London International Pasteup Festival Review

The history of street art is a complex story whose content varies depending upon author, location, editorial preferences for a “creation” date and people’s differing actual lived experiences. The early phase of its ripping away from graffiti was for many reasons dominated by stencilism and the significant role of the paste-up technique is easily overlooked. Perhaps the London International Paste-Up Festival has addressed that.


LIPF paste-ups


LIPF was held over the first weekend in November and featured art on paper by 100s of artists who responded to an open call by the organisers and here is a hat tip to Outside The Zone (Trix Mendez) and Art House Project London (Apparan). I had the pleasure of kind of winding up proceedings by leading a street art tour around the spots. This gave me the unexpected joy of meeting some street artists whose work I have loved for many years for the first time as well as renewing acquaintances with familiar artists and friends, I learnt more from the experience than anyone.


LIPF Street Art Tour group led by Dave Stuart


One reason why paste-ups were so significant was newcomers to street art who were not coming from a graffiti background were not going to spend hours creating, perfecting and refining a spraypainted piece of art under risky illegal circumstance, their art would be prepared at home, in the studio or at school and then pasted up in seconds. The paste-up was the ultimate in risk avoidance yet participants still experienced that buzz, the thrill of being a little bit naughty in a relatively harmless way.


Wild paste-up wall in Shoreditch


More than other forms of street art paste-ups have an ability to acquire a history, to evolve. There is a joy in the aging of paper, the savagery of rips and tears, the marker pen additions from passers-by, the possibility that meaning is changed by clever juxtaposition of another piece of art. Some artists regard their art as having an independent life on the walls and indeed even photograph their paste-up to rejoice in those changes.

D7606 Kurt Cobain


D7606 at LIPF


The LIPF art was pasted up in Shoreditch over the preceding couple of weekends by a coalition of willing and experienced locally street artists. One of the kind of predictable and I argue welcome consequences of this early installation was other artists subsequently adding their creativity in and around the LIPF displays.


Corrosive8 vs Eartha Kitt Catwoman by Shuby


Creativity is a word that means different things to different people, beauty being in the eye of the beholder and all that. Here we see WRDSTH explaining how his Winona Forever paste-up was “edited” by artist unknown and subsequently restored by him and he gave a wonderful articulation of his rationale for doing so. For the benefit of readers and those who heard WRDSMTH’s anecdote first-hand, the second picture below shows the redacted artwork.


WRDSMTH presents his art to #LIPF



Subverted WRDSMTH paste-u


The festival locations facilitated several different presentation styles for the paste up. Two spots highlighted individual artists, Yu_wallart and JD Montaigne in an installation format, reminiscent perhaps of something by Ludo or early Camille Walala when walls were less cluttered! It would be rare these days to see single stand-alone paste ups like this but hey, organisers gotta make use of the spots they have available!


Yu_Wallart



J D Montaigne installation


In four other spots the team had created massive banners of art pasted onto vinyl which was then tied to what in any other circumstance would be advertising frames. The first one featured below serendipitously referenced the world’s most prolific paste-up artist. Its placement and elevation high up the wall precisely matched a Lenin paste-up placed illegally by Shephard Fairey in 2007.


LIPF Paste-up banner, Bateman’s Row



Shepard Fairy 2007, Chris Stain 2008 below


The two Old Street banners had to be taken down on Sunday evening but the others on Dereham Place and Bateman’s Row (above) could last a few more weeks.


LIPF Paste-up banners on Old St



LIPF Dereham Place paste-up spot


The location the artists referred to as “The Beast” became my favourite as it offered the closest approximation to the layering and direct application of art to the wall that we see in the wild.


The Beast wall


Collaboration is a wonderful aspect of most forms of street art and one beautiful collaboration that emerged in the festival was between Donk and Uberfubs. Donk pasted-up his brilliant “Higher Ground” piece a week before before the main crew got to work with the other paste-ups, the second photo shows the dramatic impact on his monochromatic composition after Donk invited Uberfubs to augment it with her flouro creatures, Natasha Searston also got in on the act.


Donk, Uberfubs, Natasha Searston collab


Donk did his bit to shame the youngsters by getting his Dad’s art pasted up in the festival, a quartet of coppers with appropriate symbolic numbering which represents the acronym ACAB which…..go figure!
ACAB by Donks Dad


Some collaborations arise through intentional placement, such as the kitty cat and rat living in perfect harmony with two foxes, others are actually created as single sheet collaborations


City Kitty, a rat, Yaya and DaddyStreetFox


Perhaps the guiding hand of the installers has had a role in placing a body positivity collaboration between Flakes Store and Planet Selfie adjacent to a Playgirl cover and Sam Fox in a box.


