Sheffield Sex City

"cos the city's out to get me if I won't sleep with her this evening
Though her buildings are impressive and her cul-de-sacs amazing
She's had too many lovers and I know you're out there waiting”
- "Sheffield Sex City", Pulp

All photos: NoLionsInEngland

Sheffield, up North, 3 hours ish out of St Pancras, why I have not done this before? The buildings, the music, the artists – all legends. "Let’s all go to Aida’s show!" A trip to Sheffield just happened, at last.

Sheffield’s artistic delights included non permissioned art spread out on the streets, derelict buildings battered by art and graffiti and a whole host of permissioned murals.

Our first little wander is piloted with the aid of a map scraped off the net showing the locations of Phlegm paintings visible on the street though the route is propelled more by the desire to locate food. Phlegm on the side of The Riverside where a microbrewed pale ale at £2.95 is just too crazy to leave in the barrel but the early shift chef can keep his bleach tasting burgers.


Phlegm Squid Chariot at The Riverside, overgrown!




Through the streets we wander finding Kid Acne, EMA,D7606, evidence of a visit by London style meister Petro and a number of artists new to us.


Dala



Eugene



Kid Acne, EMA,D7606, Eug & others unknown



Petro


We spied quite a few stunning pieces of rooftop graf, my favourite being this Cres/Anubis couple.


Cres, Anubis


Proper artist Simon Kent is a sculptor whose "proper art" could be described as Easter Island influenced human figures but on the streets he puts up charcoal coloured portraits which sit in corners looking moody, dark and “sculptural”.


Simon Kent



Simon Kent, Kid Acne



Simon Kent


A chance encounter with writer Aero at our first dead building carcass results in us assisting him to slide into said property, which may have been our tiny contribution to this little beauty ending up on a wall inside.


Aero, Doze, Some


The next morning was spent in intensive care at TamperCoffee, Sellers Wheel wrapping myself around several cups of Earl Grey and an awesome Eggs Benedict following which we had a wonderful explore of a classic Sheffield Crack Den (me: “what’s the name of this place?”; trusty local friend and guide: “Crack Den”; “So if I post a letter to Crack Den, Sheffield it will arrive here?”; TLFAG: “Put Sheffield S1, should narrow it down”).



Booms/Eugene,Casino



Eugene, Volt



Unknown



Cres, Phlegm


Carefully and lightly navigating over glass, wood timbers, rubbish and needles, photographing as I went, I emerged into a rough courtyard space, photographed a load of graff ahead of and around me then 10 minutes later turned to go back through the shattered window I had climbed out of only to realise I had actually emerged right under a classic Phlegm piece familiar from many street art blogs and flickr accounts, I just didn’t know it was there, those special moments of discovery and revelation are spine tingling.


Phlegm


We wandered up a steep incline to an abandoned ski village – in Sheffield, who’d have thought? Found some small amounts of graffiti, stunning views and some plastic bin lids to slide down the relics of the old dry slope matting – “such fun”!


Sleit?



Casino et al


In a second building we found lots of dereliction, plenty of graff of varying quality and in amongst it all, some surprisingly beautiful art by incredible artists completely new to these eyes.





Mila K



Unknown



Nymph



Brisk


Two lads putting the art and graff together to good effect are Xhastexo and Byne BS


Xhastexo, Byne


Getting on to the more acceptable face of street art – if you are a Sheffield burgher – there was plenty of evidence that Sheffield has developed considerable formal pride in its home grown street art talent. Our visit was ostensibly to check out Aida’s first solo show at the Bradbury and Blanchard Gallery and a quick scan over the list of previous shows in that space indicates a deep reservoir of local street art talent have exhibited on their gallery walls. We found art spaces, exhibition halls and building site hoardings all giving permissioned space to graffiti and street art talent.


Kid Acne


We found earlier Phlegm pieces, early evolutionary forms of the spindly monochromatic Phlegm folk we now know well and love, as well as Phlegm fronting for a major Sheffield art gallery and of course, many more of those folorn Phlegm characters in their technology free heath robinson world


Phlegm



Phlegm



Phlegm


I never knew this kind of crazy abstract camouflage was in EMA’s repertoire


EMA


Tell you another thing I never expected - a wall painted by Rolf Harris back in the day!


Rolf Harris, Kid Acne (no connection)


Two Sheffield artists whose work I have vicariously admired from afar are Faunagraphic and Rocket01, I did find art by these folks though it was not really the kind of their art that I was looking for.  Sheffield, I have unfinished business!


