Birmingham Street Art - More than Just Banksy

“It’s A Brum Ting” has been the signature of the past fortnight as Birmingham hosted the Commonwealth Games. So what is it about Birmingham, why is it so great? Armed with a cheap cheap day return rail ticket I set out several weeks back to discover what Goldie, Trevor Francis and Banksy (might have) appreciated about the UK’s “Second City” (tm).


Justin Sola, Void One & Mose78


The art started right outside the train station, FokaWolf was well represented as was Brummy staple Tempo, of whom more later.


FokaWolf



Tempo 33


Gent 48 is a giant of Birmingham’s street art scene so perhaps it was either fitting, or just inevitable, that the first mural spotted was by Gent48, painted in January this year when Birmingham was sorting out the torch relay for the opening of the Commonwealth Games. The mural features Haseebah Abdullah, England's first hijab-wearing boxing coach and Salma Bi, who founded the first all Asian women’s cricket team.


Gent 48 feat: Salmi Bi & Haseebah Abdullah


The one flag planted in my vague, unplanned plan was to locate Birmingham’s 2019 Banksy. Tick the box, complete the set. The route took me through a cluster of architecturally fascinating buildings. London by staid by comparison, so many planning luddites have ensured our post war rebuilding really lacks the surprise, flair and modernism a waddle around the centre of Birmingham will reveal. The interior of the Birmingham Library is so worth exploring for its design as well as its exhibition content.


Birmingham New Street Station, Alejandro Zaera-Polo



Birmingham Library Centernary Square



Birmingham Library Interior


The route to the Banksy had already been mapped out by the Charm Bracelet trail by Mick Thacker and Mark Renn.


Birmingham Jewellery Quarter Charm Bracelet pavement plaque trail, Mick Thacker and Mark Renn


What’s to say about the Banksy on Vyse Street. Great placement, great use of the street furniture and a poignancy likely to rise as rampant inflation and fuel poverty drives up homelessness next winter. It is well preserved and thankfully no gallerist twat has laid his grubby “Preserving street art for private collectors” hands on it. So far. It’s a pig to photograph clearly and parts of its execution are a tad indifferent.


Banksy "God Bless Birmingham"



Banksy "God Bless Birmingham"


Banksy confirmed this stencil as genuine with a website message saying "God bless Birmingham. In the 20 minutes we filmed Ryan on this bench passers-by gave him a hot drink, two chocolate bars and a lighter - without him ever asking for anything." - Banksy


Banksy "God Bless Birmingham"


Arriving in Birmingham I expected graffiti; thanks to an awareness of its recent history of street art festivals I expected murals; I wasn’t fully prepared for the brilliant explosion of sticker art. Every lamppost, traffic light, street sign and pole had been claimed by sticker art, one of my favourites being the huge variety of brace faces by Tempo who we used to see fairly frequently in London 10 or so years ago.


Tempo sticker montage


When Tempo was up in London our main delight was his large circular non permissioned paste-ups so finding a number of larger spraypainted murals was a pleasure.


Tempo 33



Tempo 33



Tempo 33


Other sticker artists included Wreck1, Lisk Bot, Never A Servant, the legend Fokawolf and a very impressive scattering of the playful and rare (to me at least) street art of Pahnl.


Pahnl



Werck1, Lisk Bot



NVRASIR



Fokawolf and Titty



Pahnl



Pahnl


Birmingham embraces adventurous and exciting architecture but the ancient brick and steam midlands’ post-industrial relics co-exist alongside the modern. Graff was popping up in some breathtaking spots and with more canals than Venice (Brummies say), canal-side vistas in particular are worth hunting out.


Birmingham & Fazeley Canal



River Rea Birmingham



Farmers Bridge locks



Digbeth River Rea



Smokers by canal


The urban huddle of car parks, streets and old factories in Digbeth just to the east of the city centre forms an amazing gallery. It is dominated by amazing murals, some appear to be permission murals liable to change, some look like relics of street art festivals with tags acknowledging “City of Colours” (2014 - 16) and “HighViz Festival” (2019-21) as well as our perpetual favourite – get up and get away with it.


Gent 48, Ziner



Goldenboy 924



Lisk Bot



Ziner (below) TBC above



Drop Burners Not Bombs Gent 48 Ziner



Ziner



Ziner



Broken Fingers



Cryola 1



Peaky Blinders, Aske P19



Philth



Inkie



Cryola 1



Gent 48



Philth, Never Ready


Paste-up action in the vicinity was fairly limited, the paste-up hall of fame hunt will have to wait till the next visit.
Foka Wolf, Void One


Chance plays a key role in street art spotting in a city you haven’t explored before. There is the chance of what artists are “up” at that moment; your experience, your sample will possibly or probably be completely different to that of anyone else before or after. Also, what route do you take across the urban spider web of streets, alleys and paths? From A, B may be sought by going right then left; or you can turn left then go right, that’s two different street art galleries right there. While slaloming through the mainly industrial streets from Digbeth back to the train station, a glance over the shoulder into an open door revealed a delicious collection of political and tribute murals inside a fortuitously empty car park.


