2015 Street Art Flashback

All photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland except where stated

The big challenge to a writer attempting to review a year of street art is that the chosen subject is so vast, so vague and so difficult to categorize. Efforts to place a boundary around the subject always create a problem of what to do about the brilliant stuff outside that random and rather personal horizon. “A year in Shoreditch’s street art” scorns the brilliant work in other parts of London not to mention around the UK and the rest of the World; a “top 10” or “top 50” or whatever is prone to the editorial bias of the writer. The internet isn’t big enough for a “going to write about everything” approach. So Graffoto is going to do just a “shit we loved” review of street art from the past 12 months and it may be from anywhere we were, by any artist (identified or not!) using whatever technique that blew our socks off. Doubtless by the end of this composition apologies will be due to The Overlooked but here at the start I can’t be confident what is actually going to rise to the surface as I flip through the roughly 4,500 photos of street art I kept in 2015. So let’s offer apologies immediately to all those artists whose photos were deleted at the time of upload from the camera and which didn’t make even the first sift.


RIP Ben Naz by Trust Icon. Definitely made it.

A perhaps unexpected trend – if you can call two artists a trend – was the emergence of hand stitching in street art. Late in the year Victoria Villasana worked with photographer Dario Vasquez Perez and painter Mister Piro to install beautiful tinted photographs embroidered with colourful threads in a traditional Mexican style. A whole collection of larger installations with threads appearing to weep from the subject’s eyes barely lasted 24 hours, possibly a religious sensitivity might have been triggered but a number of the much smaller pieces remain in place.


Victoria Villasana



Victoria Villasana/Mr Piro/Dario Vasquez Perez collaboration



Victoria Villasana/Mr Piro/Dario Vasquez Perez collaboration


One of the top political campaigns this year in terms of message, execution and quality was the always reliable Dr D subverting congestion zone sign designs in pursuit of less victimisation of minorities and less state control.


Dr D


Gregos has used London walls as his personal self portrait gallery a few times in the past couple of years and this year in Bristol and in Shoreditch we have seen his castings evolving into a much more accomplished art installation.


Gregos



Gregos reflecting on the state of Shoreditch


Andrei Ganser created a lurid population of nightmarishly distorted cartoon characters which interacted beautifully with both the fabric of the street, passers-by and other artist’s work – check how the feet of Dotmaster’s “Rude Kid” work in Ganzers’ leaf headed character.


Ganser



Ganser


A surprise candidate for Queen of the Most Illegals must be Anna Laurini, her cubist portraits have popped all over London this year with a notable shift away from paste ups to marker pen and paint. Mind you it’s not non permissioned all the way, a tiny proportion of her painted portraits were seemingly done with permission.


Anna Laurini



Anna Laurini


As I write, Sean Worrall has just posted on Facebook that he has completed his #365artdrops project with his final “free art” art drops in East London, quite a few of these went home with guests of Shoreditch Street Art Tours, often to foreign climes.


Finding Sean Worrall #365artdrops



Finding Sean Worrall #365artdrops


Noriaki had a brilliant time in London with swarms of his mono-eyed characters appearing in East London, usually cunningly placed to have great interactions with the environment or adjacent art.


Noriaki



Noriaki brings Nessie the Loch Ness Monster to Shoreditch


King of the sculptural installation Jonesy was quite prolific this year, these are just two of his quite brilliant bronze castings.


Jonesy



Jonesy



Jonesy


Street art doesn’t have to be important but it’s nice when a street artist tries and when they succeed it is a delight. Street artists remembered to respond to the political situation at the time of our elections in May, cue a lot of anti UKIP art and a very focussed anti badger cull campaign by Clancy.


Clancy


One of my favourite artists Neoh had a great year, some of his colourful impressionist ballerinas started to display rather a lot of their feminine charms and on one piece he even ventured into cubism to symbolise mental health issues. He was also not shy about getting a few reaches up as well.