Rocket01



Faunagraphic



Wandering the streets, deserted, finding little art gems, petite cadeaux from artists left on the walls, it felt like the kind of magical voyage of discovery we had in Shoreditch years ago before everyone became street art photographers (believe it or not, there was a time when I refused to put my photos on the net and HowAboutNo beat my fingers with a hammer to make me join Flickr).  My friends and I on these wanders owe thanks to Sheffield artist Jo Peel who showed us streets, pubs with lock-ins and buildings with lock-outs.  One thing that became apparent was exactly where Jo's art has its roots.


In a very short dash we really only scratched the surface, a trio of grimy derelict locations and a bit of a wander yet we saw so much. The great thing is there remains so much more to see, so that combined with the natural spot churn will definitely going to make further trips to Sheffield worthwhile.

It would be wrong of me not to acknowledge that there are some passionate and expert Sheffield street art and graffiti photographers and bloggers whose posts and pictures inspired me and whose dedication and passion I tip my hat to.   All errors of identity, location, style here are entirely mine.

LINKS:

Fiona Ferret Graffiti - The Writing On The Wall
Mila K
Phlegm
Aida
Faunagraphic
Rocket01
Bradbury and Blanchard 
Jo Peel
Sheffield Urban Art
Florence Blanchard
Kid Acne
Simon Kent

ROA: Projectum 06

Stolen Space Gallery
17 Osborn Street, London E1 6TD

13 Jun – 6 July 2014

all photos: NoLionsInEngland


It would be easy to sneer “Sell out, same ol’ shit, run out of ideas” in a week when shows by two of the giants of street art open in London*. However, in the case of Roa, the art in his Stolen Space installation based show was breathtaking.



Roa’s art has always played with twin notions of animals rising up in abandoned human habitats and ambiguous dead creatures which left us questioning were the spoils of a successful hunt or a sinister ritual sacrifice. He has frequently employed lenticular imagery both on the streets as with the concertina shutter doors on the now re-developed Cordy House or the series of locker doors in Roa’s awesome London debut show at the Pure Evil Gallery below.


Cordy House 2009



Pure Evil Gallery 2010


The ROA room (Max Rippon aka RIPO is also exhibited in the front room) is entered through a center hinged revolving door which creates four permutations of the poor creature changes from playful repose to decomposed.


Front side!


Front side decomposed


Back side


Centre stage is a stunning 8 way optical trick of the eye in which the creatures we are looking at change as we walk around looking alternatively from square on to diagonally into the corners.










This idea of looking into the corners being a critical viewpoint repeats with a couple more installations where mirrored surfaces create a fearsome symmetry.










An intriguing fearsome bat is painted on three staggered surfaces which viewed from one point form a seamless image but form all other angles offer nightmare scary frankenstein juxtapositions. Notice the two way stomach incision flap pandering to the audience that prefers their bats pinned down and partially dissected.




The reduction in the array of cases, furniture, boxes and intriguing old biology lab accoutrements compared to his 2012 Hypnogogia show in this space has allowed the painting to have a bigger impact. Signature dishevelled, bedraggled creature and blue and red gizzards come to the fore and empathise the merits of ROA’s rough but detailed painting style. Virtually all of the images here look like ROA could just as easily have painted these on the streets as indoors in a gallery and it has been a while since there was a show that managed that achievement.





The awkward and ambiguous images of these creatures force us to contemplate our own skewed view of the animal kingdom, are we in love with them as pets, are we horrified by them as scary bats or do we hunt and devour them as ruthless consumers at the top of the food chain? Roa is on awesome form in this show and the brilliance of his art whether on street mural, abandoned buildings or inside in the gallery all amount to the same thing with this guy.

The burning question at the end is does this guy’s name need to be spelt with all capitals or just a leading capital R? Judging by the preview newsletters it is not clear that even the gallery knows!

*Also opening, "Banksy Unauthorised", Sothebys/Lazarides

Stealing Banksy?

"Stealing Banksy"

London25th - 27th April 2014

Photos: NoLionsInEngland except Art of The State and others where stated


It’s not often a piece of street art produces a profound shift in my thinking but now I’ve seen the “Stealing Banksy?” exhibition, I get why Athenians insist that inside the British Museum is not the right place for the Elgin Marbles.



Victoria, Jan 2011



Aldwych hotel basement 2014


Stealing Banksy? is part of a process whereby street art works by Banksy are being laundered through some weird kind of “preservation for the public” display exercise before being dispatched down the path always intended by the removers – making a buck for someone (other than Banksy). To be a bit clearer, the works of vandalism created on public property by Banksy, well ok, eight plus the Silent Majority on the side of a trailer done with permission and the not-for-sale "Brace Yourself" done in a deal with a band who were formerly known as "Exit Through The Gift Shop", were taken from their original location, restored, put on display to the public for 3 days in this exhibition (£20.00 on the door, no cameras) then auctioned to the highest  mug - opps, sorry - bidder  over the next few days.


