Dr D Designates Curfew Zone In City Of London

all photos: NoLionsInEngland (with anonymous passerby help gratefully received where noted!)


Dr D is a perhaps the perfect street artist. His paste up works are epic in scale and they commandeer outdoor channels generally exploited for advertising or control, if they can advertise there, Dr D will hijack it. His guerrilla advertising talkeovers inject political truisms and subverted corporate messages into our consciousness. His needle sharp wit pops the balloon of up-your-own-surgically-sculpted derriere celebrity pomposity and mocks the self interested control assumed by authoritarian state bodies. That’s why I love him.


Dr D, Kingsland Rd, London 2008


Dr D Whitecross St 2009


After an evening in Shoreditch, my late dash to the tube station was abruptly halted at the sight across the road of a very official looking warning sign which faced traffic up the very busy Shoreditch High Street. This enormous paper sign had evidently slowly detached itself from its host surface but even from across the road it was evident that was a pasted “pastiche”. The paste was still wet but a hunt for a stick or brush or any kind of implement to push the peeling paper back up into its intended position proved fruitless so holding up the paper myself, a passing kind young lady who didn’t run off with my phone when my back was turned took a photograph.


Dr D Curfew Zone


Dr D’s Curfew Zone spoofs the conventional “Congestion Zone” signs which fortify the “Central Zone” where traffic has to pay for the privilege of less vehicle strangled roads to allows for faster assaults on cyclists and pedestrians. That big threatening red letter C now stands for Curfew. Now Dr D brings it to our attention, doesn't “Central Zone” sound quite sinister, used to be that all our districts had historical names, not designations that look like geographic Big Brother tags.


Enter Ye At Great Cost

Dr D doesn't rail against injustice by daubing screaming capitalised angry messages over official signage(*), he creates subverted adverts that use the same visuals and prose as corporate advertising, or he creates signs that look so much like the authority's signs that we initially think they are. His witty distortions hit us with the realisation that actually, we are pretty damn close to the authority abusing its mandates and powers in exactly that way. Our new official Dr D designated Curfew Zone highlights the police powers to Stop And Search which can be exercised without reasonable suspicion so long as it has been approved by.....the police!
(* Maybe he does actually)

About the location, this is virtually the north eastern gateway to the City, London’s financial district. Dr D's unilateral curfew denies ne’erdowells free access from 6pm until 7am but keeps the City open and safe during financial market opening hours. Guess whose benefit that might be for.

I am pretty sure that the last time I looked closely at this wall, which was only a few days ago, there wasn’t a wooden frame masquerading as an official billboard spot. Dr D, going that extra mile is applauded! Even if you didn’t do that framing… the accuracy of the reproduction and the scale of the spoof. This is how you get your message up on the public highway yourself, don’t wait for consent, don’t pay, just do it.

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UPDATE

Dr d returned the next day and skilfully repaired the peeling paste up where your scribe failed miserably.



Taggers also left their mark, either they mistook this for new official signage or they were just asserting graff's natural superior position over street art.

Representatives of Dr d have also confirmed that the frame is a fresh addition to the wall and that the piece also has relevance as a reaction to the response of authorities to the Charlie Hebdo atrocity or a housing issue, itself subject of a major march today from just up the road from this spot to City Hall.
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To get the idea of the intelligence and concepts which have made Dr D’s street art stand out you can see a selection of pieces from down the years on this photo set here.

I also went to a Dr D show a few years ago in the unpromising location of a fully functioning open as usual Bethnal Green launderette which I wrote about here.

New Years Eve? Never Too Late For Street Art

All photos: NoLionsInEngland

We’ve done our 2014 review ,twice, already but we just fancy signing off 2014 doing our favourite things..taking photos and spouting shite. All these photos were taken mid afternoon on New Years Eve and we believe the art to have been put up in the preceding 24 hours.