Neoh



Advertise here - Neoh


Sell Out has been one of our busiest street artists this year, taking his work in a much more topical, political and sculptural direction. At the start of the year an old drinking fountain housed a dolphin snaring environmental disaster, politicians (Boris) and celebrity mishaps (Madonna falling off stage) and the targeting of a cereal café by anti gentrification protestors were all rendered in coarse trash sculptures , in total I photographed some 26 different installations by Sell Out, a very productive year evidently.


Sell Out's champagne swigging Boris Johnson


Sell Out's environmental catastrophe in a drinking fountain (out of service)



Sell Out's Madonna takes a stage tumble


The first of what turned out to be four visits to the West country was to have a peep at Bristol’s Upfest, you can probably guess the reason for the other three visits. Resting co-blogger HowAboutNo and I joined a free street art tour by the charm machine and legend that is John Nation. Among an awesome display of street art by local and visiting heroes, one piece that stood out for its originality was this stunning photorealistic right eye by My Dog Sighs, the multi-media experience had to be completed using a card and luckily John Nation had one to hand, I’ve never seen this device used before.


My Dog Sighs


On the subject of Banksy, a notable feature of attending the private view of Banksy’s Dismaland extravaganza was the delight of seeing a Banksy on an outside wall which I didn’t already know about or hadn’t seen on his website or rinsed to death on the internet, that is special these days and while the location meant this wasn’t quite the same as discovering a Banksy in a random back alley the last time I experienced that thrill was in 2006.


Banksy at Dismaland


The year was book-ended by two atrocities in Paris, the Charlie Hebdo killings in January produced a large “freedom of speech” response from street artists in Shoreditch.


TRP #JeSuisCharlie



Pure Evil #jeSuisCharlie


This year’s sticker champion was an artist whose identity is a bit of a mystery but who has populated Shoreditch with naïve expressionist portraits of hermaphrodite characters on letter box sized stickers and lifesize paintings.








Interactive art is always treasured and bored and distracted pedestrians were assaulted by this ravenous beasty by SR.X, cleverly painted on the building site hoarding behind the bus stop.


SR.X


Vermibus attacked the fashion industry’s obsession with fame, celebrity and skinny good looking girls with his display of oil rinsed advert takeovers.


Vermibus



Vermibus


Mr Farenheit was extraordinarily prolific this year and could fill another entire blog post with his work intensive paste up collages and stencils.


Mr Farenheit


One of the most curious street art pieces seen this year was a stencilled piece of html. Artist unknown, the weblink in the image of course won’t function as a weblink but if you tyope it into your browser you are taken to a page titled “universal library of claimed images” which then has descriptions of photographs taken in Shoreditch locations. Perhaps by frustrating the easy interactivity normally provided by the weblinks (the internet has a lot of those, just thought I’d point that out), the artist was making a comment about more street art being accessed online than actually viewed on walls. I don’t know if either is close to the mark but it made me think and that’s where this stuff on walls starts becoming art, either way it is either deeply profound or complete bollocks.


niche html street art by "unknown"


Multi-layer stencillist Paul “DON” Smith was prolific over the first 9 months of 2015, my favourite being this beautiful pair of portraits of a Moroccan model and Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia set against a stunning desert background.


Paul "DON" Smith


Old school street art legend Dotmasters returned to the streets of London with a message promoting heightened anti social behaviour.


Dotmasters


Jimmy C was quite busy this year doing mainly large and long lasting murals (except that Sclater Street one) but my favourite Jimmy C piece was this small brick installation.


Requiem To Shoreditch by Jimmy C


John D’Oh came all the way up from the West Country a couple of times this year to do some immaculate produced and witty sculptural pieces.


John D'Oh hopes you don't mind him tagging your wall


Back to stencils, Elly What The Funk did some of my favourite stencils this year with multi layer greyscale images stencilled onto collaged pages torn out of books (heresy!), the few which lasted (and still cling on today) proceeded to peel and decay quite beautifully.


Elly What The Funk


In street art as in life, novelty is often exciting and this skull innocuously placed up on a wall sprang a surprise in Spring when daffodils grew out of its cranium, in death the skull still evolved. Shame the lower jaw originally present seemed to fall prey to an incompetent attempt at art theft.


unknown


We didn’t fail to notice that quite a lot of murals were painted throughout Shoreditch, Camden and particularly Hackney Wick this year. In Shoreditch one of the largest was this magnificent Louis Masai piece sharing SynchEarths’s concern about reef destruction.


Masai


One of the most exquisite pieces of spray painting seen this year was the chrome balloon exercise in photorealism by Fanakapan (aka Mr Fan), virtuoso spray painting technique. I have photos of the piece but I am going to choose a photo taken by a guest on the Shoreditch Night Street Art Photography Tour, this light painted image really brings those balloon letters off the wall. The scrum of Jeremy Corbyns in chalk are a later addition by Sell Out.


Mr Fan - photo Alex Faulkener on the Shoreditch Night Street Art Photography Tour

The year continued to see an alarming decline in the tagging of permissioned murals, an essential part of the street art biosphere. The addition of a pair of Y Fronts on street art looked like perceptive and direct art critique but sadly it died out before it gathered enough power to irritate fans and artists too much.


Pants


This review has become ridiculously huge but 2015 saw so many many other fantastic additions to the street art gallery it has become a bit embarrassing to see what has been omitted. Assuming it works, who knows with this blog, here is a short slide show of a few other gems that made our eyes pop in 2015.

JR - Crossing

Lazarides Rathbone
16th Oct to 12th Nov 2015

All photos: Dave Stuart aka NoLionsInEngland


Ephemerality – a quality word we like to bandy around when generalising about the culture of street art. We tend to forget that also gallery shows don’t last forever so if you are reading this review after 7pm today, Graffoto apologises as it's now too late to catch this show. Which is a shame and I thank my lucky stars that at last I managed to visit the show and grab a quiet hour in there today, the last day.

JR is a street artist whose work is best described as “Big Art”. He has been doing art and a grand scale for many years including a lot of jaw-dropping traffic stopping work in London.


Cordy House - 2008



Cordy House - 2008



Old Truman Brewery, 2008



Inside Out Project 2011 (audience participation event!)



Inside Out - Somerset House 2013



Inside Out - Somerset House 2013


The “Crossing” referred to in this show refers to the journey undertaken by many immigrants to the USA, on arrival in Upper New York Bay the gaze of the Statue of Liberty (est 1886) bid welcome while Ellis Island served (1882 – 1954) as a credential checking facility for the 8 million mainly European migrants who passed through its registry room. According to Wikipedia, a mere 2% of the arrivals were repatriated whence they came for reasons of poverty, chronic ill health or “insanity”. Eight thousand died in the hospital facility established on Ellis Island and it is in those derelict ruins that JR filmed a very moving elegy to an immigrant’s passage, featuring Robert de Niro.

The exhibition has four aspects. The film at the top floor, is worth watching first as it is beautiful, the narration is poetic and it provides a lot on context for the Elis Island archival photographs.

Immigrants, nurses, travellers and welcoming party, JR has sought to represent all parties in that early 20th century human migration drama. The Ellis Island aspects of the static art divides into JR pasting Ellis Island archive photos onto beautifully weathered wood, and JR’s photographs of his paste ups in situ in the old hospital of the Ellis Island portraits.


"Arriving on Ellis Island #6"; Ellis Island archive photo on wood - a welcome party?



"Arriving on Ellis Island #3"; Ellis Island archive photo on wood



Photo of paste up in situ, Ellis Island Hospital





The fourth element resulted from JR’s 2014 collaboration with New York Ballet Company. Ballerinas photographed in urban and industrial contexts are fine but the real photographic gem is the portrait created by oversize half tone dots imprinted on ballet dancers costumes. At a reasonable distance the dancers fade but we gain an appreciation of a portrait of a pair of eyes in huge scale.


Les Bosquets, Eye See You



Now you see it



Now you don't


Close up, the portrait disappears and the individuals emerge. It’s all about humanity, near or far.

This staged example of a ballet dancer dancing inside an opened container in a stack of empties is very impressive in its execution and brings one thought to mind – globalisation; the USA is the world’s greatest exporter of fresh air in empty containers, that’s trade imbalances for you. That may or more likely may not have been JR's point.


"#198 Métal et Tutu"

JR’s exhibition prompts one great big question which is, supposedly one third of the USA population can trace roots to that half century of immigration so if we are inclined to romanticize that early 20th century migrant movement, then surely we must question our individual and big society response to the largest movement of war-displaced migrants in a generation now taking place across Europe.

Links:

JR: http://www.jr-art.net/

Ellis Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island

Lazarides: http://www.lazinc.com/exhibitions/1313,jr-crossing

Mustafa Hulusi: Flyposting (Indoors) & A Retrospective Of Flyposting (Outdoors)

29 Sep - 30 Oct 2015

Cass Bank Gallery
59-63 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7PF

All photos: NoLionsInEngland


Did you see it? The best street art exhibition of the year? It was in London too, not somewhere overlooking the gloopy mud of the Bristol Channel at low tide.



Flyposter clusters around London have been co-opted by Mustafa Hulusi into a multi site conceptual exhibition. Mustafa Hulusi took the simple, low overhead, moderate risk approach of pasting plain white statements on walls which said “Mustafa Hulusi A RETROSPECTIVE OF FLYPOSTING” .

One instant exhibition! The adjacent flyposters were no longer just illegal adverts, they were non consensual elements of an Hulusi art concept.


Mustafa Hulusi, 2015



Mustafa Hulusi, 2015


Mustafa Hulusi first came to my attention as a panellist at a talk in Tate Modern’s 2008 “Street Art” extravaganza, he gave an illuminating talk on the commercial imperative of flyposting. He talked about illegal advertising sites, how flyposters couldn’t give a toss about going over street art, it was all about cash and eyeballs. Picking up a few quid as a flyposter, Hulusi used the placement techniques of a flyposter to put his art in the public domain. As a result I have had the pleasure of photographing Hulusi’s art on the streets at regular intervals in the years since.

Paste up still life flowers turned out to be stunning photorealistic painting reproductions, these were placed in an illegal advertising spot which Hulusi has been using for several years and indeed still does.


Mustafa Hulusi, 2011



Mustafa Hulusi, 2011


Some had a strong fractal art hurt-your-eyeballs graphic design aspect


Mustafa Hulusi, 2011



Mustafa Hulusi, 2011


The piece above had Graffoto blog compadre HowAboutno and me scratching our heads when we found it as we knew Richard Long was a venerable land artist and the "Allotment I" paste ups next to Hulusi's image puported to advertise a 1987 exhibition, we wondered if Hulusi had put those up as well. Perhaps Hulusi's Flyposting Retrospective idea in a another form has been fermenting in his mind for quite a while.


Intensely textured tree trunks appeared


Mustafa Hulusi, 2012


And most recently, a stunning collection of decaying fruit. These ones reminded me so much of the death and decay timelapse cameo pieces in Peter Greenaways’s “A Zed & 2 Noughts”.













The placement of some of those richly coloured paste ups on Toynbee street puts Hulusi’s work in knowing conflict and competition with flyposting , it being a spot long favoured by clandestine illegal advertisers. The scale of Hulusi’s work outdoors shows an access to printing facilities few other street artists possess. He also is highly aware of and accesses illegal or abandoned advertising sites. The most obvious comparison in terms of technique is Dr D (in fact I have pondered if Mustafa Hulusi and Dr D might possibly be one and the same but concluded it seems unlikely).


Musafa Hulusi, 2015


Hulusi is a curiosity, his non commissioned and indeed illegal public art lies a bit outside the realm of what would normally these days be considered as street art. A search on the Banksy forum returns “no posts”. He doesn’t court the street art fan boys, my hazy recollection from that 2008 Tate panel talk is that he thought them rather puerile. He has avoided the established stencil – print – gallery show street art band-wagon, in fact he sits quite outside and aloof from street art despite regularly placing his work out on the streets. He is fine artist with (thankfully) a bit less academia and a bit more grit.

When he does exhibit indoors it’s not to a street art crowd but more to the art establishment, smarty pants with an educated conventional appreciation of art and probably a bit more wedge. The stark Cass University space houses huge Hulusi staples very carefully pasted to the walls.




He hasn’t been tempted to go all “street” by for instance roughly layering his art and hanging it at wonky angles or faking a pastiche of faux brickwork and tags. Plain and simple it’s Mustafa Hulusi’s art indoors.




The “pomegranate” series are quite stunning photography. Rust coloured bursting fruit set are against a scorched ash dusted mud and surrounded by brittle papery looking leaves. An arid and lifeless landscape is implied yet there’s a promise of fertility and rebirth.


Pomegranate (detail)


The tree trunks have a mesmerising flow and twist in the grain of the bark. The painted flowers could be something a very patient vicar’s wife might conjure up without leaving her garden.










Mustafa Hulusi places his art around the streets but his practice borrows more from graffiti and flyposting that from Street Art. At the heart of graffiti is a letter fetish, Hulusi lifts the ego and font fascination from graffiti but renders his name in crisp graphic letters owing no debt to graffiti pieces.







A takeaway collection of Hulusi’s photographs in large paper magazine format looks like it might be a gallery souvenir but in the way the pages unfold to double size, Hulusi is encouraging us to participate in the dissemination of his work by perhaps pasting outdoors ourselves – welcome to Hulusi’s world. The huge pile of these magazines isn’t a signal that the artist perhaps overestimated a huge audience inclined to get all activist with the wheatpaste but I see it as an installation in itself. The clues are there, they aren’t placed by the gallery assistant’s window ledge seat to be handed out to visitors, they form a monolithic bed of processed materials in the centre of a room, directly speaking to the images of decaying and transforming fruit in the art on the walls.







The images on the walls are Hulusi’s art. Images in the magazine and in a slide show projection room show Hulusi’s art out in the street. The idea of using real world illegal ads to stage his outdoor “Flyposting Retrospective” neatly avoids the trap of becoming an advert for the gallery exhibition, indeed the clever idea modestly is not actually referenced in the gallery, you could visit the show and leave totally unaware that the street retrospective took place.




The gallery show imports Hulusi’s work indoors and the strength of the outdoor work is such that it survives moving inside, in effect the street is not essential to enjoying his art. However the outdoors “Flyposter Retrospective” shows how Hulusi’s art engages with the politics of placing art on the streets in terms of its guerrilla annexation of the public realm, its directs augmentation of flyposter locations, its somewhat provocative co-opting of illegal commercial imagery as a vehicle for his art and its knowing nod to the activities of the flyposter business.


Mustafa Hulusi, 2015


The outdoor “Flyposter Retrospective” and the indoor exhibition “Flyposter” share common concepts but neither specifically refers to the other, they exist independently. The outdoor “Flyposter Retrospective” stands as the far more challenging and interesting piece of art.

Or have I been conned? Is the whole Flyposting Retrospective one big advert from someone deeply immersed in product promotion on street walls, in which case I better re-write the whole thing putting Hulusi right alongside all the other street art whores.

Mustafa Hulusi, 2015



Mustafa Hulusi, 2015

Mustafa Hulusi, 2012

Links:

Mustafa Hulusi

Dr D