Body positivity collab Flakes_store and Planet Selfie, Samantha Fox by D7606


The Live and Let Live/Street Art Against Hate project was initiated by the #NoHate family, an awesome group of street artists from Cologne. Artist were invited to support the anti-hate initiative by creating paste-ups adding their art within a circular "Live and Let Live/Street Art Against Hate" message.   A version from Streetart.globe gave me the prompt to explain Sunday's tour group the Street Art Against Hate project and the opportunity to demonstrate the power of collective paste-up messaging with an anecdote about the time I came across their Brick Lane Wall of Love in the company of two parents who had lost a son in an American High School mass murder. Full 2018 story HERE. The impact of the message and the touching affect it had on Patricia and Manuel Oliver in 2018 truly demonstrated something about paste up street art.

Street Art Against Hate repping at LIPF


As I told the story, street artist Face The Strange handed me two of his versions of the paste-up message, demonstrating perfectly that the project is actually still alive and doing good things.


Street Art Against Hate paste-ups by Face The Strange


One of the more inventive uses of paste-ups we have witnessed down the years has been Dr Cream’s creation of online stop frame animations using paste-up linoprints.
Daisy Riot animation frames by Dr Cream


He has done loads of these in Shoreditch over more than a decade and something we have never succeeded in doing is to locate all the elements of an animation to have a go at rendering our own, it is nice to think that this game or quest was Dr Cream’s gift to the streets. Finally, courtesy his LIPF installation we have all the frames of a star jumping Daisy Riot animation and I was thrilled to get it to work, though my effort does appear to be a homage to the jumpy animation style of Roobarb and Custard (look it up!).

Dr Cream "Daisy Riot" animation


As the social media flurry around the Festival subsides, I mentioned in my little digital contribution that I had enjoyed leading the Sunday tour and had learned a lot from the guests and artists present. As I pointed out the drama in the layering of Rider’s fluorescent prints against his darker monochromatic background, print artist MeandBlue helpful informed us that the two prints flanking Rider’s display were by David Shand, an artist who was new to me. David focussed on the residue of tears and colours generated by the action of time on flyposters on the streets, a phenomenon paste-ups are beautifully susceptible to. David passed away last year but as I explored his art online this week I got the sense that the spirit and intent of the festival would have chimed with him, it was a pleasure to be introduced to his work through the art on the wall.


Rider flanked by David Shand (RIP)


No matter what form a piece of street art takes it will always by elevated by good placement and use of the environment. Wrdsmth scores highly for placing the “Hearts Shatter” message within the shattered glass window, happily no wrists were slashed in the placement of the oversize stencil through the jagged shards.


Hearts Shatter, mixed media by Wrdsmth


The festival concept had a few minor and unavoidable aspects in which it deviates from the nature of paste-up street art in the wild. Pasting all the art up at one point in time denies the “patina” of a good street art spot that comes from artworks going over eachother, from the tearing, the layering, the decay and aging at different rates from different moments in history. Seeing the artists own particular eye and mind controlling placement and juxtaposition is often desirable. On the other hand paste-up street art actually facilitates collaboration, sharing and representation by mailing paper or digital art to friends in other locations and letting them get on with it.


Shuby, Uberfubs, Art.tits and Carl Stimpson


Something rather less obvious from the participation in the LIPF was the gender balance. The art world is notorious for its discrimination on many basis especially gender. A crude assessment based on identification of artists in a sample of 155 photographs suggested a ratio of male to female artists of 5:3. It’s not great, it’s not perfect but it is likely to be better than the perceived state of play in the in gallery world.

Did the paste-up festival work? It got huge numbers of artists’ work visible on the streets, it introduced the art of many artists from overseas that we had not seen here before, it brought new artists to outdoor walls who have never displayed in public this way and it gave huge visibility to this under-sung street art genre.  It was a success.

