WORD ON THE STREETS

If you take two weeks out to get all hot and bothered chasing Athens graffiti on the back of a Vespa and stop keeping an eye on them, people will get mischievous. Councils have seriously stepped up their buffing campaign and artists have suffered irresistible urges to spray, marker pen and wheatpaste on the walls. It’s like watching two dogs continuously returning to piss on the same tree stump.

strangely, the staff at Cargo who really ought to know better have got the whitewash urge too (painting out Nick Walker's Moona Lisa???? FFS).

So, while my gimlet eye was elsewhere, London had…..

A return visit from New York’s Momo.



A return visit from Australia’s ENESS




And of course, it would be cynical and churlish (and groundless too!) to suggest that perhaps some local dab hand with the wheatpaste brush had been sent those paste-ups through Fed Ex.

A complete twat, no - seriously - though perhaps I should capitalise the word, Twat has launched himself on the London stencil scene with some tasty work though some of his stuff was through unfortunate wall choice buffed within days.




Speaking of twats, some idiot pasted over just about the only remaining Faile stencil in this neck of the woods (not counting the "nothing lasts forever" ones). No need to capitalise the word that time.

As a prelude to the opening of the Camp Barbossa’s Burning Bridges show, Labrona is in town and has decorated a few walls in the company of a mate from Vancouver who Romanywg kindly tells me is Gaad.




Conor Harrington finished his Brick Lane piece. At least, I think he did.




SK? having a touch of the Judith Supines hits Curtain Street/King Johns Court.




Critical (tbc) pops up a stencilled blind-folded Mona image with “Stop using my image” across her eyes. The one on the Cargo front wall lasts less than 24 hours; the one on Blackaller Street sprayed a on board held up 6 Phillips screws to a wooden panel on was removed during its second night.



Doze Green left a few gems around the time of his Leonard St Gallery show.




Biom and Seno re-did their usual Anning Street spot though if I recall correctly they threw some paint over it just a few weeks ago. Perhaps they didn’t like it.



Anon pasted up a retro suit willing to work for cunts, fame and love and possibly even in that order. Anyone know who the artist is?




Nuff for now, all the above pics are a small selection from a set taken over three days or so wince getting back to the east end. It would be worth checking the NoLions flickr account for pics uploaded 12 June to see quite a bit more from the same artists and others.

Possible shows to visit tomorrow (Thieves Ladder feat Stain, Armsrock, Poncho at BRP; Burning Bridges, Signal Gallery).

Meeting of Styles '08

Why is it the best events are always the ones you don't know a thing about?!

The Meeting of Styles was going on as we took a random walk round the back of the "trains in the air" wall to see if there was any update to the progress of Fridays half painted out ATG effort. . . .


Safe to say that yes...lots of progress had been made :


Whilst I didn't hang around as long as I would have liked, a general feel good atmosphere, lots of weed - lots of very cheap beer and lots of very pissed and stoned graffers up at a great height doing what they do best........drinking beer and smoking weed :)

The painting was a tad impressive too, and it certainly did what it said on the tin, all good in my book.

Soozy Who?

Pure Evil Gallery, 108 Leonard St., London.
22 May – 3 June (I think) 2008

Soozy Lipsey is a name I have never heard of before but judging by the beau monde who turned out for her show, she must be very well known to some pretty damn cool and happening people. Obviously not having heard the name before this post can’t include any cross reference to a graffiti track record, but the suspicion is that this is urban style rather than street art coming in off the streets.

Soozy uses a lot of collaging and spray, and a lot of building up of layers on newspapers and other materials and tearing strips off. Her style is reminiscent of no one more than Faile.

Favourite piece of several in the show is one which puts a new meaning to the expression a set of killer heels.




Apart from Faile, some pieces had echoes of Eine.






At a slight stretch, strong dynamic whirls may conceivably suggest a heavier form of David Ellis, so knowingly or un-knowingly Soozy has been influenced by some pretty classy street artists.




Repeated viewing of Try Your Luck, the biggest canvas on show, is a bit like re-reading a great book, you find something new every time, a truely awesome piece.




A small selection of other pieces:












After catching sight of gods like Brett Anderson of Suede browsing the Soozy Lipsey, the smelly sweaty wall licking street art hoardes took refuge downstairs in The Krah show.

With both Soozy Lipsey upstairs and The Krah downstairs in the basement celler, Pure Evil has pulled off two of the strongest shows seen to date in his idiosyncratic space. If you are going to see Doze Green in The Leonard Street Gallery next week, you’d certainly wouldn’t find 30 minutes at Pure Evil’s wasted.

A fuller set of pictures of Soozy Lipsey’s work is here.

Krah World at Pure Evil Gallery

Pure Evil Gallery, 108 Leonard St., London.
22 May – 3 June (I think) 2008

The Krah, which is Greek for the corruption of civilisation, has been mystifying sober adults and scaring babies for many years on the streets of London. Typically the street stuff is half bloated machine, half organic being with infinitely flexible bendy arms and unusual numbers of fingers, often raised in what most of us would probably consider to be a peace gesture but may well be a metal styled devils horns. Body language interpretation is confused by the fantasy metal-flesh combination but facial gestures usually convey very precisely an emotion.

The Krah with Spit, Batemans Row, London

The Krah’s street work tends to be incredibly long lived, testimony to its quality. Some of the variety of media used in this show has been telegraphed outdoors where we have seen spray paint and marker pen, highlighter pen on cardboard, marker pen on road cone, inflatable balloons and paste-ups.

The Krah with Greek buddies b. and Littll, Brick Lane. London

Inside the over active imagination of the Krah it seems the universe is populated by two forms of hybrid being. There is the mainly organic, always wearing a hood or a fiendish space fighter pilot helmet; there are mainly robotic machine beings with organic arms and often a face presented on a TV screen, more than likely a machine’s simulation of a face to signal and communicate with the other organic beings in Krah world.

The Krah has taken over the dungeon walls of Pure Evil’s 108 Leonard Street gallery, and anything remotely resembling a ledge or shelf too. A trio of Krah people on roughly the same scale as The Krah’s larger street pieces have been painted onto a crudely white-washed wall so that the heads and main torso’s captured on a canvas are part of a wider tableau which, to own in its entirety, you’d have to buy PE’s basement. Wearing bizarre helmets, these three warty gnarled people wouldn’t get many Notting Hill dinner party invites.

The dungeon’s gloomy ambience is illuminated to a utilitarian 60 watt averageness making photography very tricky without flash, so apologies for the pictures, the choice was either no flash but lose the colours or use flash but swamp the pieces in glare.

Many of the cyborgs are being swathed in tentacles, suckers seek grip on some surface or victim yet some of the suckers become orifices through which a daughter tentacle reaches out. Some of the tentacles are tipped with some form of tool for burrowing or drilling. The scale of the figures and the background is constantly switching, do the characters occupy a world, or are the beings occupied by worlds. You have to be into your future fantasy sci-fi worlds to love this stuff.

What will be very interesting next week will be to view Doze Green’s work just across the road in The Leonard Street Gallery, it will impossible to ignore a resonance between the bio-mechanical forms bursting through the canvas of both artists. Maybe some kind person can illustrate the point with pix from both shows, I’ll be on a beach.

Un-expectedly there is an enormous amount of small sculptural pieces hidden in nooks and crannies, balancing on a pile of rough bricks or sitting on window ledges.
Some pieces are cast and painted Krah creatures, others take antiquated household objects, a wall lights shade here, a small globe there and transform them with the trademark Krah face into the bio-mechanical combi denizens of the Krah universe.

Miniature slinkachu-scale people an arid desert landscape centred around a Krah faced god, perhaps the god of ordinary small lives. The Krah himself professes this working with 3D miniature worlds to be one of is favourite artistic releases.

Other sculptural curios include the global graffiti staple, a train daubed with the distinctive mark of the artist, but conveniently this is more a hornby scale model painted with a Krah creature. Even curiouser is a collection of small cast Krah models housed under moulded plastic covers like a bizarre twist in the menu of one of those mass-produced home made whole grain sandwich emporiums.

The big success of this show is the large single character canvasses. As these pieces are the most direct descendants of the illegal exterior art perhaps its not surprising to reach this conclusion.

Pure Evil is a clever and cunning strategist. Prices are written all over the walls in invisible ink, you need to ask the delightful Maria to borrow the pocket UV lamp to read them. The effect is the love it/hate it decision is un-tainted by issues of affordability and borrowing of the purple light wand is a frank and public admission of desire. It’s a bit like giving your better half a joint credit card.

This Krah show has been eagerly anticipated for some time and the breadth of the materials surpasses expectation whilst the eccentricity and bizarreness of the characters occupying Krah space bites your head off. Probably the only other street artist assaulting the eyes in this quasi insane way at the moment is Judith Supine, though the styles bear little resemblance.

What have we gained in the gallery? The NoLions Through-The-In-Door analysis suggests detail, variety, sculpture, time, finish. The Living-Rough assessment is that the elements of simplicity and speed may still be wandering the streets. I really wanted to love this show as much as I love his outdoor illegals. The large canvasses really worked big time and one of these on your wall would directly reflect what we see on the streets but in the realms of the nick-nacks and smaller paintings, some barely 2 inch by 2 inch, it felt like being at the attic clearance car-boot sale of a sci fi nerd.

Monday Update. . . .

Mighty Mo's Monkey is cropping up in an amazing array of places....well actually not that amazing as they are nearly always on top of a train bridge, but placement and execution are second to none, all done with a roller and a very long pole.

Parked my car IN FRONT of this billboard a few weeks ago, the wonders of Flcikr made me realise this was on the other side of it! A big fave for me of this style from the Burning Candy boys.

Eine Continuing to be bloody amazing, wonder if this will become a "wall" font?

Random weirdness in the shape of a photo with an astronaut called Ozzie and the text "To Donna, Love Bob". First one I found was left in situ for others to get a giggle from, then I found more and took one. Has the address www.todonnalovebob.org on it, which when visited prompts you to enter a unique code on the back of the photograph, asking for it to then be sent back to them with a promise of being contacted shortly.

I'll report back soon, if I'm still alive that is. . . . .

JR getting up at Truman Brewery, looking forward to seeing more of this at the Tate very soon.

And a half finished (or is it, I can never really tell with Conor) Harrington piece in progress on the entrance to the Truman Brewery, Brick Lane.