Daytripping – Cardiff Street Art and Graffiti

Any excuse to blow the London vapours from the lungs will do so my travels recently took me to Cardiff thanks to a cheap rail ticket promotion. Cardiff is the capital of Wales and, as a specimen of street art informs me, the 6th most “at risk” city in the world from rising water levels.

Cardiff At Risk - artist unknown


I have previous with Cardiff, having been born there, schooled there and fled from there. It was a shithole until I left, now look at it! In the mid 00s when I joined Flickr with its global community of artists, writers and photographers I realised early on that Cardiff has some seriously good spraycan artists, so an art visit was well overdue. This is not a guide to Cardiff’s street art and graffiti scene, I am certain there is more and there are different artists and other locations; think of it as me sharing a snapshot of some of the stuff I happened to find and enjoy on one particular day.

My Dog Sighs & others


I headed into the area south of the train station, dark streets where we used to drink and play pool in the old Bristol Hotel, drawn in that direction not by an awareness of any art locations, just simple curiosity at a new exit from the train station which I don’t think existed when I was a kid. N3KOcardiff trans rights stickers


South of the station there was barely a single building I recognised but one thing they never change are the railway bridges so it was nice to find to rough and raw pieces on those familiar surfaces.

Past, Jams


Rmer1, as in “Armour”, stood out in my online remote appreciation of Cardiff’s street art scene, my 150% certainty was that if I did find any Rmer artwork it would be one of his photorealistic portrait pieces. I was dead pleased when one of the first tags I found was Rmer1.

Hoxe1 Rmer1


That tag was found on Womanby Street, a drag that screams “diehard 18 year old drinkers from the valleys” and most of the art seemed bar related. There was some good stuff and when you have talent like Dr Zadok combining with Karm and Rmer the result such as this portrait of 2015 Welsh Music Prize 2015 winner Gwenno Saunders is inevitably impressive.

Zadok, Karm, Rmer1


After a delicious humus and felafal sourdough in the indoor market a hired bike took me west the short distance to Sevenoaks Park in Grangetown where I found this enormous RIP tribute to deceased graffiti writer NERVE. The fragmented blockbuster letter outlines served as a frame within which writers paid their respects in a coordinated colour scheme.

Nerve RIP wall


I couldn’t believe my luck in coming across this crisp, clean, colour coordinated graff seemingly painted quite recently given its pristine freshness. It was quite a surprise when a bit of research revealed it dates back to June 2021, there is absolutely zero chance, almost, of anything lasting that long unscathed up here in London.

Nerve RIP wall


Nerve RIP wall


One writer who's style caught my eye in that Nerve tribute and a couple of other spots was Elvs. ELVS


TIP: When exploring art in a new town, never take the same road twice. A different route back to the centre led to the chance find of a long extent of graffed up hoardings on the embankment of the River Taff leading to an entrance to the Rugby stadium. Rugby fans have to have something to piss against I suppose.

Millenium Stadium Taff Embankment


Newer


AMOK


Cesto


Sepr


Apart from strange spiky posts covered in furious tags, the pieces on the boards were virtually unblemished with little to no dogging or lining out. Close inspection of one piece did show evidence of some local beef, lining out had been repaired and the same taking out style deployed against the same writer was observed in several spots across the city.

A longer ride took me through Cardiff’s impressive civic centre towards the Roath area where spectacular murals and cobbled alleyway pieces can be found.

Lowther Keys Dan Green


Helen Bur, Colour Doomed collab


City Road ish


Familiar artists abound though the art piece that excited me most was a My Dog Sighs painting in support of Ukraine in which the photorealistic eyeball reflection expresses the explosive horror or a Russian missile attack. My Dog Sigh’s painting went viral on social media in the early weeks of the current conflict.

My Dog Sighs support for Ukraine



My Dog Sighs


With spring light holding up well a random loop up the side of Roath Park then back west hemmed in by the Western Avenue revealed individual isolated art works are to be found by the vigilant eye.

Alex Pawson


This mural by SPK dating from 2015, survives on a wall which has all the hallmarks of a building extension jerry built on top of an existing garden wall, Boris was a pariah among the righteous even before becoming PM (but you knew that).

SPK Anti fox hunt Boris Johnson


It’s the legs of the badger down the badger sett painted where once would have been a garden gate is a use of wall topography that amuses and impresses.

Boris Johnson fox hunt supporter - SPK


They say one of the first signs of gentrification is street art moving in; I remember this cut-through to the train station opening some 35 or so years ago, seems Cardiff’s street art lags the gentrification :-))

Helen Bur / Wasp Elder Collab


This trip to Cardiff was part art, part graffiti and part nostalgia. Despite no prior research into locations a random exploration of Cardiff yielded a satisfying quantity of art and for that randomness was actually all the more interesting. We shall return.

All photos: Dave Stuart

My Dog Sighs - Crylong

CRYLONG
Nelly Duff
156 Columbia Rd, London E2 7RG
8TH – 14TH Nov 2019


My Dog Sighs has a London solo show at Nelly Duff, well overdue after a long gap since his last London solo show.




