Ezra St Paste Up Frenzy

Shoreditch is full of little corners where street art survives and accumulates in layers, like a busy kitchen pinboard.  Last week one such canvas near Columbia road was transformed by, in no particular order, Donk, Skeleton Cardboard, Rider and Tommy Fiendish into this beautiful paste up collage. 

 

Donk, Rider, Tommy Fiendish, Skeleton Cardboard 

 

 

Skeleton Cardboard 2020 

 

L-R Rider, Donk Skeleton Cardboard 

 

L-R Rider, Tommy Fiendish, Skeleton Cardboard 

 

Whether neglect or tolerance is the reason why the property owner has allowed street art to accumulate, mutate and flourish on this canvas is a matter for another day but it is interesting to look at just a few examples of how the patina of this door’s surface has evolved down the years.

A year ago in November 2019 the door looked like this: 

Feat Anne-laure Maison, Donk, Arrex Skulls, Subdude, Fosh, Citty Kitty, Shuby, Noriaki, Silvio Alino, D7606 

 

Just a week ago a fair portion of the art present in 2019 was showing a steely determination to cling on in spite of tempest and subsequent creatives. 

 

Nov 2020: Feat DaddyStreetFox vs Anne-laure Maison, Donk, Subdude, Fosh, Citty Kitty, Shuby, Noriaki, Silvio Alino, Bento Ghoul, Voxx Romana, Pyramid Oracle, D7606. 

 

The Pyramid Oracle paste up still visible in parts in 2019 and 2020 has already lasted since 2015, thanks mainly to its height.

  

2015: Pyramid Oracle, also feat Sweet Toof, Donk, Voxx Romana, Noriaki, Anna Laurini, Ema, D7606 

 

HIN was busy around Shoreditch 2012 - 2014 and if you looked at the bottom of the door in 2013 you would see a HIN character with an Aida face created from her infamous "East End Still Sucks" response to the Hackney Olympics.  That originally started out as a "go vegan" collaboration as shown in the following shot and the HIN body was still visible last week! 

 

2013: Sweet Toof, Aida, Kid Acne, Ema, Donk, Angry Face, HIN 

 

  2012: HIN, Aida collab 

 

Finally, back in 2012  this canvas was one of many to host the Sweet Toof/Paul Insect street group show.  This photo also features a framed print by New York street artist Gaia in a walk on part!  

2012: Sweet Toof, Paul Insect, Aida, Hin & Aida collab, Kid Acne, Ema; print by Gaia 

 

As always the beauty of the art process here is the absence of the selective and restrictive eye of a curator, an organiser.

A few years ago a permissioned wall on Hanbury Street triggered a similar “longitudinal” review of the changes time wrought on that particular canvas, click here. 

Finally, if you have enjoyed this look back through a street art time machine why not put an end to that lockdown stir crazy feeling by joining the author on a tour of Shoreditch’s street art, click here 

All photos: Dave Stuart

Skeleton Cardboard: Still Not In Use

BSMT Space
5D STOKE NEWINGTON ROAD
LONDON N16 8BH


Skeleton Cardboard doesn’t make art show aficionado’s lives easy. In fact he could be said to drive people to death as the skeleton count on the street and in the gallery piles up thanks to his art and at the same time his exhibitions are always almost impossible to find. Graffoto is here to help with the later.


BSMT in use (sign may vary)


In 2015, Skeleton Cardboard staged a 2 day pop up art show in someone else’s front room in Shoreditch to a non-existent barrage of publicity. Skeleton Cardboard converted the living room into a dead room, Graffoto chanced upon the artist luring unsuspecting unfortunates in and upon escaping with its life intact, wrote Skeleton Cardboard’s last rites, link here. Curiously the current BSMT show has the same title as the 2015 dance macabre.


