Sheffield Sex City

"cos the city's out to get me if I won't sleep with her this evening
Though her buildings are impressive and her cul-de-sacs amazing
She's had too many lovers and I know you're out there waiting”
- "Sheffield Sex City", Pulp

All photos: NoLionsInEngland

Sheffield, up North, 3 hours ish out of St Pancras, why I have not done this before? The buildings, the music, the artists – all legends. "Let’s all go to Aida’s show!" A trip to Sheffield just happened, at last.

Sheffield’s artistic delights included non permissioned art spread out on the streets, derelict buildings battered by art and graffiti and a whole host of permissioned murals.

Our first little wander is piloted with the aid of a map scraped off the net showing the locations of Phlegm paintings visible on the street though the route is propelled more by the desire to locate food. Phlegm on the side of The Riverside where a microbrewed pale ale at £2.95 is just too crazy to leave in the barrel but the early shift chef can keep his bleach tasting burgers.


Phlegm Squid Chariot at The Riverside, overgrown!




Through the streets we wander finding Kid Acne, EMA,D7606, evidence of a visit by London style meister Petro and a number of artists new to us.


Dala



Eugene



Kid Acne, EMA,D7606, Eug & others unknown



Petro


We spied quite a few stunning pieces of rooftop graf, my favourite being this Cres/Anubis couple.


Cres, Anubis


Proper artist Simon Kent is a sculptor whose "proper art" could be described as Easter Island influenced human figures but on the streets he puts up charcoal coloured portraits which sit in corners looking moody, dark and “sculptural”.


Simon Kent



Simon Kent, Kid Acne



Simon Kent


A chance encounter with writer Aero at our first dead building carcass results in us assisting him to slide into said property, which may have been our tiny contribution to this little beauty ending up on a wall inside.


Aero, Doze, Some


The next morning was spent in intensive care at TamperCoffee, Sellers Wheel wrapping myself around several cups of Earl Grey and an awesome Eggs Benedict following which we had a wonderful explore of a classic Sheffield Crack Den (me: “what’s the name of this place?”; trusty local friend and guide: “Crack Den”; “So if I post a letter to Crack Den, Sheffield it will arrive here?”; TLFAG: “Put Sheffield S1, should narrow it down”).



Booms/Eugene,Casino



Eugene, Volt



Unknown



Cres, Phlegm


Carefully and lightly navigating over glass, wood timbers, rubbish and needles, photographing as I went, I emerged into a rough courtyard space, photographed a load of graff ahead of and around me then 10 minutes later turned to go back through the shattered window I had climbed out of only to realise I had actually emerged right under a classic Phlegm piece familiar from many street art blogs and flickr accounts, I just didn’t know it was there, those special moments of discovery and revelation are spine tingling.


Phlegm


We wandered up a steep incline to an abandoned ski village – in Sheffield, who’d have thought? Found some small amounts of graffiti, stunning views and some plastic bin lids to slide down the relics of the old dry slope matting – “such fun”!


Sleit?



Casino et al


In a second building we found lots of dereliction, plenty of graff of varying quality and in amongst it all, some surprisingly beautiful art by incredible artists completely new to these eyes.





Mila K



Unknown



Nymph



Brisk


Two lads putting the art and graff together to good effect are Xhastexo and Byne BS


Xhastexo, Byne


Getting on to the more acceptable face of street art – if you are a Sheffield burgher – there was plenty of evidence that Sheffield has developed considerable formal pride in its home grown street art talent. Our visit was ostensibly to check out Aida’s first solo show at the Bradbury and Blanchard Gallery and a quick scan over the list of previous shows in that space indicates a deep reservoir of local street art talent have exhibited on their gallery walls. We found art spaces, exhibition halls and building site hoardings all giving permissioned space to graffiti and street art talent.


Kid Acne


We found earlier Phlegm pieces, early evolutionary forms of the spindly monochromatic Phlegm folk we now know well and love, as well as Phlegm fronting for a major Sheffield art gallery and of course, many more of those folorn Phlegm characters in their technology free heath robinson world


Phlegm



Phlegm



Phlegm


I never knew this kind of crazy abstract camouflage was in EMA’s repertoire


EMA


Tell you another thing I never expected - a wall painted by Rolf Harris back in the day!


Rolf Harris, Kid Acne (no connection)


Two Sheffield artists whose work I have vicariously admired from afar are Faunagraphic and Rocket01, I did find art by these folks though it was not really the kind of their art that I was looking for.  Sheffield, I have unfinished business!


Rocket01



Faunagraphic



Wandering the streets, deserted, finding little art gems, petite cadeaux from artists left on the walls, it felt like the kind of magical voyage of discovery we had in Shoreditch years ago before everyone became street art photographers (believe it or not, there was a time when I refused to put my photos on the net and HowAboutNo beat my fingers with a hammer to make me join Flickr).  My friends and I on these wanders owe thanks to Sheffield artist Jo Peel who showed us streets, pubs with lock-ins and buildings with lock-outs.  One thing that became apparent was exactly where Jo's art has its roots.


