Showing posts with label Zezao. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zezao. Show all posts

Saturday 25 May 2019

New Old Banksy Street Art In Shoreditch



Banksy street art hidden for many years has been brought out of limbo in Shoreditch, visible at last to the millions of street art fans new to Banksy’s art since it last doused itself under East London rain. Two images, a huge rat and a TV being chucked rock star style out of a window have lain out of sight under protective wooden sheeting for 12 years though they are perhaps among the more “storied” of Banksy’s street artworks.

Banksy at the Foundry Car Park
Not one but TWO Banksy relics


Banksy frequented the legendary Shoreditch art and drinking establishment The Foundry, pincered between Great Eastern St and Old St and was a good friend of the hosts Tracey and Jonathan Moberly. Tracey told Graffoto that from around 2002 Banksy was very active inside, outside and around the Foundry, in that period he painted genuine masterpieces such as the Have A Nice Day helicopter above the chip shop opposite Foundry and the earliest of the Pulp Fiction pieces that faced the Foundry from the tube station building 100 yards away.

Old Street feat Banksy
Old St feat Banksy's 2nd Pulp Fiction


The Foundry was an amazing melting pot bringing together creative, cultural and cool people and stimulated all kinds of interactions. Courier cyclists were a specific sub-species who made a base at the Foundry and some evenings (particularly warm ones!) the pavement outside the foundry would be a crush of grimy bike couriers. It was a group of cyclists who organised the festival in the unlicensed car park to the rear of the Foundry for which Banksy painted the rat and the TV.

Eine & Banksy
Banksy feat remnant of "Last Days Of Shoreditch", Eine, photo 2019


In 2010, Hackney Council had a pretty hostile attitude to graffiti and was equally intolerant of street art, as the Moberly’s witnessed with the council’s repeated buffing of great art that appeared legally with permission outside the Foundry. The council then turned round and made the preservation of the TV and the rat a condition of the planning consent for the demolition of the existing building and its replacement by what was to be an 18 storey hotel but now has permission for 22 storeys. Should these Banksys have been elevated to heritage status?


Eine, Foundry Car Park
Protect that rat 2019 (clue: underneath that wooden wedge)


The TV out the window stencil, a brilliant rock and roll cliché, looked like it was made for that wall, it’s an image that has to be on the side of a windowless building that looks like it ought to have windows. The image wouldn’t work on say a garden wall or a bridge support.

Banksy at the Foundry Car Park


Inside the Foundry all kinds of crazy things went on and prominent in the bar was a array of flickering TVs, a TV flying out the window from the Foundry seemed entirely plausible.

Foundry Photo Jonathan Moberly, 2010
Foundry 2010: Graffoto, anonymous street artist, Tracey Moberly and a selection of TVs. Photo courtesy Jonathan Moberly


The TV out the window makes an appearance in Banksy’s 2005 book Wall and Piece but is not the Foundry one, the one in the book was up by Angel and by the time I located it the TV had been buffed (higher up the wall above this image) but Banksy’s tag was still visible and Shepard Fairey had visited.

Banksy tag, Shepard Fairey, 2006
Banksy tag, Shepard Fairey, 2006


Not only is the Foundry TV nicely placed and well executed, it has a Banksy tag next to it and they are increasingly rare out in the wild. In fact including this one I can only think of 3 surviving outdoors in London and we must fear for the existence of one of the other two as there is an artist’s impression of a development which shows the surface the tag is on is earmarked to disappear.

Banksy at the Foundry Car Park
Banksy stencil tag


The rat has always been a bit unsatisfactory, the reasons Graffoto criticised the council’s decision to preserve that rat are as valid today as they were back in 2010. It has never been clear what this rat is about, it rejoices in the nickname “Eat the rich” and is often described as a rat with a knife and fork but if you look carefully that is actually a jigsaw blade not a knife and the fork is more like a harpoon or a pitchfork, forks don’t neck down from the handle then widen into the prongs. We don’t know what the rat is doing, why it belongs at this location nor what the red ring around the eye is about and the technique is a bit sloppy. The things that look like fins are probably meant to be bedraggled fur, at least that’s what they look like on other Banksy rats but on this one it looks like a weird dorsal fin or the conning tower on a submarine.

Banksy Rat - Go Back To Bed, photo 2006
Banksy rat - that's what we call bedraggled, photo 2006, Smithfelds


However Banksy’s street art isn’t diminished by poor execution, they were never meant to be superb specimens of perfectly executed art and indeed evidence of haste is perhaps part of the essence of the way Banksy has to create his street art. Banksy’s relationship with the Foundry and the use by the Foundry of that car park to stage events suggests this rat probably wasn’t subject to the usual tensions of illegality, perhaps it could have been better executed, maybe like the ones in Cargo.

Banksy at the Foundry Car Park


More significantly, Banksy hated the rat! Tracey whispered to Graffoto last year that Banksy thought the rat was a piece of shit. Furthermore, when asked to comment on the closure of the Foundry in a 2010 BBC news broadcast, Banksy contributed via one of his classic emails saying

“No one ever went there for the beer-it was always a bit warm and flat. I would appeal to the developers not to keep my graffiti. It’s a bit like demolishing the Tate and preserving the ice cream van out the front.” 
Banksy, Newsnight email 4 Feb 2010”



There you have it, the artist Banksy does not wish the art to be preserved so the council’s 2010 decision is morally dubious to say the least. Note also the explicit confirmation that the artwork is a genuine Banksy, assuming of course that the BBC weren’t being spoofed.


Preservation of these Banksy pieces began before the planning decision though. The protective sheeting enclosing the TV and rat was erected in 2007, perhaps the idea of incorporating the Banksys on the Foundry site into the new hotel had already formed in the owners’ and operator’s minds at that time.  An early painting of that slanting façade was by Burning Candy members Sweet Toof and Cyclops, wittily captioning their creation Rat Trap.

Burning Candy
Sweet Toof, Cyclops BC 2008


The immediate future for the rat and the TV is that metal frames are going to be constructed around them and after separating the wall from the rest of the building structure and dismantling the walls above the art by hand, a massive crane is going to be used to lift the two wall segments separately over the building where they will be stored covered up at the front of the building site. The developers have not made their ultimate intention clear, their obligation is to provide free viewing access to the public of these two Banksys either within the hotel or somewhere else within the Borough. The developer is known to have planned to include 6 other Banksys from the Foundry building within the so-called Art’otel development but none of the other 6 survive.

00456961 optimised extract copy
First, skin your rat


A few weeks ago Graffoto got an exclusive opportunity to watch the sheeting came down and the TV and rat were seen again for the first time in 12 years. As the sheets came off the first thing that appeared was the top parts of the old fire extinguisher ATG tag and it was immediately apparent that he paint had survived in pretty good condition.

ATG Fire Extinguisher Graff; EINE


After barely an hour of watching other people do real work, the TV and the rat were revealed in all their glory

Banksy at the Foundry Car Park
Banksy Rat (detail) 2019


For the meantime, make the most of the brief period visibility of those two Banksys before they lose whatever sense of context they may have had in their original location and ponder the puzzle of why the council decided to preserve this rubbishy rat against the artist’s own wishes yet remain oblivious to some real masterpieces that appeared on the Foundry building before and since.


Elmo, Tango ATG & Banksy
Elmo lean-over, Tango ATG - and Banksy. You decide!


Elmo, ATG
Elmo ATG, Goldpeg, Sweet Toof & the buff 2011


Elmo, Milo Tchais, Zezao, Tek 33
Elmo, Milo Tchais, Zezao, Tek 33; Feb 2011


tn_DSC_4082-001
ROA, 2011 (okay, it's a different elevation but its too good not to include as art that the council has not protected)


Elmo, Masker, Milo Tchais, Run, Zezao, Gerard Gademann
Elmo, Masker, Milo Tchais, Run, Zezao, Gerard Gademann; May 2011


Elmo, Mr Wany, Masker, Zezao
Elmo, Mr Wany, Masker, Zezao 2012


Mr Wany
Mr Wany, desecrated by an advert, 2012


Jo Peel
Jo Peel animation, 2013


Fintan Magee
Fintan Magee (detail) 2014, also feat Eine, Pez, ALO, Borondo


Phlegm
Phlegm, 2015


Eine last days of shoreditch
Eine, 2016

Related Posts:

2010: Hackney Council insists on rat/TV preservation Graffoto post

2018: Foundry/Red Gallery Building closes Graffoto post

All photos: Dave Stuart except Jonathan Moberly where noted      

Saturday 6 September 2008

Zezao Highraff Milo Tchais - Pure Evil Gallery

London
5 Sep 2008


London has vibrant street art, a dynamic culture and glorious weather so it is unsurprising that half of Brazil feels spiritually drawn to Pure Evil’s gallery for a Zezao/Highraff/Milo Tchais show.

sunny spells later, probably


Zezao, Highraff and Milo Tchais have been brightening the streets of Brazil together for over 10 years in an uncharacteristically un-Brazilian non-Pixação psychedelic manner.


Zezao/Highraff/Milo Tchais

This threesome kindly re-painted the walls of the evil one’s gallery, the black background makes the pieces on the ground floor leap off the wall.


Dirty Arse Mother

Milo Tchais has recently been seen rocking his cans on the streets of London as the mysterious 2nd man working with The krah outside The Foundry.


Milo Tchais w/ The Krah, others under

Of the trio, Milo Tchais’ work is most recognisably real world, but always the backgrounds of swirling riotous colour overwhelm shadowy figures lurking on the edges of conciousness.


Milo Tchais – Se Mente


Zezao is most likely to be familiar to European audiences thanks to a feature spot in last year’s Bomb It movie. The movie captured his wholly abstract work in the almost complete darkness of San Paulo’s drain system and the curious method of mixing the colours by dropping them into the flowing stream or damp pipe lining at his feet. His indoor work with its blistered colours on neon stencilled backgrounds work bears little of that San Paulo sewer rat ethos.


Zezao - Untitled

Of the three visitors, Zezou’s is undoubtedly the most abstract. Blistering bubbles are set in chromatic warped colour gradients.


Zezao - Untitled


Highraff attributes the efforts of the three to a purely abstract manner whose meaning is wholly free and up to the viewer to pursue their own interpretation. His work bears the largest debt to a graphic design heritage. The organic shapes suggest tubular plants or acid cactii buds.


Highraff – Lilac Painting


All Highraffs pieces are exquisitely executed, the common element being segmented tubular eruptions with a manga style delineated shading effect, close inspection suggests an effect or technique are not unlike Insa’s booty arses and legs.


Highraff - Untitled


Highraff also has a biblical origins-of-universe boiling light and molten eruptions thing going on. Curiously, I felt a strange longing for a pizza.


Highraff – Orange Series


This is the first time all three members of this Brazilian crew have exhibited in dedicated group show and their relish of the experience is evident in the way they continuously limbo back and forth across the grubby dungeon floor in their swimming thongs [not pictured]. In celebration, they have produced a pair of enormous lurid pieces, spraycan on Perspex, which is helpful given the rain that pissed down on them from the exposed skylight part of the Evil basement.


Zezao Highraff milo Tchasi collab. Perspex, gallery balloons, deluge


Some might find the work of all three artists reminiscent of Andrew McAtee without the formality and crispness.

Health and Safety culture in this country has as we all know gone berserk, now even Pure Evil feels obliged to issue a warning to anyone who has difficulty putting one foot in front of the other.

Lab Rats Enter At Own Peril


It ain’t a competition but we are allowed to have favourites and for me, Milo Tchais’ bright and contrasting colours and higly dramatic swirling patterns made an un-compromising brilliant impact. This show is an absolute must see for fans of the genre, it has been an over-abundance of riches to have this show following the night after Titifreak opening at O Contemporary. Combine the two for a magic day in London.


Milo Tchais - Sublime

Its well worth seeing quite a few more photos of the show, upstairs and downstairs here: