Diggin In The Archives Pt 10

When I first began to explore street art one my favourite artists was and indeed still is French stencillist Jef Aerosol. This Aerosol masterpiece was on Hanbury street and marked more or less a the time that this wall was just beginning to be used for permissioned murals.


Jef Aerosol 2010


Shoreditch street art was dominated by stencilism in the 00s and why not, Banksy was the stencil artist kicking down the doors of public disinterest and general hostility. K-Guy was and again still is a great personal favourite. This is his take on the dual significance of the national flag, a symbol of pride yet also racism.


K-Guy 2008


The next photo shows K-Guy’s artwork in context. In 2007 Shepard Fairey hit that spot with a long lasting paste-up (a spot he returned to in 2012). Sotheby’s and Bonhams started their urban art auctions in early 2008, others then hitched to that bandwagon. This was probably the first occurrence I came across of an arts related organisation destroying a piece of street art in pursuit of advertising. This shit still goes on and basically if you see street art being damaged in pursuit of the commercial interests of galleries, auctions and online sellers, then it’s a clear sign the fuckers do not get the culture, steer clear.


K-guy 2008 featuring Shepard Fairey – defaced, dissed and abused


Special Offer: Free Art! The stencil on cardboard below was a piece of free art by the prolific, varied and much missed street artist Mr Farenheit. Hopefully it went to a good home. This doorway in fact the whole building, now demolished, was always intensely distressed and beautifully decayed; muscular rust on the iron door had very little sympathy for any paper pasted onto its surface. “Special Offer” is a detail from an ACE paste up; the thick black bars emerging over Twiggy’s left shoulder are a Paul Insect relic; D7606 also did great paste up montages on this door and it’s a rare photograph where you can’t see one of his pieces at this spot.


Mr Farenheit, 2013


The pair of birds in the next photo by artist and graffiti writer Dr Zadok are done in the swirling style which characterizes both his graff letters and his art. Alleyn Gardens habitués will note the virgin brickwork on the then relatively new North London Line.


Dr Zadok 2013


The image below shows Dr Zadok’s hand finished bookcover in aid of Joe Epstein aka LDNgraffiti’s fundraiser for Great Ormond St Hospital. More details and information about how you can to support the fund raiser and maybe win one of these fantastic prizes in the #LDNGOSHLottery is HERE. Keep an eye out on LDNGraffiti’s Instagram for further announcements of more prizes.


LDN GOSH Charity Book with Dr Zadok Cover art


Swoon again, simply because she rocks. Close to Broadway Market, 2011.


Swoon, 2011


Borondo was an extraordinary painter who lived in London for a number of years in the early part of the 00s. His impressionist murals channelled the effect of strong colours but he first appeared doing single layer portraits created by splashing emulsion on the outside surface of glass windows then etching imagery into the paint with a fork. Two artworks survive, the “11 Apostles” on the Bull in a China Shop on Shoreditch High Street is easy to find. This pair of figures from 2013 play with the window frames; the scraped paint has settled like frost on the window ledge.


Borondo, Brick Lane 2013


And now, something consigned to the archive in just the past fortnight !Things turned a brighter shade of orange across a locked down (ish) Picadilly Circus as the iconic illuminations displayed a charity digital artwork by Stik. Stik must be alongside Shep Fairey and Banksy in the ranks of street artists who most consistently use their art for deserving causes. This installation was in support of Young Westminster Foundation.


Stik Picadilly Circus June 2020


Stik is also one of the 9 street artists who have joined Joe Epstein to raise funds for Great Ormond St Hospital. Each artist has created a special version of the book by hand painting the cover, so that’s 9 unique versions of the book.

See HERE for a blogpost with more images, details and link to how to support the fund raiser and maybe win one of these fantastic prizes in the #LDNGOSHLottery and keep an eye out as well for further announcements of more prizes.