Silent Majority


What will visitors see and is it really street art?

On Thursday Sincura Grouop held a press conference which included seven Banksy street art pieces and the slightly comical live assembly and unveiling before our eyes of the “No Ball Games” piece, featuring a lot of challenges reconstructing the top section. On Friday, two more pieces had been revealed, the “Girl With Balloon” and the “Boy with Heart” (Banksy and Faile) making a grand total of nine pieces on display. The tenth piece, the Liverpool Rat is described as needing refurbishment but it would have taken something rather larger than a single story indoor room to display.


No Ball Games, Stealing Banksy? 2014


Are these pieces actually Banksy? Well, the organisers only identify one of the pieces, the Silent Majority, as having Pest Control provenance, Pest Control being Banksy’s company that certifies works as genuine Banksy. This difficulty with lack of proof of the artist has always made reputable auction houses loathe to handle Banksy street art.

Do you think Banksy wants his street work to  go through a natural life cycle ending in obliteration on the street or would he prefer it ends up in this un-intended state of restoration and preservation?  This is what the great man uploaded to his website on the day of the press conference:


Copyright: www.Banksy.co.uk

I have speculated that Banksy had an ulterior motive to derail this exhibition when he created new street pieces that appeared in Bristol and Cheltenham two weeks ago.

As for it being street art, shifting it indoors has a traumatic effect on the look and feel of these street pieces. Gone is any sense of the relationship they had to their environment. Admiration for the vandal taking risks to create this piece – the “Wow, how did he get away with that?” factor is completely absent. In short, they don’t feel at all like street art. They actually look completely out of place in this situation and one would hazard in any indoor location.


No Ball Games, Tottenham, 2009


The Berlin door raises the question “doesn’t this rat actually look a little bit silly”, I’m afraid the rats actually come across as rather infantile, which may be what Banksy intended though the impression is magnified hugely by the change of context from urban strasse to moodily lit showroom.  No art historian is ever going to laud the artistic genius of our favourite vandal based on this evidence.


Berlin Door feat art that looks like Banksy, Faile and London Police


What is the impact of the “restoration” that takes “9-12 months” ( per “Liverpool Rat according to the Stealing Banksy's "The Banksy Bugle" publication). Compare the photos I took of this detail of Tottenham’s No Ball Games, the restoration actually doesn’t look too heavy handed. A light dusting of the stains outside the stencilled portions and a bit of cleaning of the shadow between the chin and the ear looks like about the extent of the difference between the “as painted” condition and the restored condition, though the painted blob just behind the ear seems to have become curiously more emphatic over time! however a photo on the Stealing Banksy website suggests that at the start of restoration it was in appalling condition.  That condition was its natural state given its location, lifespan and history, Sincura would have us believe that terrible condition is exactly the justification for saving and restoring the piece.  The question is what right do they have to make that judgement?


No Ball Games Girl - 2009



No Ball Games Girl, repainted, Stealing Banksy? 2014


The Old Skool piece painted in 2005 (“The Banksy Bugle" – 2006) was originally captioned “Thugs For Life” by Banksy and didn’t feature the grey rollered background. This 2006 photo shows it with the grey background but lacking the “Old Skool” that was added later.


Thugs For Life, 2006 - in between captions!


Compare the flaking damage in 2006 on the right side and across the chest of the seated granny with the restored version now.


Thugs For Life detail, repainted


A curious aspect of this “restoration” is that at the time is was removed, apparently after paying the wall owner a mere £1,000, the restorer Tom Orton described the restoration process in the press as involving peeling the 0.25mm thick layer of paint off the wall. In other words, they didn’t take the wall material. In fact, distinguishing features of the wall such at the crack on the buttress that ran horizontally through the nose of the central standing granny are STILL present on the original wall on Clerkenwell Road. In which case, exactly what is the wall on which Thugs For Life is now mounted? Did they take a mould of the wall surface? Whatever they did, the piece is not mounted on its original surface, how can this possibly be regarded as a Banksy?


Thugs For Life, peeled, remounted, repainted, Stealing Banksy? 2014


The Great Eastern St Girl With Balloon was in appalling condition back in 2004, Sincura's own film of its removal shows at 21 secs that it had deteriorated in the 10 years it was hidden behind wooden cladding. Its present condition amounts to little more than a repaint.  While we are on it, The Banksy Bugle says there were 2 "Girl With Balloon"s executed in this area, there were at least 4!