In a very short dash we really only scratched the surface, a trio of grimy derelict locations and a bit of a wander yet we saw so much. The great thing is there remains so much more to see, so that combined with the natural spot churn will definitely going to make further trips to Sheffield worthwhile.

It would be wrong of me not to acknowledge that there are some passionate and expert Sheffield street art and graffiti photographers and bloggers whose posts and pictures inspired me and whose dedication and passion I tip my hat to.   All errors of identity, location, style here are entirely mine.

LINKS:

Fiona Ferret Graffiti - The Writing On The Wall
Mila K
Phlegm
Aida
Faunagraphic
Rocket01
Bradbury and Blanchard 
Jo Peel
Sheffield Urban Art
Florence Blanchard
Kid Acne
Simon Kent

Petro

24-26 July 2009
The Rag Factory
London


Graffiti writers have been appearing in galleries for 25 years, though in the context of the hot ticket that was street art moving into galleries to prostitute itself as Urban Art, proper graffiti writers have trailed behind in the gutter. A welcome trend surfacing in chisel fringed, skinny-jeans wearing Shoreditch is the profusion of shows from real graffiti writers (however - see footnote), Vibes, Insa, and Panik being a few mentioned here recently, not to forget Andy Seize.


Petro show


Petro is a writer whose recent graffiti productions in the wild (well, HOFs perhaps) have a very distinctive style, strongly characterised by diagonal themes and lots of arrows.


Petro, EOS - Bristol


Petro was one of the first un-invited writers to piece over a launch piece from Cans II.




Petro is old skool and thanks to Skire for this pic of a piece from 1994 which indicates a wilder scratchier and harder to read style


photo: Skire


Petro has seized the initiative by hosting his own brief show in The Rag Factory, a corridor like space set back from a side street off Brick Lane. Pop up gallery would be less accurate than “out of sight, hidden, knock on the door, speak through the slot and give the password” off-piste space. The show is housed in a couple of long out-houses which surfaces the hidden, reminding me of well light cowsheds. The distribution of work in the main show room falls into four distinct groupings.

The key phase which is characteristic Petro, the trademark outdoor lettering delivered within, consists of some 30 or so varied landscape PETRO words on plywood and natural coloured canvas. The word Petro is explored in a variety of letterforms and a profusion of squirming arrows which almost stretch the letters like a medieval torturer’s rack.




The outlines explore a range of styles with clouds, crimped bubbles and 3D geometries.




Fills range from random bubbles to non-existent negative space forms


Petro negative space


While the majority of the PETRO words are comparatively easy to read, several pieces are based around geometric patterns confound your senses, challenging your belief that the word PETRO probably can be made out in the spaces, lines, divisions and links.




Petro’s colour selection suggests an inclination towards drama, in a good way, the pink and black Galactic Scaffold can be forgiven its name for its stunning lurid colour and pattern.


Galactic Scaffold


Leaning more towards conceptual art is the “Life of a Pencil” installation, a table with a pair of yellow pencils embossed with the title of the show, another pair of pencils shaved down to the rubber stub and a jar holding the entire body of pencil sharpening. Coupled with this piece are two sheets dense with furious free-hand horizontal pencil lines which look like the artist has eked out a pencil’s entire lifetime ability to draw lines and then discovered he got 2.316miles out of it. Contemplating the miles per pencil and carbon expenditure correlation starts to make your head hurt.





The Life of a Pencil/2.316 miles


Other Petro creations include some Petro wallpaper with dirty black Petro characters complete with fat oily drips, a collection of dinosaur monsters roaming the eaves of the gallery, one of which in a moment surreal intervention chose it’s moment to drop onto Pure Evil’s head.




A less satisfactory element of the show is a collection of rough paper jottings, black book records and naive felt tip illustrations. The black book extracts have evidently been passed around peers, friends and critics for annotation (“when are ya gonna grow up you imbecile?”) and so have the usual curiosity value.


black book pages



Overlord


Four years ago the explosion of street art into the yuppie walls of middle ranking financial services employees (raises hand, guilty) allowed people to buy credibility through the perceived links to illegal, albeit safe and sanitised, street art and poseur-ish anti-establishment sentiment. Next stop may be putting “real” graffiti art on your walls and based on his work in this show Petro would be as good a starting point as any.



More pictures from the show here

Rarekind Gallery: New favourite gallery Rarekind which relocated this year from Brighton to London will sadly be closing its doors after the London Handstyles show in a couple of weeks. Rarekind has been a breath of fresh air through the London graff art scene and, in conjunction with the opening of Chrome and Black paint shop on the same site, has been hugely influential in giving the Shoreditch graff scene a kick up the arse this year. To sugar the pill, the owners told us that Rarekind will continue to stage graff art show using pop up spaces, we look forward to a forthcoming show on 3 decades of London graffiti.