LDN GOSH Charity Book with Stik Cover art


We didn’t clap for carers in the UK this week, the mood switched more to pressurising on the government to fund the carers properly, and reward them not to mention try a little bit of planning for a change as a second wave is held likely. Seems like a good moment to shelve Diggin In The Archives, though it has been a happy accident of exploring my own archives and memories and so don’t rule out DITA’s resurrection sometime.

Check out the previous Diggin’ In The Archives weekly compendiums starting with week 1 and then hopefully navigate the index to find the rest: DITA 1

All photos: Dave Stuart

Diggin In The Archives 5

“We can’t throw away all our hard work so far”. The current political aversion to trusting the general public with any inkling of lockdown planning could perhaps also be applied to the rich heritage of Shoreditch’s street art. This is the 5th compendium of the daily scrapings of the digital archive, is it really only 5 weeks since we were ordered to remain in our bunkers?

Gold Peg was undisputed queen of the rooftop. She got up in pretty tense spots, happy to mark the environment with text or imagery, a rare example of someone with a foot in both the graffiti and street art camps and hugely regarded in both. Gold Peg's art was always breathtaking and photogenic, this artist is a classic example of someone impossible to adequately represent in just a couple of images.


“Too many artists, not enuff anarchists!!!”, Goldpeg, Shroeditch, 2011


This railway bridge pic also features 10foot (naturally), Serva, aze, rakit and the legend that is TOX trackside.


Gold Peg et al, Paddington, 2010


Everywhere you went in Shoreditch in 2012, Usain Bolt’s eyes seemed to follow you. Painted by the genius JimmyC.


Jimmy C aka James Cochrane


That photo of JimmyC’s Usain Bolt has a van in the foreground which was obstructive, irrelevant and the photo is poorly composed.  Every other photo I took of that mural has a superb Dan Kitchener mural below the JimmyC. Both paintings were brilliant, each distracted from the other in a kind of unfortunate way. Dank's refined and distinctive geisha girls and his drippy Bladerunneressque neon night scenes are rightly revered these days though if you go back more than a decade he had quite a variety of quite different styles. Dank’s mural under the JimmyC was one of a number of brilliant trackside images he painted in 2010, the next image was painted on the Village Underground wall in that same style.


Dank aka Dan Kitchener, 2010


Remember your parents nagging you to stop staring at the pavement? If you listened to them you’d have missed Pablo Delgado's miniature paste ups with painted shadows. Over several years he pursued increasingly surreal themes, Pimps ‘n Hos in Shoreditch was one of his early sets. Yes, that’s Skewville and Banksy hangin' with the pimps as well.


Pablo Delgado, 2011



Pablo Delgado, 2011


In August 2011 Pure Evil had a show at XOYO debuting this pop art eye candy, the first sighting of the Nightmare series. This was one of the first specimens to appear on the street, October 2011 I think. And so it continues, the Nightmares pour out of the Pure Evil creative engine to this day. Also in shot is a beautiful Swoon paste up. A couple of Swoon pasteups in this alleyway in Shoreditch lasted quite a long time, like more than a year. Partially visible is a pasteup from Mr. Farenheit and yet again a Skewville stencil muscles into the frame.


Pure evil, Swoon 2011


Mobstr does a line in knowing and occasionally provocative text based stencils. You could read this as street artists with easy, low risk placement are challenged by Mobstr to get a bit higher and a bit riskier. Or maybe you see Mobstr proposing a photogenic “loadsa-likes” placement spot; or we can even see a commentary on street art as a tool of gentrification doing the developer’s bidding. All interpretations equally valid, feel free to make up your own.

As an aside, in 2011 Brick Lane was named London’s Curry Capital which is about as obvious as declaring Pall Mall the capital of palaces. The Banglatown banner with its photo of the later discredited Tower Hamlets crooked Mayor Lutfer Rahmen appeared illegally over Roa’s famous crane on nearby Heneage St, much to the annoyance of local residents and business who forced the council to have the banner removed within 2 weeks.


Text stencil by Mobster, also featuring Kata, Unga, Andalltha and The Misfits


France is blessed with superb stencillists, Jana and JS have done Shoreditch a few times and when they do Shoreditch, they leave the place seriously more beautiful. This example is slightly unusual in being a stencil on paper rather than stencilled in situ on the wall.


Jana and JS, 2012


Anyone finished Instagram yet? Check out the previous weekly compendiums: DITA 1, DITA 2, DITA 3 and DITA 4

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

Graffoto Round Up of the Year - Part 4

Photos by HowAboutNo and NoLionsInEngland And here we have it folks, part 4 of 4 in the round up of 2011. This final look at the year now covers September all the way through to the end of December. Being that it was mild for the time of year, and there were a shed load of art festivals and paint jams in town, the surrounding areas had a nice smattering too. Street art pastes and stencils seemed to be out of the window for pretty much most of this quarter, and I think that was also a big shift for the year. Good to see more talented artists grafting it at the side of a wall. Also nice to see lots of quick and dirty damage throughout town. Rowdy/Horror, photo HowAboutNo Rusht, photo HowAboutNo Shane ODV, photo HowAboutNo Roid MSK, photo HowAboutNo D*Face in progress outside the Moniker Art Fair, photo HowAboutNo And completed, photo HowAboutNo Various, photo HowAboutNo Gold Peg, photo HowAboutNo A solid year for the machine of graff that is Probs. Think this is my fave piece he has done ever. (photo HowAboutNo) I think we'll see a bit more of JimmyC in 2011 (photo HowAboutNo) Motor, photo HowAboutNo C215, photo HowAboutNo , photo HowAboutNo 2011 was the year Ronzo turned his hand away from sculpted pieces to graff.....and a welcome turn it was. This piece painted with Conor Harrington photo HowAboutNo Evol impressively buggered about with scale this set of blocks making up a mini housing estate complete with Elk, Drax and Shun tags. Read more about his visit here photo HowAboutNo Banksy did quite a few street pieces, all outside Soreitch - consequently I didn't get off my lazy arse to photograph them. No bother, this was my favourite thing he did all year anyway. General and most lovely damage . . . (photo HowAboutNo) Swoon, photo HowAboutNo This superb paste up by Gaia lasted no more than a few days and was fly posted over (photo HowAboutNo). Revok/Roid at the most single hit "legal" spot in Shoreditch (photo HowAboutNo). Don’t believe the nay-sayers saying the scene has tanked, looking back we have been overwhelmed with top quality shit on the streets of London in 2011. Stuff that should have got a mention earlier but just got missed in the admittedly random selection process includes: Phlegm was down several times during the year photo: NoLionsInEngland One of the highlights of the year was the privilege of seeing Sweet Toof and Paul Insect collaborate on this stunning rooftop piece, and in case you missed it, the timelapse is here photo: NoLionsInEngland Elbow Toe photo: NoLionsInEngland This Chu sticker made us chuckle earlier in the year photo: NoLionsInEngland So that's it for Graffoto's round up of the action in 2011. At the beginning and at lots of points throughout the year it did seem like it was stale and not moving anywhere. Part of wanting to look back at the year at the beginning of a new one has shown that it was a busy and colourful year, full of lots of new names and techniques and people to watch in 2012. The shift also seemed to go towards lots more "with permission" spots last year, I guess a big test for those shutters and areas may fall closer to Olympics time, when the council may decide to buff at random for no reason whatsoever. Happy 2012. Fuck The Buff.

Swoon Scene in London

Photos: NoLionsInEngland (who is slightly peeved that blogger is trimming the right hand edges of landscape pics so that central elements shift to the right and important info is not visible. Click through landscape pics to see the original image)


Swoon was recently in London combining the installation of her part of the Small Acts of Resistance show at Black Rat Press with leaving a few pieces on the street.

A few years back, Swoon left some stunners on the streets of London.