Girl With Balloon, 2004
Photo copyright Art Of The State, used with kind permission



Girl With Balloon, Stealing Banksy? 2014 version


These "restored" pieces bear as much relationship to the original Banksys as a Madame Tussauds waxwork of Lennon and McCartney does to actually being the most brilliant music composers and lyrists of the 20th century.


The organisers have a website which smears a veneer of mitigants, excuses and basically layers of ambiguity and smokescreen over their involvement in the process and the motives of the people on whose behalf they are selling. My friend RJ from Vandalog has done a brilliant dismantling of Sincura's public proclamations so no need for us to repeat it. One thing to be added is that their claim that the Shoreditch “Girl with Balloon” was “long forgetten” is nonsense, we (author and several of similarly geeky friends) knew it was there, Banksy probably knew it was still there and clearly the building owners knew it was there. Their oft repeated mantra of “On the brink of being lost forever” is laughable, as if this was the Three Graces or some kind of national calamity or art world disaster! This art is meant to be ephemeral.


Formerly ephemeral!


At risk of getting a bit pedantic and trivial, both The Banksy Bugle and the Stealing banksy website are chock full of errors. There's a sort of trivia quiz, "10 things you didn't know about Banksy" and only one of them is supposedly incorrect they say. There's "5. The Stealing Banksy? show in 2014 was actually commissioned by Banksy himself, through an anonymous company", seems unlikely. However, "fact" number 1 is "Banksy was behind a famous hoax in 2004, where photoshopped copies of Paris Hilton's album were distributed in HMV shops". There are three errors in that sentence alone, (2006, Banksy/Danger mouse remix CD, HMV & Virgin & independent record stores), so which of those two erroneous "facts" do you think they think is incorrect?


The exhibition lasts until Sunday 27th and door admission is £20! Half of that is earmarked for charity but that steep ticket price is not exactly consistent with the general drift that the restoration, display and sale is tantamount to some kind of public service. At that price a family can save enough to buy the petrol for a trip to see the Banksy in Cheltenham with enough left over for a Little Chef burger. Don’t forget in London you can still see the brilliant “Shop 'til You Drop” in Bruton Lane behind Old Bond St too.




Thanks to good friend Joe LdnGraffiti who sorted out access to the press conference and comps to go back and see the pieces after the rest had been revealed.

The Curious Incident of the Banksy 'Street' Art in a Museum

Two new Banksy pieces in England

All photos by shellshock


It’s official (almost).

Banksy has come away from the dirty nappies and dropped two sumptuous pieces in his old stomping ground; a.k.a. God’s own backyard, the West Country of England.

 

Not surprisingly Banksy has never done anything in genteel Cheltenham before, as the local ‘krew’ consists of a spotty 14 year old called Tarquin, and his dad, Miles, who works in London and graciously comes home at weekends to practise [water] bombing in the 80 metre garden at their Regency townhouse.

As is the norm these days early morning joggers spotted this intricate piece on Sunday morning (13th April) before the paint was dry, and although the tenant of the house didn’t quite know what was going on, she did go and have a look about 7.30am when the 3 ‘workmen’ who had erected a tent over the wall/phone box had just left.  CCTV shows 3 people wearing high viz jackets, driving the ubiquitous white van, arriving at 6am.

 

It’s on the side of a non-descript house where Hewlett Road and Fairview Road meet in a not quite as leafy area of Cheltenham [for those wishing to visit the postcode is GL52 6AJ, and the train station is less than 2 miles away].  The appeal of this particular house though was not only because its side wall is whitewashed and has a satellite dish on it, but also that it has a telephone box slap bang in front of it, and is on a high visibility mini- roundabout where 6 small roads meet.  All perfect Banksy material.  And finding a public phone box these days isn’t that easy you know!

Being located in Cheltenham is obviously a nod to the huge Government Communications Headquarters building 3 miles away on the other side of town.  More commonly known as GCHQ, this is the place where the UK government monitors global and national communications; i.e. where they spy on us all.

GCHQ say they are keeping Britain “safe and secure” and when asked to comment on the art, even gave a pithy reply that “our website gives a glimpse of what modern-day intelligence operatives are really like, although some may be disappointed by the lack of trench coats and dark glasses”.

Spending barely 15 minutes there this week was enough to make my ears bleed as I couldn’t help overhear the inane conversations of self proclaimed Banksy ‘experts’, a local Councillor, and a BBC news crew urgently called away from Mrs. Miggin‘s cat stuck up a drainpipe.  The usual rent-a-quotes then came out in the written media to exalt its genius, or pillory its tired middle of the road message (delete as applicable to fit your own immoderate point of view).
 