Hit Shot Walls May 2013

All photos: NoLionsInEngland


May was a busy month for street artists and photographers of street art. London has been blessed by visits from a plethora of overseas street art stars, let’s start with a few shots of work by an artist new to us, Dede who is reported to come from Israel. Dede’s paste ups were all nice, original and well placed but specially noteworthy were the huge quantity of evidently handmade (screenprinted?) individual stickers


DEDE



DEDE


Also from Israel, regular recent visitors Unga and Tant of Broken Fingerz crew popped back to Shoreditch recently to paint some naked chicks on bikes with big handle bars stuff. It’s what decaying disused doorways are for really.


BROKEN FINGAZ


The international invasion turned intergalactic with the arrival of Space Invader, whose Earth base is in France.


SPACE INVADER


SPACE INVADER


London always welcomes Belgian artist ROA and this month he obliged with two of his finest large scale murals. One located on South Bank must by dint of the nature of the tourist spot and also the heavy traffic on passing railway lines be in with a shout of being his most eyeballed ever, while the other in a grim alleyway is far from the beaten track for anyone other than winos, junkies and street art photographers.


ROA



ROA (detail)


DALeast and Mrs DALeast, herself more commonly known as Faith47, arrived to decorate various walls around Shoreditch. DALeast ran a cheeky little competition for the first 50 people to photograph all 7 pieces he did in London, the twist being the 7th one is located on private property behind locked doors and I can testify that a polite knock earns a frosty reception, so no image here of that particular holy grail.


DALeast



FAITH47


Yola is another artist previously unheard of who visited London and put up some large scale paste-up. Whilst this particular wall has been running for far longer that is healthy in an active street art scene, we weren’t impressed with the lack of respect in papering over this DScreet/Cept collab on Bacon St. On the other hand, this may possibly be a symptom of the pressure on space these days with so many spots reserved for curated/permissioned street art.


YOLA over Dscreet



YOLA


South Coast native Shuby visited London and revealed a complete potty-mouthed approach to letterpress paste ups though frankly who’s surprised, surely you remember the “knickers” portraits from a couple of years ago?


SHUBY


Early in the month we located a cluster of Lad stickers by The London Police but the star find were these custom kicks done in “get your chems here” boots over the telephone wires style.


THE LONDON POLICE


Not all invasions were intergalactic, Kid Acne brought a fresh wave of his Bouddica referencing Stabby Women to various front doors.


KID ACNE


At some point local hero Benjamin Murphy did this stab through the heart though we only found it in May so it qualifies for this months’ HSW.


BENJAMIN MURPHY (artist formerly known as AD/SO?)


An all too infrequent visit to Hackney Wick for a whistlestop shutter clicking frenzy yielded a cluster of ballerinas by spraycan impressionist and rude tagger Neoh.


NEOH



NEOH

Many London graff photographers have got used to popping in to the Kings Court car park to photograph the high spec spraycan artistry available there on a fairly good turnover. However, about 6 months ago the moody bastard on the gate who I always made a point of checking in with said "no photographs on weekdays, punters don’t like it; weekends only”. More recently this became "no photographers at all", a point reinforced with a laminated notice displayed at the gate. You can take spray paint into the car park but not camera lenses???? Cue our community’s applause and general mirth at Malabrocca’s huge fuck-off notice directly opposite. Apart from the dig at the car park proprietor’s, there is of course the irony that documenting the art breaches its prohibition, ho ho.


MALABROCCA


MALABROCCA


We have been hugely impressed with Jonesy’s use of street art to promote environmental awareness and score political points. This seemingly unique piece appears to show an over-furry figure with a stunted tree growing out of his head squatting behind a begging bowl, so while we like the art its meaning has us a little baffled.



JONESY

Aida’s fluorescent cheebra’s, half zebra, half cheetahs have been popping up in a few locations, curiously they always seem to yield good photo opportunities which reflects good placement.


AIDA


I mentioned this was a busy month for photographers what with 2 street art photography shows and a debate on the nature of the incestuous relationship between street art and photography, there is also the small matter of the Street Art Photography Workshops which I want to brazenly plug here. The essence of the idea is spending about an hour talking through tips, hints and ideas for photographing street art with the aid of a slide show then to go out onto the Shoreditch streets to play with the wide range of opportunities for street art phototgraphy. The feedback has been pretty awesome and the workshops continue. Check HERE for updated news and schedule. Plug over. For this time.

The Eefos of Bortusk

Viola Gallery 1a Turville St 21 Feb 2008

First, a short summary of recent street art history as background to tonight’s show. Several months ago a flutter occurred literally on the streets of London when a flock of pigeons appeared on the walls of Hoxton and Shoreditch. Thinkfly took the whole fluorescent pigeon with eyes and teeth genre to its limits and he and his flock disappeared almost as fast as they came.

Thinkfly

At Christmas, grotesque dayglo monsters from the feverish imagination and possibly hand of a child sprayed directly onto newsprint started appearing daily on walls and hoardings across E1, proudly signed by the artist Bortusk Leer. Anagrams ahoy! Many mainly meaningless permutations of the letters were tested but once the word Luke sprang out of the mess, a surname soon followed and the culprit was swiftly located somewhere around and occasionally in The Leonard Street Gallery. Before this riddle was solved however, a completely anonymous pasted up rosette of Santa’s elves appeared in one location in Blackaller Street exactly at Christmas, followed by further lone Santa’s babes in isolated locations across over to Brick Lane.

Eefos

Nothing to connect the two phenomenon was obvious. Within the last month however, variations on the glamour babes started to appear at the same locations and same times as the rash of paper monsters. Pinning Bortusk Leer to a wall the truth was extracted, a friend of his who was responsible and was going under a nom-de-rue which was her real name backwards. This revelation required the re-captioning of many pictures posted on flickr. Tonight, uniquely, for the first time ever, the same pictures are being re-captioned for the second time following the discovery that the artist can’t spell Sophie.

Bortusk Leer and Eefos

Lest there be any confusion, tonight’s opening is the joint show of the two artists Bortusk Leer and Eefos whose street biography is crudely mis-represented above and whose name lends itself to the pun in the show’s title. Thinkfly got fed up of being pigeon-holed and morphed into the Bortusk Leer under consideration.

The cosy confines of a small room just off Redchurch street – opposite that Banksy tag in the meter box for those who know it or have a copy of BLT – plays host to a large number of compactly hung modified pictures by Bortusk Leer and a smaller collection of Eefos glamour girls in rosettes and panoramas in a variety of uniforms.

The largest paintings which have been subjected to the Bortusk Leer treatment recall a Crude Oils-esque (Banksy in case ya don’t know) alteration, though my favourite is the somewhat smaller corruption of a group of French soldiers from Napoleaonic times which bring to mind the Chapman Brothers defacing (dontcha love mischievously putting those words together) Goya. Given the scale of the pictures, and some are barely 2 inches by 2 inches, this is paste up vandalism on a truely micro scale.

Bortusk Leer

On the streets all Thinkfly’s pigeons had human parts superimposed but Bortusk Leer has flipped the concept in many cases here with humans having animal parts added. Wisely and thankfully, Bortusk keeps the more eroticised images off the streets, looking at the rather gynaecological positioning of a cat’s face between a woman’s thighs doesn’t bring the word “subtle” to mind.

Bortusk Leer

Judith Supine comparisons seem inevitable but this would miss the humour underpinning Bortusk Leer’s work. A smile is what Leer seeks and fun is writ right through his pictures. His rapid rise from a few pigeons on the roadside to a fully fledged show opening in a gallery is infused with an “I can do that” punk spirit.

Good news for fans of the lurid monsters is Bortusk plans to introduce a few of these at the weekend into the gallery. At the rate he manages to whack these up on the street it should be possibly to get several hundred uniques knocked out by Friday.

Turning to his friend, first of all lets get the obvious Hello question out of the way once and for all, Bortusk Leer and Eefos may turn to eachother for friendship and perhaps a look-out when being naughty against a wall, but friendship and an accomplice for art devilment is all it is!

Eefos in contrast to Bortusk Leer has essentially taken her street motif directly into the frame with little modification, which is perfect for the street art purists among us. Using a simple vintage glamour girl image, clad in various coy conservatively revealing outfits and replicated her in multiple rows and rosettes, Eefos’ pictures remind one of a vintage piece of Busby Berkely choreography.

Eefos

As the girls reach out to each other and brush each other’s thighs there is a nuance of lesbian eroticism, though that could just be my mind. Most of the work presented is available in modest editions of 5. The same cute sweetness of the street paste ups is captured in an un-demanding way on the gallery walls.

Eefos

Connections matter a lot; Pure Evil, Beejoir and Mau Mau being among the street celebrities spotted tonight. Cojones count too, and having the necessary to decide that they could do it, that they would have fun doing it and that they would take it all the way to a show indicates spirit, though the relative simplicity of what is presented tonight suggests Bonhams won’t be hammering on the door just yet. Get the point, just enjoy!

Viola Gallery – a rather small room!