Shepard painted his largest mural yet in Shoreditch last month as a late contribution to the London Mural Festival. We plan to reflect on LMF2024 a little later but in the meantime we thought it would be fun to fork over the NoLions photograph archive and revisit at least one illegal piece, one legal street piece, some stickers and an indoor shot for the recent visit and each of three previous significant visits when Shoreditch hosted major Shepard Fairey solo shows.
In 2007 Shephard Fairey gave us “NineteenEightyFouria”, his first huge Shoreditch show which was staged by the StolenSpace gallery owned by his longstanding London buddy D*Face. Nineteeneightyfouria took over the cavernous first floor space in the Old Truman Brewery. As well as a stunning assembly of art, the staircase up to the space was strewn with “Obey The People” Fairey dollars.
His next solo exhibition was “Sound and Vision” in 2012, split across two Truman Brewery event spaces, one being the StolenSpace Gallery which was lived its best life as a record store full of LP covers from Shepard’s collection, all artfully modified by Shepard Fairey and not for sale.
Shoreditch’s most recent Fairey blockbuster was “Facing The Giant” in 2019 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Shepard’s first foray with the classic “Andre The Giant Has a Possee” stickers. This was also across two sites though this time neither were in the Old Truman Brewery. At the time of the 2024 visit Shepard Fairey had solo shows running concurrently in Paris, Milan and Stockholm but no solo show in London.
As a street artist Shepard Fairey really earned his spurs using paste up techniques and Shoreditch has one particular spot which Shepard Fairey virtually owns, each of the placements has lasted for years. The wall geometry at that location acts like a cradle for the paste ups, in 2024 Shepard repeated the installation of the box of Obey print we saw in 2019, in fact you can still make out the remnants of the 2019 version around the edges.
The snowy scene below was a day in February 2009 when no one else made it in to work leaving me free to wander getting great snow shots. That particular paste up collection was showing its age having been up since 2007. Big Brother is Watching You from 2007 resonated with the surveillance theme of Nineteeneightyfouria.
The after party for 2012’s Sound and Vision Private View was held at The Birdcage, owned by friend and fellow QPR supporter Garfield, I was able to get onto the roof for a night-time shot, a personal favourite that for years was my desktop background image. On the whole, the 2012 visit produced a load of stunning photogenic art, several of my humble photography efforts were rewarded with nice slots in the Very Nearly Almost zine.
The 2019 visit saw Shephard Fairey pasting with his pal D*Face while 2024 saw classic Shepard Fairey access to elevated high street spots.
In the cult scene movie “The Sticker Movie” which came out last year, Fairey says if he ever leaves home without a clutch of stickers in his pocket he feels as exposed as if he had forgotten to put his trousers on. Here is a selection of his stickers and again there is much evidence of Shepard and D*Face wandering the streets slapping and pasting together.
I didn’t photograph any Shepard Fairey stickers in 2007 though it is unlikely that there weren’t any, more that I hadn’t got over an early prejudice on the basis you couldn’t know whether or not it was the artist had put them up. Nor were there any painted Shepard Fairey murals in London prior to 2012 and this time I don’t think that my photographic peccadillos are the problem. Perhaps the 2007 pasteup walls in Cargo and on Brick Lane outside the Old Truman (both above) were murals by proxy.
In 2012 Shepard Fairey took time out from Sound and Vision preparations to paint a couple of blockbuster murals, both of which enjoyed long lives. “This Decade Only” with its debt to Jamie Reid’s “version “This Week Only” endured till 2016 when after repeated graffiti accretion the wall was annexed for spraypainted adverts, never to host art again. It Takes The Sedation Of Millions To Hold Us Back setting an agenda against political somnambulism caused by “conspicuous consumption, social media, entertainment, and self-medication” was inspired by Public Enemy’s album and lasted a good few years. There was also a 10 storey high “Amplify Your Voice” mural in the docklands painted for the ill-fated London Pleasure Gardens (sticker version above) and for context, directly opposite Shepard’s Sound and Vision exhibition a ghetto blaster mural appeared visible over the Truman Brewery boundary wall.
In 2019 Shepard Fairey added yellow and blue to his classic black, red and gold palette for the first time. Sue Webster had moved out of the famous “Dirty House” and Shepard gave the exterior a glorious multi colour collage of classic Obey elements while filling the interior ground floor with a chunk of his Facing The Giant 30th anniversary show. Shepard’s wife Amanda stood in as representative of powerful women and her eyes followed you wherever you went. The 2019 Shadowplay mural still features on our public street art tours but is pointless to reproduce photographically as its very point is the folly of relying on photographs for accurate representation of art.
This 2024 visit saw Shepard paint a huge environmental mural which appears to come as a late addition to the London Mural Festival, though several agencies and producers have emerged to claim a share of the credit for Shepard’s painting.
Hopefully this trawl thorough the photo archive and illustrated how Shepard Fairey has been a major contributor of stickers, paste ups and murals in Shoreditch down the years and who knows… 2007, 2012, 2019… Shoreditch must surely be due another major solo show sometime soon.
All photos: Dave Stuart