tends to be about the words, for a change here’s a string of pics which would normally be consigned to flickr where the image is the law.


CEMO


Last time out, Graffoto reported on the toyish dogging doings of someone with a grudge against Malarky’s colourful shutter and wall murals; the street cartoon machine didn’t let that stay up for long, completely re-doing the Redchurch St wall with a notably more gnarly and snarly tone.


Malarky, Lucas


At the other end of the size range there were a lot of ultra small interventions catching the eye and begging to be photographed. A prominent proponent of what we might refer to as the beauty in the male form, this Paul Le Chien sticker isn’t new by a long shot but yesterday the colours and composition begged to be photographed.


Paul Le Chien


Still at the macro scale, someone had a minor clearout of their toy collection or, as HowAboutNo observed, possibly something from a cereal packet. Just one of those quirky little bits you find that you can’t see any rhyme or reason for its presence but it’s just good someone thought it should go there. “Artist” unknown.


Unknown


Back up to the mahoosive, productions in this car park plot escape the usual life cycle of dogging and 1 day max going over, perhaps due to the 24 hour security presence. This new(ish?) piece by Probs echoes and appropriates the rail line that arcs over the plot, so much so that I wanted to bring that link into the picture which is my lame excuse for this somewhat contorted context shot.


Probs


DON has been out there smashing prominent “street art trail” spots which will keep the tour guides happy. You’ve got to admire the quality and detail of this partially stencilled piece, the two characters also by DON mugging their way into the shot are Darwin and Hirst.


DON UA


This collection of irregularly sized charcoal portraits look sweet. Would they have been better spread around the parish rather than clustered in this one over-pasted go-to “urban back alley”?


Unknown


What is the word on the streets? For some reason none of the massive number of doorways bearing ancient and modern tags made it onto the camera’s memory stick but RUSHT is one of the few writers who deems the Shoreditch art fag vortex worth bothering with, here’s a dirty and new Rusht piece.


RUSHT


This sticker is cool. Whoever the proud stickerist is, they wanted to create a long lasting legacy as this is about 10 feet off the ground. Artist anyone?


Unknown


One more sticker, bit of a curio, this is an image of the flyer advertising Banksy’s Graffiti, Hostility and Jubilee show in Southwark in May 2002. The event went ahead based around various Banksy images including the Monkey Queen and sentry with pants down but the fuzz were all over it. Why make a sticker of this? Why cross out the date? You think got a micro piece-ette of a Banksy factoid you want to hide from us? Pesky forum types perhaps.


Unknown


Getting more sculptural here, no idea who this is by, possibly an artist with a show that I missed but it’s nice to see someone putting up something one off, crafted and abstract.


Unknown


You just can’t beat a bit of colour and the writing IS the word, so it’s good to end with a nice piece by RULA ONE.


RULA ONE

Fuck Street Art - this year's model

Photos: NolionsInEngland except HowAboutNo where stated.


Every year throws up it’s street art hating graffiti purist, thankfully 2012’s has arrived early.


Malarky, Lucas & feat Kamba


Malarky, Lucas, Mr Penfold and co are clearly guilty of wantonly putting up sweet and bright painted walls and shutters all over Shoreditch and someone, step forward Kamba, resents that. “Street art is not for galleries” and “street art is not a business” is Kamba ‘s message, propagated by stencil, ironically.





Kamba‘s tag hasn’t exactly got the finest handstyle but he/she evidently trusts in the purest of graff colours – chrome and black.




The message is curiously accepting of street art. Unlike many of Kamba‘s more illustrious predecessor crusaders against the corruption of the graff culture, it’s not the existence of street art itself get Kamba‘s goat just that it shouldn’t be in galleries. Ok, most us accept that you don’t get street art in galleries, in galleries it becomes just art but lets not nitpick.


photo: HowAboutNo


Maybe Malarkey does own too much Shoreditch, maybe we could use a bit more variety, hopefully the tacit acceptance of Malarky’s epic walls and shutters will mean that those dogged murals will now be painted by a greater variety of street artists. Let the production/dog/ buff/production cycle commence. And may the artists raise their game cos Kamba is on their ass.

Quick ting.

Graffoto Round Up Of The Year - Pt 3

HowAboutNo rashly promised FOUR picture-rich blog posts to review what was up on London’s streets and alleyways in 2011, so I thought I’d contribute something at this stage covering the Summer months, mainly because with our productivity we might not complete this magnus opus until Dec 2012.

Dr D was present and correct throughout 2011, this particular poster reflected what we were all thinking but by pasting up on this scale on the A501, Dr D said it with a little more panache.