This photorealistic extraordinaire has steadily built up a broad array of impressive street art styles, most famous of which is his Free Art Friday cans drops. The cans feature a crushed and folded cylinder with cute snub hosed faces painted onto the shiny base which were left outdoors for people to discover and keep, they were hugely admired by many, found by few. The concept and discipline of painting photorealistic faces on circular can bases fed into other street art styles, notably in many enchanting paste ups created in collaboration with fellow south coast artist Midge.


My Dog Sighs & Midge, London 2013



My Dog Sighs & Midge, London 2014


My Dog Sighs has also a massive reputation for his incredible murals, his eyeball paste ups, his stickers, his waterdrops and his completely different uncircular non photorealistic stick character.


Upfest mural, Bristol 2015



Upfest mural, Bristol 2017



Eyeball, London 2017



Sticker, London 2015



Stick Man, London 2017



Water drop, over Subdude, London 2019



Rising damp in Nelly Duff 2019


The humble tool of the graffiti writer, street artist and amateur bodywork repairer is the spraycan and My Dog Sighs art has brought the can right into the art as a canvas as well as a source of paint. This show is all about the cans.


My Dog Sighs- Beige


Crylong, the title of the show plays with the phonetics of the name of a major spraypaint supplier Krylon. Back in the early days of graffiti spray paint manufacturers were focussed on industrial applications, particularly car paint and a major source of paint for graffiti writers was the cans of paint sold in car repair shops, not all of it finding its way through the checkout before ending up in the graffiti writer’s hidden pockets. Crylong also speaks to the sad doleful appearance of My Dog Sighs’ characters.


As well as the cans, it’s all about the eyes. Watching My Dog Sighs in action on a public mural is to watch someone painstakingly paint microscopic detail in flecks of colour in the iris and in the reflection on the eyeball. In his exhibition you ascend the rickety wooden stairs of the Nelly Duff Gallery and enter into the Room of Stares.




If you ever photograph a face close up then home in on the eyeball in the image and blow it up full screen size you will see the eyeball is a wonderful mirror. Usually the thing in the reflection is a photographer as we have yet to see a photorealist painter be brutally honest and paint a phone in the reflection. Engage in a staring match with each of the square eyeball images and in the reflections in each of the eyeballs you will spot different characters inspired by legendary photos from the 1980s era of subway graffiti. One lining up his spray cans is unmistakably Dondi photographed by Martha Cooper and published in graffiti’s Book of Genesis Subway Art. Look right into the detail of the eyeball and you can see that My Dog Sighs has even replaced the Rustoleum logo on the can Dondi holds with the characteristic triple spot of Krylon’s logo.


Pink canvas (detail)



Pink screenprint (detail)



Dondi by Martha Cooper, Subway Art, published by Thames and Hudson



Red screenprint on paper (detail)


Flick through your copy of Subway art and you will find spraycans littered, almost literally, throughout Martha Cooper’s photos which embraced the broader context of graffiti culture rather than just the trains themselves. B-Boy legend Crazylegs, again from a Martha Cooper image makes an appearance.


Blue screeprint(detail)



Blue canvas (detail)



Crazylegs by Martha Cooper, from Hip Hop Files, published From Here To Fame Publishing, 2004



Yellow canvas detail



Green canvas detail


The wall of stares houses a mix of eyes on canvas, eyes screen printed on paper and in one case screen printed onto metal, each in 5 colourways, though not all on display. This allows us a very unusual opportunity to compare a screen print with the original, and only a publishing house with the quality of Nelly Duff’s in house printer would have the confidence to pull this off. Under close up scrutiny the effect of the varnish layer on the aluminium print is bewitching although really only apparent when viewed in real life, photos don’t do it justice.


Blue - Canvas original painting



Blue - archival flatbed print with silkscreen varnishes on brushed aluminium



Blue - archival flatbed print with silkscreen varnishes on paper


Any variation in colour in the three photos is actually more due to the different lighting and mixture of daylight and spotlight falling on each one rather than a real difference.


The other half of Crylong is a collection of framed faces on cans, the cans are Krylon and in each one the painted character reflects the colour of that paint can and indeed something of the emotion suggested in the faintly surreal names the colours are given by the manufacturer.



Owl is obviously a quite extraordinary name to give a paint colour so just as well Owl has an extraordinary face.


Owl (detail)



Owl


Nice to see vintage cans of Rustoleum making an appearance.


Gold (detail)


Seems that aluminium is a colour now, interpreted by My Dog Sighs as a Silver lady up to some devilment at a masque ball.


Silver


The rim of the base has been sanded back to bright metal to make it silver rather than the rust finish seen in all the other vintage cans.


Silver detail


The frame fillet, that colour strip inside the frame that gives depth to the frame is also matched to the colour of the can and at the bottom of each frame is a used spraycan cap, also colour matched natch.


Bright


My Dog Sighs has, in the blink of an eye, doffed his cap to the origins of street art in his homage to the classic Martha Cooper photos and the old school industrial painting spraycans are a nod to the significance of the can as a canvas for his art. He also demonstrates that photorealism can be beautiful art as opposed to the exercise in tedious virtuosity it can appear at times in the hands of others.  The show is up for a week, coming down on Thursday so blink and you'll miss it but hopefully these hindsights will have given some insights.


Fire



Bright (detail)



Regal



Pink canvas


LINKS:

My Dog Sighs website
Martha Cooper instagram

All photos: Dave Stuart except Martha Cooper where noted