Void One memorial tribute mural to Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, Astro (UB40) and Captain Tom



Gent 48, Ziner The Brolly Works



Theresa May by Title



Two faced Jeremy Hunt is NHS Joker, Void One



The Brolly Works



Malcolm X and Martin Luther King by Title


A good street art city should house a collection which is too vast for you to cover in your limited time, especially on a one day visit. It should also have change, renewal, vibrant health and life and Birmingham’s street art scene has both of these. It is hard to put it better than Birmingham’s own Prince Of Darkness when Black Sabbath reunited last Sunday (Paranoid starts 1 min exactly) for a spine tingling surprise set (BBC iPlayer, certain areas only, go to 2 hours exactly, next 3 months) at the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony.

“You are the best…..Birmingham for EVVVAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH”

Links:

Gent 48 instagram

Ziner instagram

Tempo 33 instagram

Banksy Website (please tell Banksy you found him through Graffoto.co.uk)

All photos: Dave Stuart

Diggin In The Archives Part 6

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? By the time you read this Boris should have made his “statement” to the nation and one suspects the tunnel will seem to be stretching much much further into the distance. Activities continue to expand to fit the time available and blowing the dust off the photo archive is a good a rabbit hole as any to fall into, so here is this week’s selection of gems from the past.


You wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a snorkeler (snorkelist?) walking down the road with a lion on their shoulders in 2013, it was Shoreditch after all. Twisted surrealism from Dal East.


Dal East, 2013


ACE is full OG London, his comic and pop art influenced collage screen prints were pasted up all over Shoreditch from the beginning. They still appear although nothing close to the quantity he used to put out. One of my all time favourite paste up artists. And there's Skewville , yet again, he keeps popping up in the archive photos. 2011.


ACE, 2011


In 2009 Graffoto founder HowAboutNo and I wandered Shoreditch and beyond on our lunchbreaks, chatting shit and shooting crap. Daytime street art creation was quite rare in those days and one lunch time we spied an artist in act of pasting up some big faces. He scarpered. Brummie Tempo33 told me a while later they had thought we were cops! Not many people wandered round in office garms photographing street art those days.


Tempo33, 2012


As I started to develop a little bit of an interest in street art I had a conceptual difficulty with stickers;,that fact that anyone could have put them up challenged their authenticity. Then I started to get my head around “Representation”. It would be very easy to upload a photo of a stunning mural by D*face, rightly they are appreciated worldwide but his stickers are in my humble opinion are way more significant to his street presence.

Liskbot’s hand finished stickers and paste ups go back a decade, still prolific!

The unknown sticker looks and feels like a corporate logo.


D*Face, Liskbot 2011


East London in 2011 was full of Malarky cartoons. Superficially they had the characteristics of children’s illustrations but close inspection revealed a real darkness. Often painted with compadres #Billy, Mr Penfold and Sweet Toof. These old Hanbury Street gates used to host art by great artists such as Donk , Stik, a Saki and Bitches and Macay collab, a Mau Mau and Alex Face collab and an Otto Schade "Creation Of Adam” masterpiece. And Curly ;-)


Malarky, 2011


In the next pair, the elevated elevation behind the grey gantry is the old Shoreditch Tube Station, closed in 2006. The first picture is from October 2011 and features a Rowdy creature and a piece by fellow Burning Candy crewmate Horror. The second picture dates from July 2012. The difference is the Olympics buff. One of these pics cost me a gorgeous Colnago Road bike, stolen by some Tower Hamlets low life cunt as I climbed up on the wall to get the pic

I am sure you don't need reminding, #fuckthebuff


Rowdy, Horror 2011



The Olympics Buff, 2012


When its good, Street Art can be very “of the moment”. The flip side is that years later the context or relevance of a piece of art may be forgotten. This Teddy Baden multi layered stencil features Mandeville, one of two mascots for London’s 2012 Olympics. Mandeville was named after Stoke Mandeville Hospital, the world famous spinal injuries hospital that organised the first games festival for injured people, seen as a precursor to the Paralympics. The orange flash represented a London taxi hire light. Mandeville was much maligned in the press, there will always be some mirthless killjoy. He didn’t have a good feeling about Teddy’s feline either.

I enjoyed the privilege for many years of submitting a selection of street art photos to the VNA guys for their quarterly zine. The vast majority of them went unpublished, there were far better photos from far better photographers to chose from. This is one of the unchosen. . . .


Teddy Baden, 2012


I took the liberty of visit to Shoreditch on my bike this morning, first time in over 2 months. Very little had changed, street artists have been socially distancing from the walls.  Notwithstanding whatever guff we get from Boris this evening I suspect there may well be more sucking from cess pit of my street art photos this week, catch them daily on my Instagram or facebook

Check out the previous weekly compendiums: DITA 1, DITA 2, DITA 3, DITA 4 and DITA 5

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