When you are spoilt for choice of Street Art festivals but have limited time, you must choose wisely. The annual Southend Festival Jam has evolved into one of the most intense and largest street art spraypainting orgies. The quality of artwork certainly rewards the daytrip from London.
A fair old chunk of the afternoon was spent walking the 1.333’ miles of the longest pier in Southend, the reward being the incredible Illusion installation which Tizer spent a week painting.
Then at the end of the pier was a signature Southend Jam cube, bigger and better than any other cubes! Winds over 30mph on Saturday made for tricky painting conditions but patience paid off on Sunday resulting in some stunning murals in a lovely location.
Southend is by the sea, which you can guess accounts for the presence of that pier. It may be tempting to ponder what monsters lurk in the briny depths, except Southend is blessed with the most gentle shelving foreshore in Essex and the receding tide exposes just under 1.333’ miles of lugworm perforated estuarine mud. That doesn’t stop landlubber painters conjuring visions of all kinds of imagined maritime terrors, although uniformly it seems they all fear octopuses with tentacles and beady eyes emerging everywhere.
I only had a late afternoon at the Jam so much quality painting was missed specially up towards to the top end of the High Street but here’s a selection of some of the epic murals seen.
Keeping the best till last, this being a subjective view prejudiced by my lifelong love of sailing, Mr Tris is clearly no landlubber based on our conversation about classic 12m yachts and vintage J Class boats.
Props to Ster and Ekto for once again pulling off a fantastic weekend of painting, the hard work required to pull off an event if this scale and to do it well enough to keep everyone on board for the next edition cannot be overestimated
LINKS
Southend City Jam website
All photos Dave Stuart