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

Diggin In The Archives 4

Diggin into the archives bring back lots of mostly good memories but some of these artists have done so much brilliant street art that picking just one or two highlights is cruelly dismissive of their street opus. Another week of suspended animation has rolled past so here we go with the 4th collection of flashbacks trawled up from a long forgotten sector of the hard drive.

Anthony Lister did quite a number of stunning superheroes and faces over a number of years and a number of visits. It was quite easy to miss that Lister was parodying the Banksy in Cargo with this piece. Responding to the Banksy piece Lister declares himself over stencils and certainly now with the advent of muralism and greater tolerance of street art the old fashioned single layer stencil is nothing like as common as in the old days.


Lister, 2012


Industrial revolution superhighway meets imaginative Sweet Toof vandalism. Although not terribly far away, the location was quite different to the usual Shoreditch street art beat.


Sweet Toof, Regents Canal, 2010


Louis Masai has done a phenomenal number of projects and art campaigning in support of species preservation and the environment generally. These two are the earliest Masai artworks I found on the streets, dating from late 2011. This blast from the past surfaced on the annual Earth Day last week. One planet, one love, one chance.



Masai featuring False



Masai


One of my lockdown distractions has been reading JR’s “Can Art Change The World”. The first time I came across his Inside Out project was this large mugshot on Redchurch St in 2011. The idea was that you sent JR a photo, he would print it and send it back to you and you had to paste it up on the wall. You may have had to send a photo of it in situ back to him. The self imortalising person in the photo is Ross T. The juxtaposition of Ross’ #insideout portrait with Ron English’s speech bubble was too good to be mere coincidence. Rock The Mouse was a shutter relic from a 2009 Mickey Mouse by Yan77 from Chrome and Black shop which used to be across the road.


Ross T in JR's Inside Out, 2011


There are many artists whose style, ability and creativity have evolved dramatically over the years such as Airborne Mark, or The Pilot as he was known back in 2009. The first photo comes from a hoarding under the Westway where Garfield Hackett and Mutoid Waste staged One Foot In The Grove in 2009. Looking back through my archives One Foot In The Grove was a stunning event, I pass that location on the tube every time I go to QPR and never fail to peep into the space under the flyover and think of that show.


The Pilot, Acklam Rd, 2009


Airborne Mark was an OG mid 80s graffiti writer, this specimen of his graff was in Leake St back in 2008.


The Pilot, 2008


As a reminder of how far Airborne Mark has come, here's a gorgeous specimen of his origami folds painting style today.


Airborne Mark, Shoreditch, 2019


Sometimes it’s about the beauty, the drama or the politics of the street art; sometimes it’s about being in the right spot at the right moment. Monsieur Qui has visited Shoreditch a few times, leaving just a few tantalising illustrations to hunt down each. Love the art, love the bird nesting in the passerby’s topknot giving extravagant coiffure's to both art and life.


Monsieur Qui, 2011


Saki and Bitches’ voluptuous temptresses appeared in some pretty eyecatching spots. Given Saki’s home country is Japan, the influence of Japanese art and use of Japanese subjects in Saki’s work, the appearance of “Tokyo Rising” alongside this Saki’s sturdy study of feminine charm was pure chance. Saki held down this elevated high street spot for several years.


Saki and Bitches, 2011


I'll try to make time for daily blasts from the past this week but I'm making no promises ok. Check out the previous weekly compendiums: DITA 1, DITA 2 and DITA 3

Art credits and links are by each photo. All photos: Dave Stuart

Diggin In The Archives 3

Four weeks of Lockdown now, most sensible countries have extended their lockdown period for a few more weeks but don’t worry, the archive isn’t going to be running on fumes any time soon.

The relationship between impact and size is not at all clear in street art. Isaac Cordal's forlorn concrete figures were found in nooks and cranies in London over several years from 2010. Spotting them was difficult, how the artist installed them at their illegal elevated perches was inspiring. A few survive to this day.


Issac Cordal, 2010


As a great fan of stickers it is a bit remiss not to have looked back at some great stickers of times past. PS, or "Public Spirit" was an amazing sticker artist, the examples here date from 2010 and 2011. PS was comfortable with a range of styles from fantasy illustration to op art via pure abstract geometeric but always in a very distinctive teardrop style. The first sticker in this series has a little clue how to look for the initials PS embedded in the swirling shape of the art - other than the purely symmetrical ones (so far as I can see anyway).