Small was beautiful throughout 2011,not only the likes of Isaac Cordal and Pablo Delgado (see VNA issue17 for an interview) but new to London’s streets were a collection of hand painted anthropomorphic pig sculptures by lovepiepenbrinck.




Italian artist Clet Abraham visited these shores early in the Summer and took the liberty of modifying a number of our street signs.



We didn’t see too much of Kid Acne on London walls this year but he seemingly did go out on a bombing mission one night in the company of Aida and Emma. Seeing my bike leaning against a wall on the fringes of the shot reminds me of the self inflicted stupidity that led to my bike being nicked from just 3 feet from me in Brick lane in October. Twat.




Stencils on old newspapers are Mr.Farenheit’s stock in trade, he (she?) certainly got up a lot throughout 2011. Supposedly the QR codes used in a lot of his paste ups do work.




Mobstr had a great year, frequently targeting street artist’s commercial agendas and, as in this one, the council buff.




Continuing to display a refined appreciation of vintage Burlesque as well as a faculty for hitting the high spots, Saki and Bitches turned out to be a continuing surprise and mystery – until her warmly received pop-out, sorry... pop up show in East London.







Ai Wei Wei had a piece running in Tate Modern in London and despite being unjustly detained in China for a long period was able to get these fearsome beasts up outdoors in London. OK, the courtyard, Somerset House.






Dain putting up some of my favourite paste ups EVER. This lasted 1 day and was then fly pasted over.

Stinkfish


C215 had at least a couple of trips to the UK in 2011, this was my fave from the year.


El Mac painted this piece shortly before going off to paint in the Bristol "See No Evil" event.

New names in 2011. . .

These artists may well have exhisted long before last year, but in 2011 they smashed Hackney/Shoreditch and Brick Lane . . .


Nemo


Nemo


Malarky


Malarky

Kata - who showed ealry spouts of activity in July/August...but not much else since.


Part 4 before the weekend is out....in your Face!

Graffoto Round Up of the Year - Part 2

Part 2 of 4 in the round up of my favourite graffiti and street art action in 2011. Already a few days into the new year, this all feels so last year already. . .

All photos by HowAboutNo except where stated.

Probs

Various

Blam repainted his famous Oscar the Grouch piece (and possibly one of the longest lasting pieceof street art, it was up for nigh on 6 years, but was unfortunately buffed quite a while ago now) I think we all knew this one would never last as long. Painted on a legal spot in Brick Lane that had a lot of visitors this year.

Pablo Delgado proved to be an interesting newcomer, a slightly new take on stuff that could have just been tired and forgotten about, he made sure that he placed them in enough spots to be seen and at least he was an artist that was getting up regardless of any print release of self marketing campaign. (his work is available at Pure Evil I realise, but small hand limited editions only.)

Stik

A.ce

A wet weekend at home in East Sussex in May. Being at home means usually not much to be seen in the way of street art or graffiti - so I took up "urbexing" to fill in some down time. I thought nothing of seeing the odd bit of graff here and there in the derelict buildings....but was amazed to find my first real Paul Insect piece in an old abandoned girls school. . . . .

Myne

Back in January, a chance encounter with a young man on the streets was our first introduction to the colourful and angular world of ALO. Before too long ALO was getting up with spiky, twisted characters on board

Photo: NolionsInEngland

Raise a glass to Bortusk Leer who did more than his share to brighten London's corners with mad-cap fun.

Photo: NolionsInEngland

In April we got our first introduction to a man who came to pretty much own Shoreditch shutters before the year was out. Malarky continued to have a big impact throughout 2011 with High Roller Society hosting a Malarky presented Gocco Printing workshop workshop and a prestigious interview in VNA issue 17, still available here

Photo: NolionsInEngland

We lost two HOFs during the year, the second comes up later but regardless of the arts council lumberjack fest, nothing in the UK matched the cultural desecration the demolition of The Pit, RIP, wrought on an un-broken line back to the very beginnings of London graff.

Photo: NolionsInEngland

One of 2011's most brilliant street art campaigns was by the old master Ron English. Judging by the huge numbers of human-free photos that surfaced on the net it seems not many spotted that the speech bubbles were meant to interact with passers-by, as revealed on Graffoto here.

Photo: NolionsInEngland

Ad Skewville was over in the Spring. Apart the brilliant "Slow Your Roll" show at High Roller Society, Skewville dropped a number of stunning shutters on Roman Rd and Bethnal Green Rd including the pair above exchanging honest Brooklynite greetings across the street.


Photo: NolionsInEngland

Part 3 to follow soon which will cover the months of July to September.