Redchurch St, 2015


That "rite up" looked at Skeleton Cardboard’s street art, his collaborations and his free art giveaways so this time by way of update here are some hand finished prints and a recent collaboration he did on the Shoreditch streets with another Graffoto favourite Donk:


Calvin St, 2018



Fashion St, 2018


There is a brilliant irony in the placement of that collaborative print on the wall pictured above, there are 3 skulls in the frame yet none of them are by Skeleton Cardboard, genius!

BSMT’s basement gallery has taken on the appearance of a subterranean charnel house with the accumulation of a hoard of freshly dead skeletons.




The frozen grins of the reanimated cadavers are a façade masking their disbelief at our modern ways. Their bony brains are bamboozled by the dire warnings that constrain and limit our risk averse, arse covering life.


Danse [sic] Macabre/Internet Connection required





Ironically, the newsphere has for the past week been following the consequences of a judge deciding that an international food purveyor was to blame for a young girl's death because they sold sandwiches with inadequate labels, so perhaps Skeleton Cardboard’s characters are right to fear the morbid possibilities contained in these stark product and lifestyle notices.


Not In Use/Not Evolving


Skeleton Cardboard’s humour extends to a lovely self-deprecating mockery, the skeletons are delivering advice and warnings back to the artist, it's either a huge “no fucks given” self-confidence or someone’s self-doubt and paranoia is being hung up to the light.


Refresh Yr Head/I Can't See The Point



Refresh Yr Head/I Can't See The Point (Detail)



Refresh Yr Head/I Can't See The Point (Detail)


BSMT’s basement has two alcoves which have in the past few years have provided artists with plenty of scope for installation fun but they seem almost purpose built for conversion by Skeleton Cardboard into some kind of occultish crypt. Other observers have identified “Day Of The Dead” inspirations but Skeleton Cardboard is, perhaps unintentionally, pastiching Haiti Vodou (voodoo) shrines.







Deletions, crossings out and corrections form the basis of colourful abstract compositions from which the skeleton and the skull are absent, so empty coffins perhaps though the title, 0111, may be a binary representation of something deadly or more likely something rude.


0111



Just About Holding It together


The host for this plague of rigor mortis is BSMT Space and this week they are embarking on their first foray into the Art Fair world. They are one of the galleries exhibiting at Moniker Art Fair which goes from strength to strength and is expected yet again provide a fresh take on the urban art scene. If finding the actual BSMT Space is too challenging or too remote, Skeleton Cardboard is going to be featured on BSMT’s stand at Moniker, along with other long established Graffoto faves Sweet Toof and Ace.  A nice little sweetener is that thanks to BSMT, readers who make it this far into the post in time can get a 30% discount on the Moniker ticket price using the code LDNBSMT30 at the checkout, do shoot them a courtesy email (info@bsmt.co.uk) to let them know.

The origins of the artist’s handle lie obviously in a fetish for drawing skeletons but let’s not forget the other part of the name came from the preferred material used to put these skeletons out on the street, so it’s good to see cardboard appearing on the walls and indeed in the shrines, they may be skeletal but there is life in them bones.

Links:

Skeleton Cardboard instagram

BSMT Space website

Moniker Art Fair website

All photos: Dave Stuart

Skeleton Cardboard: Not In Use

71 Redchurch St
1 August 2015, one day only

Photos: NoLionsInEngland except 71RCS where stated


Every now and again someone comes along whose art stands apart from the rest of the street art canon. A few years back quirky skeletons started to live a somewhat traumatised and confused life on Shoreditch wall. Thus began an unconsummated love affair with the work of street artist Skeleton Cardboard.

He has worked big




And he has worked small




He has done stickers




and paste ups on vintage paper










He has collaborated with other artists


Skeleton Cardboard vs Nathan Bowen



"D7606 - your cheque is in the post"


We have found even free skeleton cardboard art on the street (but of course guests on my daytime job street art tour are always given the excitement of keeping those cool free art pieces)


Sarah & Lisa, 2013


This weekend we spied an open door in a Shoreditch cottage and we were beckoned in, “this is someone’s front room but be welcome” we were told, Skeleton Cardboard was having a pop up one day art show in someone’s house.


Photo: 71RCS

Now, the idea of an art show in the home is not specially new, what is different on this occasion is that those events are usually staged in an art world “insider’s” cool loft; the owner is either the artist, a friend or perhaps a gallerist. Skeleton Cardboard’s host is no art world insider at all, merely someone living in Shoreditch who didn’t chase Skeleton Cardboard off aggressively enough and once he had a toe in the door SC made himself at home.


Photo: 71RCS


Certain influences in Skeleton Cardboard’s work are quite obvious, day-of-the-dead; Basquiat. Skeleton Cardboard re-contextualises the health & safety warnings and propaganda that we all encounter in our daily lives and with an understated intelligence and wit he illuminates previously unsuspected sinister aspects. You look at his charming skeleton characters with their "death words" and think “yeahhhh, spooky, I hadn’t thought of it like that before;”


Photo: 71RCS



Photo: 71RCS


The atmosphere inside the “gallery” was warm and welcoming, none of the snooty aloofness of the posh west end galleries or the “we tolerate you lurkers, chatters and free beer gluggers until the first excuse to throw you out because our real priority is the 10 people on our email list who actually buy shit”.


Photo: 71RCS


Rich, to whom thanks are due for the photographs that accompany this blog post, has lived on Redchurch Street for years and like your author fell in love with Skeleton Cardboard’s work. A chance encounter with Skeleton Cardboard’s work in Monty’s Bar led to Skeleton Cardboard being invited to place a mural on a garage door to Rich’s property about a year ago.




Rich has over the years tolerated and enjoyed some fantastic street art on the externals of his property including a spectacular ROA squirrel, works by C215, Elbow Toe, Anthony Lister, Jim Vision and currently Skeleton Cardboard, Cityzenkane and James Bullough. Rich is sadly moving out of Redchurch St as the home goes the way of most property on Redchurch St – redevelopment. This pop up show by Skeleton Cardboard is sort of one final hurrah for a very cool Shoreditch spirit. This event was really reminiscent of the old days when the gap between the art on the streets and the work in the galleries wasn’t the gaping conceptual chasm that it is these days. In Rich’s words “For me, this was a fitting end to an incredible time living here. And for 24 hours it felt like Shoreditch used to. RIP 71RCS”.

Couldn’t say it any better.


Photo: 71RCS

Link: Skeleton Cardboard facebook

London's Street Art 2013 - Nostalgia is so last year

They said it wouldn’t last and dammit they were right. The year turned out to be mortal, just 365 days long but attaching electrodes to 2013’s nipples, street artists cranked the generator handle to keep fresh work fizzing on the walls right to the very death. Let’s look back over the highlights, the brilliant walls, the teeny-weeny you’d-easily-miss-it fragments, the colours, the visiting international artists, the spats, the local artists who aren’t getting curated spots on permission mural walls, the REAL street art.

Words and photos: NoLionsInEngland


Street art is not a competition but Art Is Trash is 2013’s winner. Brash, colourful, inventive and at times downright lewd and crude, Art Is Trash turned his installations and painting into a performance. It was his ephemeral tragic bin bag characters and beasts that first caught our eye.


Art Is Trash


He then took the fight to fly posters (ok, I know street art is doomed to lose that battle) with some twisted subversions of the airbushed, cool and fulfilled characters targeting our needy and product deprived community.


Art Is Trash


His cure for tapeworm may face challenges getting medical certification.


Art Is Trash


One of the most beautiful campaigns was the soulful floppy eared characters who appeared on vintage music sheets and magazine pages courtesy of Midge, sometimes in stunning collaborations with My Dog Sighs.


Midge v. My Dog Sighs


On the subject of vintage paper, 616’s trespassing in abandoned buildings resulted in the liberation of found letters from a bygone pre-email era, he picked out underlined highlights from the text which formed the basis for multiple distortions of his characteristic tribal cartoon characters.


616 – “Monarch”


It has been a brilliant year for the highly promising ALO. His street work painted directly on the surface has won heaps of admirers and he is beginning to develop deserved traction in the gallery world.


ALO


The world is certainly a brighter place for the pop art paste ups of D7606. After coming to attention for persuading icons of femininity that piss smelling phone boxes were the place to be seen in 2013, he expanded the repertoire to embrace other forms of technologically challenged communication utilities such as post boxes, valve TVs and “Tardis” police phone boxes.


D7606 – (“yeah, Billy love, just go to the hotel and straight up to his room”)


D7606 proved himself to be an exceptional engine for artistic collaboration, inviting artists such as 616, C3, Gee Street Art and Benjamin Murphy to integrate their characters into his pop soaked retro world but as suckers for interaction between pieces of street art, the perhaps unplanned addition of a letter to the interface between Skeleton Cardboard and D7606’s post box tickled us most.


D7606 v. Skeleton Cardboard


Clet Abraham has been a frequent visitor in recent years though the vast majority of his traffic sign subversions from previous visits to London were “sign man” carrying a heavy beam. On his most recent visit late this year his interference with the authority's visual control signals demonstrated the full range of his witty and imaginative repertoire.


Clet Abraham



It would have been an incomplete year without the collaged brand-jacking of A.CE, he dutifully kept up a barrage of wheatpastes. Something unusual this year from A.CE was his "artist-cam" view of a night time bombing mission which captures the energy and “one man alone versus the city" of an intense illegal run, click A.CE: Inside The mind Of A Street Artist.


A.CE


The Horror Crew, Mr Fan in particular, has had a great year with work which challenges categorisation. The observant will see in addition to the gorgeous candy coloured pop imagery that the legs of the beast in the photograph below spell out HC FAN, defiantly blurring the boundary between street art and graffiti. Also, is this cool street art or a permissioned mural? Though we have chanced upon him painting this spot a couple of times in broad daylight without a care in the world, I am inclined to guess that Mr Fan has created these beautiful Koons hat tips without permission from the property owner. That supposition is supported by the absence of any camera crew documenting every squirt of paint and also the absence of any stencilled shouts to any mural organizers.


Mr Fan HC


Sometimes it’s the small and un-shouty street art that deserves greatest admiration, a piece that is clever, took some effort and doesn’t scream “I’m an artist, buy ME ME ME “. This metalwork bird by artist unknown is stunningly placed, beautifully executed and its installation is ingenious in a way you can only appreciate by finding it on the street, one of my favourites of the year.


Unknown


Something which seems quite commonplace in New York with their angle iron sign posts but which is rare in London is the metalwork tag. Artist “Three” from Singapore left this beautiful rusty tag on a wooden background of faded abstract spraypaint colours, a stunning and photogenic little piece which lasted quite a while.


Three


D*Face closed the old Stolenspace location with a spectacular solo show, reviewed here, which was accompanied by an epic mural next to Christchurch Spitalfields, beautifully juxtaposing the sins of the flesh and religious piety.


D*Face


In doing so, he provocatively went over a long running graffiti spot and to no one’s surprise, probably least of all D*Face’s, due response was delivered within days.


Graffiti v. Street Art


There is a long list of artists and pieces of work we want to include in this year’s annual review but in recognition of the attention span of our audience…and hello to anyone still reading this far…plus the fact that I may have figured out the technology for the first time, we are going to recognise the great contributions of some (not all) of those artists in a photo slide show.


Coming shortly will be part 2 of Graffoto’s review of the year 2013 in street art with emphasis on the larger and more spectacular work of visiting artists and muralists and anything we feel just should be mentioned even if only for being damn photogenic. Sign up for the Graffoto email or RSS and see ya shortly.