Coronet St filigree



Girl From Ranoon


Both of those ran for a long long time and for me they never became invisible background, I never ever got bored of seeing them.


In those days the buff was a council employee and he told me one morning that he could see those Swoon pieces were things of beauty, though he had no idea they were “Swoon”, and he said he’d never buff those.


This photographed in late 07 but was definately there in 2006, the grain of the woode hoarding has cut into the paper and lent a gentle curving wash to the art.




This time round Swoon has put up 4 street paste ups, at least, that’s how many we have found. More knowledgable Swoon spotters have opined that these four new images haven’t been seen before which is cool for us locals.

This first one saw her returning to Blackall St, location of the Girl from Rangoon at the top. Blackall Street these days is a noisy battered alleyway with generally mediocre but occasionally adequate paste ups, Swoon’s piece is sort of jostling for elbow room in the crowd and that optical bedlam just doesn’t allow the piece to interact in any meaningful way with its environment, you probably need to know that the boy is gazing at some non-descript two storey offices opposite.


Swoon 2010, Boy from Haiti?


The last piece Graffoto found (well, HowAboutNo) sits in a very nice spot, I love the way the more delicate transluscent sort of paper Swoon has used here allows the colour of the two columns of London brick to seep through. Again he is scrutinising a fairly dull brick built office. Perhaps staring at places of work is the theme for this autumn's street collection.


Swoon 2010






Like the one above, this third one sits in a nice location and has awesome levels of detail within the art.







The final piece sits a little off the beaten track but not too far from Black Rat. The grainy detail pasted to the wall and even in the textures of the brick itself really captures a weathered and ancient face. When you look at the amount of detail in the close-up you can really appreciate the astonishing intricacy of the paper doily, not to mention how tricky it must be to paste that kind of work to the wall. The pipe at the bottom of the wall looks like it is meant to be a meaningful addition to the composition or at least provide some kind of context for the portrait but we just can’t figure out what.





detail


A much more knowledgable Swoon spotter (sorry - can't remember who otherwise they would get a shout here) has said they believe the new images in London haven't been seen on the street before, which is cool for us.


The Black Rat Press group show is constructed around the theme of how substantial change can be created by individual un-sung and small scale acts of protest or activism. With each of the artists there really was a sense that the despair, isolation and suppressed individual was fully explored but little sense of what they could or would achieve through individual action, on the whole they look like they remain oppressed. Other than Peter Kennard whose wall looked like the kind of high altitude panorama shot we used to see on the news from a camera mounted in the nose of a ship-to-shore missile.


Swoon, Know Hope, Armsrock, Matt Small, Peter Kennard, Dotmaster


Swoon’s top-to-bottom whole wall piece starts promisingly enough on the left with a single child sitting on land with a blasted tree and wooden hut in the background, the scene pans across a set of steps, with a distant village in the background, is he being invited up the steps? The image just sort of petters out to the right into indecipherable contemporary box buildings, broken signage and pieces of pasted paper. It seems to speak of the plight of orphaned children following the earthquake in Haiti, it's not too clear.




Close up the layers of newsprint paper build up into the background and the image of the child is beautiful but the sense remains that we are not seeing Swoon at her gallery best.




Previous show outings in London include her favella contribution in BRP’s launch show Heaped in 2007 with David Ellis and Monica Canilao, followed later by a significant, beautiful and cleverly staged train carriage panorama at Leonard St’s Urban Sprawl show


Swoon, Urban Sprawl, 2007


Photographs of Swoon shows from New York and elsewhere show that Swoon can transform spaces and create stunning wonderlands of filigree and portraits. Her work in her London shows has tended to leave us feeling a little short changed, fingers crossed that sometime we get a fully fledged solo show fit to blow our socks off.


Show continues at BRP until 30 November 2010 - update errrr, the BRP artist bios at the show says 30th, a BRP emails says 26th. They ought to know or perhaps just like to keep you guessing