The truth of course is somewhere in between.  It has a certain charm and the quality is undoubted, but then again since when did illegal graffiti or ‘street art’ involve a tent and 90 minutes of relatively stress free work.  Its message may still be news worthy, but the piece is extremely tardy, as newspapers like the Guardian and the Washington Post were fearlessly reporting on US government electronic spying and Edward Snowden’s valiant whistle blowing since June 2013 and, in a peculiar twist of timing, were awarded a Pulitzer Prize the day after this piece went up.











In a turn of events more significant than the Cheltenham piece, I have wracked my tiny brain, and I believe this is the first ever Banksy street piece to end up in a Museum.

The first most people knew of Banksy’s second new piece (instantly known as 'Mobile Lovers') was when his web site was updated on Monday (14th April), and it mysteriously contained just two photos of a new piece and nothing else; not even one word.  The only clue as to its potential whereabouts was that a double yellow line and a partially cobbled street suggested is was a section of rough old road somewhere in the UK. 

Yet it had been ‘found’ already and the location was made public on Tuesday morning.  Although the piece was in a small dead end road (Clement Street), it overlooked the main dual carriageway into central Bristol from the motorway where thousands of motorists sit daydreaming in long queues every day.  It was a classic Banksy location.  High profile, yet simultaneously low profile, and particularly photogenic at dusk, with the street light, cobbles and barbed wire close at hand, making the piece resemble an illicit love tryst in a dark doorway.
    














It was on a slab of board that was covering a old blocked up doorway next to the Riverside Youth Project.  Staff from the Broad Plain Boy’s Club, the charity who use the Council-owned building, rapidly took the board off and into the club for ‘safe keeping’.  Although Banksy pieces in his home town tend not to get dogged or stolen, I could understand this decision as the hype surrounding new street pieces has now reached intolerable proportions and this one was also easily nickable.  The club’s CCTV show that this one took an hour, under another tent, on Sunday morning although that does raise questions of how he did 2 pieces in 1 morning and how the photo on his website was in the dark.  CCTV suggests Cheltenham was done first and Bristol after, which means the photo of the Bristol piece in the dark must have been taken on Sunday evening.

With indecent haste the club’s leader, Dennis Stinchcombe, claimed it for their fundraising activities and said they would approach Bonham’s ASAP to sell it, whilst also promulgating the theory that Banksy had ‘left’ it there deliberately to help them out financially.  Later they stated they had received offers of over £1m for it.  I doubt it, unless Mr. M. Mouse was calling them up from his padded cell in the toy town detention centre.

A futile debate rapidly raged over ‘street art’ being taken out of context and ‘charged for’, whilst others said ‘calm down love, it’s only a painting’, and agreed it could help local Bristol urchins in this run down area, barely a stones throws away (admittedly by a very strong man) from where Banksy lived in the late 1990’s.



True to their word the club had immediately let people gurn at the piece, in return for a small donation towards their undoubtedly good work.  On Wednesday morning Mr Stinchcombe was still very bullish about their rights and when asked if they would hand it over to the Council if they asked for it he replied, “Definitely not.  Not only that but we don’t get the grants from the Council anymore… if they want to come up with some good grants they can have it”. 
 
The old adage that possession is 9/10ths of the law is nevertheless total balls and whilst taking photos there on Wednesday lunchtime I witnessed a surprise visit from the Cops, who checked it was still there and gave polite advice about its uncertain ownership status.
 
The elected Bristol mayor, George Ferguson, was apparently behind this and by the end of the day the clubs resistance had crumbled as it was handed over to more Police, who deposited it at the Bristol Museum, whilst the red trousered one declared that “It certainly would have been a cultural crime if this artwork had been lost to the City”.  Yes, and last week was the 20th Anniversary of the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide.  I’d hate to add up the uneven number of column inches these 2 ‘events’ have received. 

The mayor had a point though, even if he seemed rather heavy handed in his hyperbole and cries of ‘theft‘.  It certainly seemed a difficult inference to accept that Banksy had meant this to be taken away and sold off within days, even if it would help a good cause.

It went on display there yesterday (Good Friday), just in time for the resurrection. 

It will remain there until its future is decided, and if I were a betting man I would be wagering my kids that it will stay there.  I just hope I don’t acquire more ear-shattering kids as my winnings though.

Free entrance is assured at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Queens Road, Bristol, BS8 1RL. 

A range of tacky souvenirs will apparently be available soon after the Easter hols.  More info here…