Donk had an epic 2014 and signed off with a major mission on the past 24 hours. How on earth did I forgot in the Graffoto 2014 Review that Donk did two of the most awesome paste ups in 2014 both placed without permission? He has put out a curious new image in the past month or so featuring a dude in a whisky bottle holding a whisky bottle which contains ..a dude..holding a whisky bottle. Here is a small medley of some of his (eve of?) New Years Eve hits.


Donk


The fragile translucence of this tissue paper must make the printing and pasting of this a very delicate process.

Donk


This could also be a new addition to the DONK oeuvre, I don’t recall seeing it before.


Donk


This is like a hall of fame featuring three of our favourite street artists ACE, Mr.Farenheit and Donk though we can’t be sure that any of those pieces were put up in the past 24 hours.


clockwise from top left: Mr.Farenheit (x2), Donk, Ace

A couple of weeks ago we spotted a guy very verrrryyyyyyyyy carefully lifting a Donk print from its street gallery display; this morning in an alleyway we spied a pair of Donk screen prints pasted onto a sticker battered unloved window but when we returned mid afternoon wafting a camera in the general direction of anything street arty, lo – that pair of Donk screenprints had gone. Also, speaking of the ephemeral existence of the best street art, another of Donk’s paste ups had already been gone over this morning by a repeat of a Paisley image imprinted with rubbings of old Republic of Ireland coinage. The image is by Belfast artist TLO, apparently critiquing the cult of Ian Paisley.


TLO

A number of other paste ups appeared wishing “evolutionary Greetings From Ireland”. These may also be by TLO given the coincidence of the timing of their appearance, the fact that both these and the paisley posters were printed over multiple sheets of A4 paper and both touch on “The Irish Question”.  It’s hard to be certain what the Ikea logo juxtaposed with terrorists is about, something to do with modern corporate colonialism perhaps. Artist unknown (TLO is a guess).


Artist Unknown


Last but definitely not least, The Rolling People rang in 2014 with a big piece on the Sclater St wall and they signed off 2014 doing what they did quite often throughout 2014, taking over that wall with a fresh new blockbuster. Cap doffed to Karim too who hadn’t finished on a spot next to TRP.


BRK, SNOE, KEV



SNOE TRP

So, you get a feel here for what we love and little impromptu wanders like this New Years Eve perambulation reinforce why we love this art. Thanks again to all the artists who made 2014 a fantastic year, many of you were just plain forgotten on the reviews I wrote and for that I am humbly sorry but HowAboutNo, Shellshock & I wish you and all the audience for the blog, our photographs and everyone involved in so many ways in this culture a peaceful/successful/exciting/prosperous (pick as many as you wish) 2015.

London Street Art Highlights 2014

Photos: NoLionsInEngland

Undoubted star of the London street art scene this year was Spanish artist Borondo. Among a series of great pieces the stand out has to be the upside down canalside face in Hackney Wick, a gem of site specific dynamic art. With just the right wind, a gentle slop of the water surface results in a face whose lips mouth words silently and eyes that wink at you, pure genius.


Borondo


Working with a bunch of wooden planks found among the fly tipped materials lying in a car park, XO from Amsterdam produced a striking collage of wood grain and plank colours, topped with geometric string art.  With a high novelty value quotient this was one of my favourite pieces this year.


XO


Italian visitor Luis Gomez painted at least three great murals in Shoreditch this year though the real stand out was his Narcissus, many folk missed his deft use of the different surface of the base of the “flower bed” to create the reflection of this vain creature.


Luis Gomez


Sell Out kept up a solid output of butterflies and sculptures throughout the year, with many visitors taking home a souvenir of Shoreditch’s street art courtesy of Sell Out’s blu-tacked butterflies. Some do find the way he imposes his art onto other people’s work rude or disrespectful but we have no problem with it, street art is ripe for modification and interaction the moment the artist leaves the wall (but not before!).


Sell Out


As always lot of great stickers have appeared throughout Shoreditch, we loved this burst of fiendish colour brought to lampposts by Steek and Arrex.


Arrex (RX)


Street artist and gallerist Pure Evil embarked on a mission to create a piece of street art on the streets whereever he happened to be every day for 365 days. A number of his pieces were commemorative including tributes to Kieth Haring, JFK and Robbo and the work became highly personal and poignant with the sad loss of his father to cancer during the year.


Pure Evil


Another artist from abroad who stayed to make a big contribution was Furia ACK from Portugal. His first chalk and charcoal portraits were the very definition of ephemeral as rain eroded and softened the chalk highlights. He then specialised in people’s heroes usually connected to a defining moment of historical change where oppressed people asserted a wish to be free from despotic tyranny. More recently he has moved on to icons of female power.


Furia ACK (also feat. WRDSMTH)


Another artist on a political bent was HKG, addressing social politics, geo politics and environmental politics, it all boils down to them and us, and greed.


HKG


We saw a number of conscience driven activist art campaigns during the year. Masai’s endangered species slant on environmentalism crystalised in two campaigns, the first raising awareness of the consequences of bee wipeout and the second in conjunction with the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Animals) and Synchronicity Earth highlighted the perils of endangered species in the UK.


Masai


Sadly no year is complete without its fallen soldiers and this year saw the London graffiti and street art community mourn two significant losses. Robbo WRH WD PFB succumbed after a 3 years in a coma to injuries sustained in an accident. Palpable grief was expressed not just throughout the London graff brotherhood but worldwide with many writers paying tribute on walls dedicated to King Robbo.


Robbo tribute by DASR


Street artist BEN NAZ fought a hugely courageous battle against cancer, appearing at his solo show just weeks prior to his death when it was already known that the battle had been lost. He created a considerable amount of stencilled imagery in the past year or so before his sad departure.


Ben Naz RIP


The roaming spraycan art festival Meeting Of Styles returned to Shoreditch this year and produced some stunning permissioned murals, all technically exceptional and stunning to look at, probably defined by this signature wall on Network Rail property.


Gent48, Vibes RT, Odisy; bottom: Soker, Ders, Twesh


ALO continued his steady ascent in the art world with a solo show at the Saatchi Gallery but still found time to travel internationally and to add some beautiful portraits to Shoreditch surfaces.


ALO


One of the more controversial episodes this year involved a small number of youths paint bombing a portrait collaboration by Edwin and Josh. The youths contended that the face portrait, painted as a highly stylised pair of eyes and a nose across three shutters signified a one-eyed devil. Of course, nothing could really have been further from the truth of the artists' or the shutter owner’s intentions. Community censorship appeared to strike Saki and Bitches mildy eroticised geisha girls, and an image of a seating nude female by Benjamin Murphy had only the tape parts which defined the lady’s feminine charms buffed. Shoreditch has a significant Muslim population.


Edwin (not the defaced piece)



Saki and Bitches


Augmented reality technology came to the streets of Shoreditch for the first time courtesy of INSA's Cycle of Futility, INSA's Gif-iti Viewer, an iPhone app, replaces the static mural with the animated version of the artwork when viewed through the phone on the street. You can get a weak proxy to the experience by downloading the app and pointing it at the static photo in this blog post. Amaze your friends!


INSA


A curious population of sweet little bug eyed creatures exploded all over Shoreditch this year courtesy of Noriaki and boy do we love them. No corner is too dark or dank or remote for these unobtrusive people, they remind me of the way Monsieur Andre's character populated Paris or even Banksy's rats in the middle of the last decade.


Noriaki


Because the night ...belongs to artists, night time photography has produced a number of fun and pleasing photographs which are included here just because we can


Mr Cenz



Code FC, Graffiti Life behind



Nemo, Rask


For a slightly quirkier look at some of the great art created on Shoreditch streets in 2014, there is a slideshow of the finished versions of some of the street art the Shoreditch Street Art Tour came across during their creation, click here.

We’d love to include a shed load more highlights but the quantity of art and the number artists seen on the walls of Shoreditch this year was extraordinary. Going to finish with a slide show of just a few of the many many pieces that really impressed us this year.  Let’s just say that all their efforts have been seen and appreciated and we wish all artists a fantastic and productive 2015.