Street Art For Strange Times

You didn’t think a killer virus was going to stop street artists did you? Shoreditch witnessed an outpouring of street art addressing the Covid 19 pandemic from a number of angles. It’s amazing what a street artist could achieve with that one hour outdoor exercise license non-shielding people had during lockdown!
Thank You NHS, Artist Not Known

One of the most prolific artists was Nathan Bowen whose suitably masked characters appeared all over from West to East
"Stay Positive/The NHS Warrior" - Nathan Bowen

"Thanks NHS" - Nathan Bowen, Harry Blackmore; Oxford St

Nathan Bowen, Harry Blackmore, Ernest Obi - Shaftesbury Avenue

Almost as active as Nathan were Deanio X and Seen K26, often in the company of Tasnim Mahdy "Stay Strong" - Deanio X, Seen K26, Tasnim Mahdy; Old Blue Last, Shoreditch

"Stay Strong" - Deanio X, Seen K26, Tasnim Mahdy; Picadilly Circus

Deanio X, Soho

Our weekly clap for carers, which was a beautiful collective thank you, has stopped but it is clear that many street artists remain grateful on our behalf to the NHS, to the carers and other key workers.

“A quiet prayer holds over London…” We Love Our NHS – Robert Montgomery


Thank You NHS – Jimmy C

Is it just me sees concentric stained glass hearts in shades of NHS blue in this homage by DRT?
DRT (with Nathan Bowen & Co. in background)


Graffiti Life

On the flipside from the love for the NHS comes blame flinging and conspiracy theory. The UK’s elected political masters and their un-elected advisers repeatedly preached one thing but practised another to the point that anyone else would have felt embarrassed by. Street artists can be quite merciless when political hypocrisy becomes apparent and they proved yet again how swiftly street art can respond to current affairs.

In some countries the political response was based on denial or even deceit, Subdude latches on to those moments quite brilliantly.

Subdude

On the revelation that the NHS workers Boris thanked for his care in St Thomas' Hospital were immigrants who now under the conservative government's mooted minimum wage threshold would not qualify to come and lend their skills to the UK's underfunded understaffed health service:

Subdude

If you need to know what "Dominic Does Durham" is pastiching, ask your Dad:

Subdude

The early days of the UK response to the Covid crisis were characterised by simple clear messages and this apparent clarity was reflected in the referencing of the messages in the art. K-Guy found the graphic design and linguistic shorthand of those official three stanza instructions we saw on the podiums at the daily Coronavirus press conference in England lent itself to highlighting political neglect as an amplifier of the spread and impact of the disease through hospitals and care homes.
"It's A Testing Time", K-Guy

"Infected frontline policies", K-Guy



"Infected frontline policies", K-Guy

The surprising move to abandon testing and tracing and the awful situation regarding inadequate PPE provision featured in several pieces. Frankie Riot references the famous press conference where World Health Organisation head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus offered the simple “Test, test, test” which many developed countries decided to ignore with pretty devastating consequences.

"Protect NHS Workers" - Frank Riot

China again:

Eau de Virus, 'Orrible

Stay Safe, Remain Free - Artist Not Known

As Shoreditch Street Art Tours has emerged from lockdown doing very small private street art tours for the same price as the public tours, just so you know, the single piece of pandemic art everyone appears to be aware of is, not surprisingly, Banksy's nurse superhero painting on canvas “Game Changer”, donated to Southampton General Hospital.
"Game Changer" - Banksy, Photo: Banksy website

Banksy has done three pandemic related artworks: the aforementioned “Game Changer”; his earlier skit on the idea of the elusive rat stencilist working from home and most recently his brilliant makeover of a London tube with rascal rats parachuting with PPE face masks, rats tagging with sanitiser gel and rats sneezing all over the carriage in a lurid echo of the animation played frequently on the UK TV of the dispersal of vapourised snot from a sneeze in a train carriage.
Banksy, You dont mask you dont get"; photo source: www.banksy.co.uk 

Banksy, You dont mask you dont get"; photo source: www.banksy.co.uk


Banksy, You dont mask you dont get"; photo source: www.banksy.co.uk

Among all the inspired pandemic related art and the positivity towards those who placed themselves in way of potential harm for our care, one artist was creating pro NHS art years before it became fashionable. Ben Wakeling recovered from his own mental health issues to channel his efforts into art as a therapy for people with mental health issues and his therapeutic work and his Outsider Gallery have proved so effective that his art therapy can now be prescribed by GPs.

NHS Mental Health - Ben Wakeling, London 2019

To end this lockdown lookback on a positive note, could any message be more appropriate than Mark Titchner’s “Please believe these days will pass” plea.
"Please believe these days will pass"; Mark Titchner

All photos: Dave Stuart except courtesy Banksy where noted

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 Part 9

All photos: Dave Stuart


In the week we discovered new ways to test your eyesight, the photo archive continued to exhibit 20/20 hindsight with visual crackerjacks from the past.

Mr Cenz has a spraypainting pedigree that stretches back over 30 years so it is not surprising that his style has evolved considerably. He is famous these days for intensely colourful portraits with shafts of light and starbursts, those elements are clearly emerging in this 2013 portrait yet at the same time, it is quite different.


Mr Cenz, Ravey St, 2013


The two seemingly abstract paste ups above on the Grant and Taylor sign represented folded garments by Specter from NY who dropped some art works reflecting on visual aspects of the homeless community when over in 2010 for an exhibition in the Pure Evil Gallery.


Next, a pair of east end classics, Sweet Toof and Paul Insect on a paste-up mission around Brick Lane. This pair of beautiful decaying paste-ups has long gone but this 2013 photo also shows Jonesy’s “Sand Tar Nightmare” from 2012 complete with the original Native American headdress feathers which is still up today.


Sweet Toof, Paul Insect, Jonesy, Fournier St, 2012


Graff snapping mate for many years Joe Epstein aka LDNGraffiti, author of street art book “London Graffiti and Street Art” has teamed up with 9 street artists 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.


LDN GOSH Charity Book with Run Art


Italian artist Giacomo aka RUN paints stunning murals around Shoreditch and North London. Flat faced characters express surprisingly intense emotion and always at large scale. This pair of characters competing for the passer-by’s attention dates from 2009. Needless to say that spot on Hackney Road has no sense of that urban dereliction now.


Run, Hackney Road, 2009


Click 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, keep an eye out as well for further announcements of more prizes.




This D7606  &  C3 collaboration from 2013 found a perfect home on the haphazard accumulation of red and white marks on this Blackall St door.


D7606 C3 collaboration, Blackall St 2013


Dan Witz is full on old school street artist from New York who has blessed London with impressive street art on several occasions. Each passion project has been cause driven. It was Guantanamo in 2013 (1st photo) and his “Empty The Cages” anti animal cruelty project in 2014. The joined up element between the two visits was the theme of incarceration and cruelty in both.


Dan Witz, Rathbone Place, 2013


I recently cycled through Kings Cross and can report with pleasure and amazement that the PETA (People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals) installation below is still in place. See Graffoto.co.uk Feb 2014 review http://bit.ly/10Cp9pu


Dan Witz, Kings Cross, 2014


The magical power of art to turn humble domestic artefact into art icon has an honourable lineage that ultimately culminates in Toasters! Toasters already came up in Week 2 of #DigginInTheArchives but embedded in this bit of #flashback fun is a cruel selection process as a limit of one image only per artist was imposed #rulesforbenefitofall #rulesapplytoall (according to government deputy Chief Medical Officer Prof JVT when he brooke ranks at the briefing podium to condemn lockdown breaches by unelected shameless creep Cummings).


LDN GOSH Charity Book with Toasters Cover art


Thanks again to Joe Epstein's fundraiser for Great Ormond St Hospital, the Toasters corner of the archive gets forked over a second time. This stunning appliance from 2010 faced a Roa hare, famously spared the council buff thanks to a public petition. That green board next to the Toaster was the same property that Run characters were on in 2009, see above.


Toasters, Hackney Road, 2010


Every week now it feels like it is time to draw DITA to a close, to get out, do more contemporary but social distanced street art spotting. We are however feeling inclined to err towards the side of the scientific advice and, again in the words of JVT, “not tear the pants out if it”. DITA daily uploads will continue on the Dave Stuart instagram


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

Diggin In The Archives Pt 8

This week in spite of the latest official guidance to follow unofficial interpretations of the law, there have been no trips to Durham. I have followed my instinct to remain at home to see what scum is floating on the surface of the street art photography archive.

Ludo first put his art on London streets in 2009 and right from the off his Nature’s Revenge project dealt with man vs nature, weaponry, deception and death. Ludo’s work always had scale and awesome eye-catching placement. This weaponised orchid dates from 2011.


Ludo, 2011


Street artist and gallerist Rae visited London in 2013 and left an impressive range of paste ups, stickers, painted surfaces and this wacky sculpture which lasted all of 24 hours.


Rae, 2013



Rae, 2013


The Battle Of Fashion St pitted Ronzo’s monster, looking very much exactly like a medical diagram of a virus against studio stablemate Conor Harrington’s faceless soldier. Like most of Conor’s art this one lasted a long time.


The battle Of Fashion St, Ronzo and Conor Harrington, 2011


Graff snapping mate for many years Joe Epstein aka LDN Graffiti, author of street art book “London Graffiti and Street Art” has teamed up with 9 great street artists 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.




For more images, details and a link to how to support the fund raiser and maybe win one of these fantastic prizes in the LDN GOSH Charity Lottery, click here


One of the featured artists in the LDN GOSH fundraiser is Pure Evil, he doesn’t so much redecorate the book cover as subject it to extreme abuse and reconfiguration, it’s bonkers but brilliant. In 2012 Pure Evil imagined the Hackney Olympics looting squad making off with some Olympics booty, as seen on this Redchurch Street shutter.


Pure Evil 2012



Pure Evil's LDN GOSH Charity Book


In the happy days when I had a kind of job thing, I did one of my Street Art Photography Workshops in Hackney. I only found out this week thanks to Inspiring City’s Art Related Noise podcast interview that this stencil piece is “Lee P” by Findac. Lee P is otherwise known as street artist Eelus. The second shot was the idea of the photo - to show what Lee P was looking at


Findac, 2013



Findac, 2013


More than a decade of pasting up street art has left no doubt that Donk has an awesome approach to impressive installations created from his own original photos. It would be very easy to dredge up one of Donk’s huge crowd pleaser paste up images like the Fashion St fence (with the tassels), the Willow Street horse facing POW or the ghetto blaster on Sclater St but with no slight on any of those, sometimes his montages of smaller images show his versatility better. From 2013 this is a selection of hand finished unique Humble Magnificent and B Brave Indian images featuring Donk jr as model. Donk’s paste up’s typically decayed beautifully.


Donk 2013


Claudia Walde aka MadC is a graffiti writer and book author. She is also another of the artists to have created a unique painting on a book being auctioned to raised funds for Great Ormond St Hospital, details as above.


In culture with such a huge gender imbalance MadC is a rare example of an internationally regarded graffiti writer. In 2011 the Pure Evil Gallery hosted MadC’s first solo exhibition and graffiti writers came from all over to check out her top notch can skills and brilliant colour palette. Her 2013 abstract mural on Chance St in Shoreditch is well known and still running. Less known perhaps is this stunning 2011 graffiti on the old Micawber St launderette, look closely and you can pick out her name in there. It was huge though this is nowhere near the biggest piece of graffiti MadC ever did.


MadC, 2011



Mad C LDN Graffiti book cover


If you are interested in seeing previous DITAs, you can start with the first weekly compilation of the daily DITA uploads of HERE,

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

Diggin In The Archives Part 7

Never in history have the words “relax lockdown measures” been so badly abused. Please stagger your viewing of this post and share with only one person outdoors. Here are this week’s street art little gems from the past.


Jorge Rodrigues-Gerada is probably more widely known these days for his enormous land art portraiture but in 2012 London was blessed with a number of works by Jorge. This beautiful 2012 charcoal portrait was ludicrously short lived.


Jorge Rodrigues-Gerada, 2012


Cartrain was a marmite kind of artist, people either loved him or hated him. I had got pretty fed up with him constantly hitting up stencils right onto the edges of Banksy stencils around Shoreditch. Then in 2007 he came up with these collages, a massive transformation. The first few had proper gilded picture frames and he added spoof Perspex gallery labels alongside them though I guess the logistics of economically sourcing frames led to the cardboard cut out frames. I thought it was brilliant, others struggled to make sense of the random meaningless combination of images. Then came his appropriation of Hirst’s diamond skull and that evolved into a whole other drama of its own. These unusual diptych framed specimens here date from 2011.


Cartrain, 2011


There is nothing quite so exciting as a good hack of the corporate intrusion on the visual landscape. Meaning, ad busting rocks and Vermibus is a master of the form. In 2012 Vermibus was one of the key participants at Moniker Art Fair which in those days was still based in its original Village Underground location. This advert box, not far from Moniker, is a single purpose intrusion into the public pathway, it’s an illuminated obelisk straddling the pavement angled for visibility to car and bus occupants.


Vermibus, 2012


The second image is a collection of keys for illicitly accessing the different forms of those advertising spaces displayed by Vermibus at Moniker. Fuck corporate privilege, subvert its purpose.


Vermibus at Moniker, 2012


Remember Ai Wei Wei was placed under house arrest in China in 2010? In April 2012 I chanced upon this Free Ai Wei Wei stencil by Bambi sweetly captioned “You can cage the singer but not the song”. This photo is out of focus, the lighting is shite and composition is abysmal but when you want to photograph a piece of street art you stumble on en passant, you make the best of whatever light and technology is available. In this case, it was the shittiest out of date corporate Blackberry with a camera not much more advanced than a pinhole and the Guinness enabled focussing feature selected. When I returned in daylight with a proper camera a few weeks later it had been buffed.


Bambi, Marylebone 2012


Lovepiepenbrinck shared her time between Hamburg, Berlin and London and for years put out a series of piggies each presented as a different character. The piggies were quite small, often they were high up and sometimes completely hidden in dark spaces. Finding the piggies was like a treasure hunt. This example was the Ronald McDonald piggy obviously. One piggy was disguised as a shark, mounted in a small glass cube and glued to the outside of the Tate Modern in 2012 when Damien Hirst had that huge show there. Its title was “The physical impossibility of being a shark in the mind of a pig”. Street art genius! (And I never got to see it for real, security had it removed very quick).


Lovepiepenbrinck, Commercial St 2013


Stay alert! You have nothing to fear in isolation except Skeleton Cardboard’s morbid dancing skeletons. These used to appear in many imaginative forms, often interacting with the fabric of the wall or as a response to existing artworks. Dem bones were guaranteed to raise a smile . . .


Skeleton Cardboard, 2013


Nether's street art first appeared in London in 2012. When he returned in 2018 his style was dramatically altered, though those distinctive planes remained a feature. Also sneaking into the margins of this this photo are an awesome piece by Mr Wany, a detail from the edge of a Pez mural also dated 2012 and the conceptually brilliant pulse of EKG from New York.


Nether, 2012


It looks like the archives are going to be forked over for some time yet, each one of these photos reveals itself like a little speck of glass in an ankle deep farmyard.

Two months intensive use of the internet means you don't need to be told where to find the previous selections of archive gems, but here is where it began with the first weekly compilation of the daily uploads: DITA 1,

Art credits and links are by each photo. 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