Is Street Art Dead?

all photos: NoLionsInEngland


I come to praise street art not to bury it. If that gives away my answer to my own question fear not, for purpose of dramatic suspense the best is still saved till last.

There are a myriad variety of ways I can cycle across London from home in the West to work in the East and luckily today I was able to choose a meandering tour-de-W1 which took in two new pieces which I had spotted in Ian Cox aka Wallkandy teaser pics.

This Paul Insect was not difficult to locate (ok – it’s W2 but lets not quibble) and as I took some flicks the adjacent door disgorged a family of mum and three kids under the age of 5. They loved the art but hadn’t witnessed its creation as the kids asked if I did it, ho ho ho ho. Somewhere in London, a young family may now believe Paul Insect goes to work in Lycra.


Paul Insect


The Mode 2 piece is rather saucy and of course, being W1 I couldn’t get this shot without some damn gorgeous woman walking into the frame.


Mode 2



Mode 2


Lunchtime presented the opportunity for a 1 hour whizz around Shoreditch, wandering the streets is great for blowing through the synapses after a hectic morning and this time I had five specific objectives.

I met Fauxreel aka Mr Dan bergeron at Pure Evil’s gallery last week and although he has been a flickr contact for a while I wasn’t really conscious of his art, my ears pricked up when he talked of his plans for a paste-up in a grubby but frequently hit alleyway. Seeing a flick of the end result on unusualimage’s flickr put the idea in my mind for a shot as if the camera was the eye of someone holding the ladder looking upwards, the pic here is the full piece, the “propping-up-the-ladder” shot is here on my flickr. Tick the box marked “not permissioned”, always worth an extra star on the street art rating scale and also the piece works so well with the wall furniture so top marks for placement.


Fauxreel


Continuing towards Brick Lane I paused at End Of The Line’s Curtain Road wall to photograph some Aryz, Tizer, Probs, Nychos, Biser and Does pieces, when I chanced upon them painting this last week i got some comedy pics of a grass on a moped watching them brazenly painting away in daylight without a care.


Aryz


Just yards further on, there were the Village Underground wall panels painted last week in parallel with Probs/Tizer’s stunning “Shades of Things To Come” show. Got some decent pics of more Probs, Aryz, Snugone, Does, Nychos, Biser among others and this masterful and witty Tizer confection.


Tizer


And on, still on a 1 hour schedule, came across a very nice new Mantis, check the paths in the maze, they're not as random as you might think.


Mantis


Yards further on came across another Fauxreel that I hadn’t known about, so with this one there was not only the illegal aspect but also the chance discovery element as well, getting close to perfect (free hand spray required for top marks!).


Fauxreel


And I haven’t mentioned the two new (to me) Elbow Toe written word pieces or the Sinboy shutter character and tags, save them for another day though recently there has been a lot of pieces kept back for such “nothing new” days which have been a long time waiting.

Sickboy’s flickr streamed yesterday revealed a new Sickboy letter piece on a familiar gate – so freehand spray but not “chanced upon”, Sickboys part had been partially spoiled by someone tearing off the flyers it was painted over, perhaps an audacious attempt to steal the whole piece!


Sickboy, Word To Mother (I think)


Mr Cox’s weekend flicks confirmed suspicions this Vhils piece was only about 80% complete when I snapped it last Thursday but it was still worth strolling into the Old Truman Brewery to capture the piece in its finished state, my fifth intended location. Curiously the lunchtime curry stall often positioned in front of it wasn’t there, sometimes you get lucky (other times, there’s be a bloody white van parked hard against it).


Vhils (sculpted render)


How did I get to the Brewery from the Sickboy piece, well I paused and pondered - go back to brick Lane or round the opposite side down a dog-legged road between a wall and a derelict warehouse. Easy choice! Rounding the corner I spied a cherry picker up against a warehouse brick wall and even from about 100 yards at a very oblique angle there was no doubt in my mind what I had found.

However after a matter of feet I came across this lush Grafter stencil piece that I had seen pics of but whose location I didn’t know, this wonderful and peaceful innocence in the midst of the urban crush feels like a throw-back to a rose-tinted previous world where kids could play outdoors unsupervised and un-threatened. Try leaving your kids alone at that age today and people not only wonder if she is safe they mentally start forming the unfit negligent parenting accusations. When street art triggers reflections like that, it’s clearly doing something right.


Grafter


Finally, the crowning glory of the walk, the un-expected chancing upon a street art legend in the act of creating a piece which stands a chance of lasting for the life of the building it is placed upon. They don’t come much more revered than the legendary French street artist Space Invader and here he was in front of me, working with a friend putting up a piece which is going to be enormous when it is finished.


Space Invader


Of course, quite a bit of the art photographed today isn’t there by chance, apart from the “Shades Of Things To Come” show mentioned earlier, the Paul Insect, Mode 2 and Space Invader pieces are connected to Lazarides “The Grifters” Christmas Show” which opens this week. The joy of discovering un-expected street art and illegal street art creates a wonderful rush and whilst today my cup truly did runneth over, thankfully this is not as rare an emotion as some might have you believe.

Mode2 – Never Too Late

Laz Gallery, Greek Street, 4 April – 2 May


Thursdays, perfect for a night to seek sensory stimulation, art and free beer. Tonight’s cultural oddessy started at Cargo gardens for live charity painting by Bristol Graff legends and 1980s Banksy contemporaries Inkie, Cheba, Cheo and Lokey. We watched and sniffed the spray work under progress, we listened to Bristol poets sounding like reactionary Wurzel Gummages with humour, perhaps a scanning equivalent of Banksy. Tangent books were selling Bansky’s Bristol with author Steve Wright on hand to scribble his name inside.





It's worth checking flickr for pictures of the completed pieces, Inkie’s in particular is awesome. Didn’t have time to stick around to watch them finish as it was…..

… to Laz’s where to our immense surprise we have managed for the first time in two years as a buying customer (ok… a couple of prints 2 years ago, that’s one a year if you average it out) to get included on the list for Mode2’s new show.
Gone are the bootylicious libidinous party girls and in their place are distinctly policital, socio-political and environmentalist themes

The first canvas, We Believe In One God, is a kind of religious clash, male figures dressed in characteristic religious and ethnic clothing batter the living daylights out of each other in an “you’re all as bad as eachother” allegory of all religions being equally to blame for conflict.




Seig Heil, pastel, acrylic and canvas like all the works in this show, depicts a street scene on a cold shadow-less day with a pair of down and out street drinkers giving a nazi salute to an apparently middle-class couple with child in a pram, the backdrop being a shop called Kaisers – the title of German emperors up to the first world war. To equate the passing family to fascists seems a bit extreme but their evident comfort, their togetherness, the cut of their clothes does set them over the two itinerants but the family themselves have a blindspot to the plight of the humanity sinking deep into the embrace of the bottle.




Butterflies In The Springtime pushes both an environmental agenda as well as protesting about in-equitable share of land wealth, specifically targeted at the harm done in the process of commodity raping third world countries. A steel mill belching noxious fumes to fuel the greed and consumption of the developed world squats incongruously in a pleasant green prairie though which butterflies flit. A naked negro child whose lack of clothes symbolises his non-participation in the comsumerist acquisition of possessions gazes up at the billowing smoke, the sole element of the process in which he gets more than his share.




The concept of un-recompensed theft of precious raw materials from the rightful occupants of the land is repeated in All You Get Is, a native figure fruitlessly scratching around the soil whilst societies “haves” look forward to a convenience world of diamonds, gold and black oil.




The most dramatic piece is a burning hot gathering of people under the gaze of a couple of armed men, though we only see their sinister weapons. The context of the gathering of the people is ambiguous, they might be celebrating a feast, they could be captured, the urns balanced on the heads may contain water, or perhaps food; perhaps it is a fire that is out of control and not a party bonfire. Who knows, but it is good to have something to speculate about.




The most, perhaps the only optimistic piece in the show, that which perhaps prompts the plea in the title, is a familiar Mode2 luscious female figure ripe to give birth. Life Expectancy has a gorgeous rich patina, warm and almost satiny to look at.




All the works are mounted on striped back to plaster gallery walls giving a coarse rough temporary feel to the work. Tallying the works to the list isn’t easy as Laz hasn’t troubled the laser printer to produce labels, a sure sign of pretentiousness rather than lazy arsed-ness

All told there are 13 large scale canvasses in the show, more pictures here. Superficially Mode2s work is based upon simple, self evident statements yet several pictures have a fine multi-layered symbolism giving cause for thought.

More Mode2 pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11928372@N04/sets/72157604389241715/

From Laz it’s a short weave to Elms Lester to view Phil Frost canvasses and pick up a signed copy of his book. And what a signature that is, a slow inky work of art in itself and cause of a long straggling queue. Gorgeous canvasses though with a sort of aboriginal repetition thing going on.


Phil Frost


Phil Frost Siggy




Following a recent run of luck in getting into off-limits areas, we managed a sneak via a small hatch into the back gallery at Elms to snap a few fascinating historic pieces of graffiti, though we did miss the alleged Banksy. Some pictures of this area are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11928372@N04/sets/72157604385463612/detail/: