we are merely vermin

A brief retrospective on the Souls on Fire (SOF) lads, and a special mention for Vermin who has his own show this month

All photos by shellshock


“If human beings were shown what they're really like, they'd either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves“ (Aldous Huxley)


I’ve always been partial to a bit of the Souls on Fire (SOF) crew. They make you work. It’s not a picture of a decent looking woman, or a 6th Former’s clumsy political message. They make you wonder what it is in their art that you like. It makes you delve into your inner core to worry about yourself and your own frame of mind. Am I a bit mad because I like this stuff? Don’t answer that question….

I wanted to do a short blog on their work, and when I had a look through my photo archive I realised that they are slightly elusive and their pieces were rather thin on my ground. But it’s still nice to raid the archive and show a smattering of their productions in Bristol.

SOF mainly hail from Frome in Somerset (pronounced ‘Froom’, like vroom, and NEVER ‘Frowm’, like gnome, although more and more newsreaders seem to be doing that) and consist of Pen, Boswell (who used to write under the name ‘Warp‘), Vermin and Rowdy. They mainly write and paint in Bristol and as you’ll see from my slightly random photos they also often work on their own, plus collaborating with other writers, some of whom may not be obvious choices.



Boswell & 3rd Eye - St Werberghs tunnel - August 2008


Pen & Rowdy - St Werberghs tunnel - August 2008


Here’s a few from the Mina Rd tunnel in Bristol a couple of years ago. Boswell does his customary ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ type creatures, but 3rd Eye has his ever so slightly fluffy edges with cartoon-ish characters (still maybe not a cartoon for the kiddiewinks though...).

Pen writes his name like he’s under electric shock treatment and Rowdy shows his ‘other style’; that of ethereal impressionist abstraction (it’s not all crocodiles and painted rocks you know)


Boswell and Pen - The Deaner - July 2009 (with a sliver of Kato on the left)


Boswell and Cheo close up - The Deaner - July 2009


Boswell and Cheo - The Deaner - July 2009

Over the other side of town, I’ve found a few in the archive from the Dean Lane skate park in July 2009. It’s no surprise that Boswell and Pen mutually work together (top photo), but let’s be honest who would have expected Cheo and Boswell to be able to sit on a wall in sync!? Somehow they pull it off, rather like a nice cop / nasty cop routine.


Vermin and Mr Jago - Stokes Croft - September 2010


Vermin - close up - Stokes Croft - September 2010

Finally, I’ve pinned one down from Vermin (a.k.a Dale ‘vn’ Marshall), painted this summer with Mr Jago round the back of Stokes Croft (the self proclaimed ’cultural quarter’ of Bristol). The emotion and fluidity in both of their work shines out for me.

I think it might be my Asperger’s leaning, but I could lap this stuff up all day. I find the abstractions and fantastical meanderings mesmerising, and I‘ve never been afraid of a bit of darkness and emotion. It‘s probably therefore no surprise that my favourite canvas was done by Crie, from the Trans Pennine Nomads (TPN) crew; someone I’ve blogged on several times before. And no visitor has ever had a bad word to say about it (yet.... Nolions & HAN have never been round to my gaff...lol)


My Crie canvas

So, I’m looking forward to ‘Room 101, The Fine Art of Graffiti‘, which is Vermin’s first solo show, opening this week. It showcases 101 oil paintings completed in 101 days this summer, as well as five additional show paintings and site-specific installations. Details are on the flyer below.



The room 101 theme obviously draws parallels from George Orwell’s novel, 1984, as well as Dale’s personal experiences and ongoing battle with his own mental health, including stays in a secure unit. His history and life story (visit here for details) is in equal parts amazing, shocking and totally understandable when you see his art. I don’t know Dale but I feel some connection through his art, maybe aided by us being from the same city. My own minor battles cannot be compared to his, but I do get a strong personal feeling from all of this, and my heart skips a beat when I dip into his story and his soul.

The show also has a dedicated website here

Papal Bull

Pope In London - Street artists rise as foretold

photos Nolionsinengland except S.Butterfly where noted


Benedictus episcopus servus servorum Dei, Pope Benedict, Bishop, Server of The Servants of God, etc etc is in the UK to give us a bit of a telling off and to enjoy one of the most expensive inter-city long-weekend breaks on record (Twelve million quids worth is the accepted estimate of his inclusive board and travel deal). Graffoto was a little disappointed that the opportunity presented by the elections in the UK this Summer passed by un-remarked by most of the street art/anarchist community, perhaps with the honourable exception of Dr d, so it is encouraging to see this papal visit has stimulated the minds and exacto knives of a few stencilistas in London. For anyone not familiar with the circumstances, the two protest themes hinge around expense and paedophilia cover-ups.

Top prize goes to the ever thoughtful K-Guy who placed controversial work in a couple of spots designed for maximum visibility to the papal entourage and all passing Catholics. K-Guys is at his best when presented with a toxic cocktail of politics, religion and hipocracy and the quality of his political work is sustained in this hear-no-see-no-speak-no cannon-ised monkeys. Reducing the pontiff to the level of a primate and mocking the Church’s inability or un-willingness to properly and clearly address the horrendous crimes committed within its sanctuary by a few (“Paedophilia is a sickness, they were “ill”), this work pulls no punches.


K-Guy “see-no-hear-no-speak-no”


K-Guy placed a version of this image on Thursday night on the Popemobile route to Westminster, Graffoto made a detour on the way to the day job on Friday morning arriving just as one chuffed-to-bits cleaner removed the piece off the streets. 0-1 to the buff.


I’ll ‘ave that


K-Guy was motivated to go one better for the Pope’s benefit on Saturday (today), placing a second specimen inside Hyde Park where the Pope was due to lead an open air séance or something. Wonder if it survived until the vigil, certainly thousands of Catholics will have got the message if it did.


K-Guy


SPQR also addresses the popular theme of papal cover-ups, this splendidly executed work referencing the less than transparent internal investigations supposedly carried on by the Catholic church. Being placed on a gallery wall miles from where the papal retinues and the flock would gather renders this effort a tad futile but to be fair to SPQR, he was presumably rather busy with a solo show opening at Signal Gallery that night.


SPQR – “Report Exposes Church Sex”


Much closer to the heart of the papal action geographically speaking is Nick Walker’s Cardinal Sinister placed on the walls of the Royal College of Art immediately outside Hyde Park. Nick Walker renders the Pope as a Blofeld-like evil head of a sinister organisation stroking the cat on his lap. We like the analogy to the head of a crime based organisation, the stencil has impressive scale and detail but we feel the Royal College of Art gains more through boosting its waning“edginess” quotient than Mr Walker gains for his imaginative composition.


Nick Walker "Cardinal Sinister"


We thank the ever vigilant Ms S Butterfly for photographing this effort by Raymond Salvatore Harmon (anyone like to hazard a guess at his religion?) aka RSH, location unknown. Perhaps the splatters of blood are a bit OTT but the few pieces by RSH we have seen recently have been almost violently dayglo, the point of the work is more important than the colour palate.


RSH – Suffer The Children (photo S Butterfly)

D*Face used the opening on Thursday of a retrospective show at Electric Blue Gallery, Middlesex St to mock the new religions of corporatism and branding with his logo cross (curiously, this time hung upside down St Peter style), previously seen at the 2008 aPOPcalypse Now show.


D*Face logo cross (aPOPcalypse Now, 2008)


The Pope angrily charged D*Face with what he called “Aggressive Atheism” but the bulk of the mainstream press have chosen to interpret the remark in the wider context of British Society.

Poster Boy In London

Dog days of Summer suck and taking a family holiday at the end of August can involve compromise. For me the compromise became apparent a couple of weeks ago when an calling-all-art-knobs email arrived announcing a Poster Boy multi-location book launch, one leg of which would be at the Pure Evil Gallery, London.

Within minutes, a sceptical buddy mail arrived saying “oh yeah – Poster Boy...one dude.....four simultaneous launches around the world [ish, London and 3 in the US] .... does not compute”. Fuck that I thought and got back on the kite board (kinda – day 1 is body dragging)....I wasn’t going to be anywhere near so best not to dwell on the inconsistency.

Reacquainting myself over the past couple of days with what’s new and what’s forgotten in the London street galleries I was really surprised to find Pure Evil’s gallery resonating with irrefutable evidence of a continuing Poster Boy presence - books, beer and cut out paste ups strewn on the floor.

Before checking out the PVs tonight I found the end of Summer transformed by Poster Boy action on the London streets. No, I don’t know when these interventions happened other than it was today..I was there sometime before, I was there sometime after, here are before and after snaps.






Obviously this is plain simple billboard hijacking. Other than where the eyes are allowed to peek through, these pieces involve complete advert obliteration. The message here is simply political. Spending 5 minutes photographing the hijacked billboards gave sufficient time to absorb the impact this un-expected off-message message was having. Every passerby and every car driver was studying the anarchist assault.







Thanks to dastardly bastardly agency creatives discovering that mimicking street art has a powerful resonance with a certain trendy target audience, my quest over the past few years to discover more Cut-Up Collective work lurking behind, around and on top of public adverts has involved me looking at more street marketing campaigns than any ad exec could dream of. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t Cut-Up Collective's intended effect!






I had thought, having never previously had direct contact with a Poster Boy environmental enhancement, that Poster Boy’s work was purely about advertising subversion, poster remixing with wit and generally an anti corporate propaganda theme. This may or may not be true, in a couple of years I will have finished reading the book, but Poster Boy’s London blitz is hugely political, a truly remarkable thrust from a dude whose country pulled out of its most recent/current/most public global fuck up only last week.




Poster Boy was arrested in an internationally publicised incident early in 2009, nabbed by covert police pouncing on an advertised private view of a Poster Boy art show. Poster Boy got sent down, or detained, or sent to bed early or something, yet the Poster Boy campaign actually intensified. It had both a windmill to tilt at AND a huge profile. Eventually, messages reached some critical nerve endings in some street art keyboard botherers and the question “if he’s inside, whose doing this schizz” was floated. Mainstream press speculated that the wrong guy had been arrested.

Although Graffoto believes these mysteries are best left mystique intact, it seems the answer was/is that Poster Boy is a multi-testicled beast and the authority had yanked its tail. Anyway, the gentleman in Pure Evil’s gallery tonight was without doubt in my mind the same guy in this famous youtube clip and he seemed to imply that Poster Boy is a collective.


Clip by “TheKSkill”

The book is a fundraising exercise to raise money for K.A.R.A .T.E - Kids Are Rallying Against The Empire – a legal defence fund for artists who may find themselves detained at The Man’s pleasure for changing the world without license or authority. When we look at custodial sentences handed down to visual environment enhancers then any funding to protect society from the stupid mistakes of its un-elected judiciary has to be a good thing.




Apart from funding a good cause, Poster Boy has a unique way of signing the books, if you look closely you might make out that he has whipped out his razor and incized through the frontispiece to reveal Poster Boy's name on the page behind. Cool. Signed copies available Pure Evil Gallery, London and, I would guess, from Frost Gallery, NY; Carmichael Gallery LA and AE District Gallery, Miami.


copyright - whatever


The book is a photographic collection of the work of Poster Boy, including many before and after shots as well as the photographic inspiration and sources behind the ideas. The introduction nails it, don’t know who the author is but it says “This book is a piece of hypocrisy....Poster Boy’s high-minded rabble rousing is starting to reek of bullshit. After all, Poster Boy detests the media but wholly depends on it as a medium.”

This post doesn’t fall into that trap as Graffoto prides itself on being a large, not a medium.

CEPT - Cosmic Interceptor

London Aug 2010


Graffoto had the pleasure of a morning with Cept as he freestyled a London shutter writing CEPT with an awesome intergalactic perspective buggering fill. Look too closely at the end result and you'll feel like you are about to fall into deep space.


Check the movie, in particular see some impressive backwards tagging at the end. Smoke a banana while you watch it.


Cosmic Interceptor from NoLionsInEngland on Vimeo.



Check here some of the awesome CEPT work Graffoto has covered in the past and as anything Cept touches may involve warping time and space, depending when you click this link we might throw in some future work too.

VNA Issue 12 - This Thursday 12 Aug 2010

Pure Evil Gallery
108 Leonard St
London EC2A 4RH


VNA Issue 12 launches this coming Thursday (12 Aug 2010) with a party at Pure Evil Gallery, London, K.O. 6pm.

98 pages (100 counting the covers?) are packed with features and photos. The cover artist ROA has screenprinted a unique image on 100 copies, his first ever screenprint whilst apparently the first 20 to storm the evil dungeon may get their mitts on a very special ROA VNA teeshirt.

Amidst the launch buzz there will be a load of ROA art on the walls, featured artist and Brizzle legend Mr Jago is painting live whilst adhoc low-fi scuzz rock groovers Pure Evil and The Prehistoric Man will be serenading all in the basement, check out “I can See Your Bra Through Your Top” here. The B-Side “I Can See Your Y-fronts Through Your Monitor” hasn’t been cleared for release. Refreshments by Kopparberg,

As a bonus, it very easy to walk the 50 yards to see the Rooftop Roa painted specially for VNA as a series of various vivisectionist states of internal dis-memberment.




Back to the mag, it just gets fatter and brighter, like some of its photographers. The emphasis is shifting towards artist interviews and photos with the photo-journal of street art and graff since the last issue confined to 4 double page spreads at the back. Booooo. In depth interviews and photologs include feature interviews with Bruno 9Li, Dave Kinsey, M-City, Kevin Cyr (paints tagged vans), The Yok, Mr Jago , Buff Monster and an Amsterdam OMT including an beer and chat with exactly 50% of The London Police, plus of course the Roa interview already mentioned


featuring the ever-lush photography of Ian Cox

If like Graffoto you prefer an album cover you can hold in your hands rather than an email confirmation that you paypalled 79p to iTunes, then make a copy of this lush little record of that most ephemeral of art forms yours.

If you can’t make the opening this Thursday, check out one of the many UK and international stockists (curious that in London there is no stockist North of Oxford St or west of Whitehall, where the PM and his Mrs are elbow deep into street art and graff culture nowadays). If all else fails, check out the shop on the VNA website.

Thanks to VNA and google, Graffoto may be busy for the next few weeks getting to know the Visiting Nurse Association.

Hackney Wicked

Hackney Wick
30 July - 1 Aug 2010



Hackney Wick is bohemian, decaying, swampy and trendy though a lot of its post industrial bleakness is being surrendered to the concrete sports temples rising out of the mud and mire. Some of the resilient local artist community, 670 or so the promotional bumpf proclaims like some kind of statistical triumph, have had their doors levered open for the annual Hackney Wicked art festival now in its third year.


One of the coolest bits of work was an outdoor-internal installation called Tompson’s Tunnel, featuring miniature concrete steps leading up to a tunnel burrowing into the building with tiny Slinkachu-esque naked figures striding the landscape. The figures looked like they may have been wrapped in foil then lost their skin to first degree burns in some grotesque bbq related accident. The illusion of depth in the tunnel was enhanced by a mirror fitted at the end. Bugger to photograph mind.


Tompson's Tunnel


Quite a bit of live painting had taken place the day before in and around that White Post Lane car park including pieces Snoe, Cept, Seks, DScreet, Busk and Xenz.


Snoe, Cept, Seks, DScreet, Run (&Busk?)


Also in that same car park, intertwined down the structure of the back staircase is one of those robot wooden arms similar to the ones seen at Prescription Art in Brighton last year.




Normally you wouldn’t have polite access to these sweatshop buildings, various handwritten notices pleading for the return of missing items or threatening dire retribution if perpetrators of theft are caught indicate why. The best part of these buildings being open is the opportunity afforded for access to roof spaces and elevated windows, yielding panoramic views and close up shots of rooftop graffiti gems.


Sweet Toof



Sweet Toof


Arriving early like around mid-day, when stalls selling home-made carrot cake out-number carrot cake eaters, had the dual peril of artists still being tucked up in bed and if they were there, you were likely to be the only rubber necker keeping the artist company. You hope as you mooch un-certainly into the heart of the studio that your face doesn’t betray any particular look of horror.

On a hunch that he might have finally surfaced by 2.30pm, a return to the Peanut Factory found Joseph Loughborough aka illjoseph, bright eyed and demon breathed after a bit of a session the previous night.


Joseph Loughborough


Joe has been an artist I have admired for several years and the work on his studio walls was just stunning. Some of them are on his flickr account and without being critical of Joe's photography, flicks don't have a fraction of the impact of seeing these fo' real. Joe was sitting there producing one of his latest series of frenzied, fragmented and smudged charcoal portraits. For me this brief visit was the highlight and made the Eastwards schlep worthwhile (and the bit about demon breath probably isn't true).


Joseph Loughborough


In, around and beyond Hackney Wicked photographs 'ere

High Roller Society - Linoprinting Workshop

HIGH ROLLER SOCIETY
10 PALMERS ROAD
LONDON E2 0SY

24 July 2010



photos: NoLionsInEngland except High Roller Society where noted.


After last week’s hugely fascinating screenprinting workshop, Graffoto completed its 6 hour crafts major at High Roller Society’s linoprinting workshop. Guest demo man this week was printer, book illustrator and lecturer (among many other illustrative activities) Nick Morley from East London Printmakers, aka “linocut boy”.

He showed off the tense and dangerous art of cutting lino, creating a prophetic split composition of a sprinting cyclist and a cloud of dust which anticipated Mark Cavendish winning the Champs Elysee stage of the Tour de France the following day. Just for fun, Nick chose to demonstrate a colour blend print across the cloud of dust with a solid blue on the cyclist



Lino cutting the cloud of dust (photo: High Roller Society)



Blending colours



Inking up



Positioning the paper



Beron action



Go Cav!


Using Nick’s freshly cut lino block we participants and devotees had our first crack at inking and the critical skill of pressing the paper to the lino block using a “beron”.


Inking up


For entertainment and experimentation, the workshop had a go at printing on six lino blocks kindly made available by Sweet Toof, Paul Insect, Nylon, Cyclops and SheOne and actually used in the printing of “lim ed” prints on sale at the High Roller Society “Press and Release” show. With a number of different coloured papers and ink colours to try, some of the prints produced by us amateurs looked pretty damn lush.


Sweet Toof proof print


On a technical note, the prints taken off the blocks at the workshop are regarded as “proofs” and some of the noted artists were present and showing how their work could be/should be printed, SheOne showed us how to overlay an abstract piece over a colour background resulting in a gorgeous spikey bold combination. Three artist printed proofs are available from High Roller Society though we understand the online shop may not be fully functional you probably should email them.


foreground: SheOne creating printed image, background: LMNL inks up a block, her hair and her frock



Rather than part of any edition, the “proofs” printed by us amateurs were really have-a-go fun practise pieces for people interested in the process, there certainly didn’t seem to be any signing or numbering going on.


SheOne proof print (photo High Roller Society)


Although we tend to think of lino cut as an ancient but coarse form of reproduction, there are many ways it can go wrong in the hands of the novice. Inking up the plate requires a skilled eye to ensure that the ink is uniformly spread with no blank spots, irregular pressing can cause variations in the image transferred to the paper. The photo below shows an overlap comparison of our first and second attempts at printing on a Sweet Toof lino print. Blemishes? No, those differences are “process idiosyncrasies”.


Sweet Toof linocut prints, newsprint paper.


If you look at the proofs hanging from the drying rack below you can see how the detail in the black marks along the edge varies between the two prints, and they were printed by the artist!


SheOne, Paul Insect (photo: High Roller Society)


Under the guidance of linoprint boy, Little Miss NoLions went next level, cutting a dragon outline (which from Dad perspective got “tense and dangerous”) and freestyling the skin texture and background.




Three days later we have two dragon lino prints still wet, ink on the upholstery in the car (joining the legions of dabs and smears from previous incidents transporting kids' wet painting) and ink on the back of the settee, a window ledge and the dining table.




The demonstration covered a simple small scale version of the process, linocut printing can be done in a variety of more complicated and even mechanised versions of the basic process we learnt. Linocut supremo Nick told the story of how he drove a steam roller a couple of weeks ago to press paper onto some very large lino cuts. The Nolions' mental picture of a lino mat wrapped round the roller with a sweaty, oil stained Nick banging out a repeating pattern on hot fresh tarmac turned out to be wrong but how were we to know.



Thanks to High Roller Society and particularly Jenny for putting on these events, NLIE and LMNL thoroughly enjoyed these insights into such mysterious arts. Thanks also to the artists who allowed their lino cuts to be desecrated by amateurs and to those artists present at the workshop providing help and encouragement. We look forward to High Roller Society living up to its name and bringing a steam roller along to a future workshop.