At least one PS sticker dating from that period survives in Shoreditch.



















Fake stencil. Fake Street artist K-Guy. Fake photo from 2017. K-Guy has total authority.


K-Guy, 2017


Burning Candy represented by Cept, Sweet Toof, Tek 33 and DScreet had the first spot on lockdown for many years. The Garage owner received a council enforcement notice demanding the piece be buffed but flatly refused. Garage now rolled over by development.


Cept, Sweet Toof, Tek 33 and Dscreet


Burning Candy at its largest grew to 9 members, the next photo features two of London's hottest #rooftop kings of that time, MightyMo and Goldpeg


Mighty Mo, Goldpeg, 2010


Otto Schade painted very intricate musing on human emotions using a stencil technique, symbolically connecting the emotions and the nervous system to external stimuli. This was one of his earliest ribbon paintings on the street, the owners buffed this very shortly after Otto finished it.


Otto Schade, 2010


Stewy Stencils populated Shoreditch and Norf London with a menagerie of animals, reaching a zenith with the size of this horse. The horse appears to be tethered and getting fed, not sure if that was Stewy or a clever augmentation by someone else. Either way its great when there is a little more to the stencil than just a spot where there was no cctv. Then virgin wall, now a hotel stands on the property opposite the Pure Evil Gallery. A version of this horse closer to Brick Lane was brilliantly augmented by Saki, might have to dig that pic out later but let’s hope we aren't in Lockdown that long.


Stewy Stencils, 2012


From the days when artists did find virgin unpainted derelict walls in Shoreditch. "Plastic Bones" Best Ever v. Deadleg


Best Ever v. Deadleg, 2011


Next week, same time same place yeah?  Check out Part 1 and Part 2

Art credits and links are by each photo. All photos: Dave Stuart

Sweet Toof Mid Nite Crisis Exhibition

Mid Nite Crisis
14 – 22nd December 2018

Rocket Barber Shop
118 Stoke Newington High St, London N16 7NY

Sweet Toof, East London’s legendary dental illustrator is back for a show in the unlikely surroundings of a North London barber shop cellar. The unorthodox location heaves with canvasses, prints and bizarre objects. Knick knacks with lurid buck toofed characters abound while disembodied gnashers chomp in mouthless isolation.



Cool, trendy upstairs



Shady basement downstairs, shady geezers, shady gals



Cellar. Sweet Toof.


Many acquainted with the breadth of Sweet Toof’s outdoor endeavours will recognise Mid Nite crisis as a corruption of Mid Life Crisis, which Sweet Toof and friends often put up on walls.


Mid Nite Crisis



Sweet Toof MLC collab with Rolf Carl Werner, Dalston 2017


Centre stage is hogged by a train set with the looping period piece rail service hit hard with whole car Sweet Toof graffiti. This straight up not-for-sale Sweet Toof toy provided what the vast majority of arty art shows lack, something to have fun with!


Battered Choo Choo






It is only 12 months since Sweet Toof last exhibited in Dalston, a joint show with Swedish artist Rolf Carl Werner (review here) and the good news to take away from that is that artists abandoning London aren’t actually lost to London.


Stag Night



Knick Knacks


Moments of darkness transformed the cellar into a graveyard of glowing ghoulish gnashers.




A print launched at the show featured Sweet Toof collaborating with Aida on a gentrification lament. The print celebrates 10 years that Aida and Sweet Toof have worked together on prints and other  collaborative artistic misdemeanors.


GentriFUCKation - Aida Wild/Sweet Toof Collaboration



Completely anonymous artist in disguise.


There is an irony in the concept of two street artists coming together in a trendy barbershop in Dalston to protest against gentrification.


GentriFUCKation - Aida Wild/Sweet Toof Collaboration





That’s not to knock the location of the show in a hairdressers. It is crucially important that this scene is outside the gallery system and not dependent upon museums or art world support, Sweet Toof by convention is unconventional.




Aida and Sweet Toof also collaborated on a lush variant on Aida's ever popular "EAST END SUCKS" print.


East End Sucks, Aida Wilde/Sweet Toof Collab, 



Cleaned your teef?



Red Handed (Above), Roller Gang (Below)


Links:
Sweet Toof instagram
Aida Wilde instagram, website
All photos and video by Dave Stuart: instagram