Street art generally doesn’t go large in London, at least not the corporate funded municipality supported epic gargantuan kind of “large” common in so many overseas cities and even towns and villages. There is however the occasional exception when London Mural Festival marries walls to artists and spraypaint. The last edition was in 2020, generally not a fondly remembered year, so in September Global Street Art ended that period of hibernation by organising the 2024 London Mural Festival.
The latest GSA posts reports 140 murals created for LMF2024 and they are pepper-potted all over the capital. Unlike many other festivals, pretty much all the murals bar perhaps one or two are basically permanent. It has taken until now to get to visit all the murals, the bike and the knee joints have seen a lot of wear and a huge amount of tear. By chance or by design a number of themes seemed to thread through the murals, these hopefully will emerge from this collection of photos.
Street art is at its most worthwhile when it does things that can’t be done in museums, galleries and private collections. Chris Dorning’s fantasy tug‘o war battle pitching implausible armies of mythical gods, Easter Island statues, sharks, skeletons and contemporary superheroes against eachother on a multi-faceted omega shaped wall complete with ball playing prohibitions and “anti vandal” paint signs is sure to fire more imaginations than a 1000 visits to a London art gallery.
To the rear of one of those council blocks in College Place Camden, the type where the flats are over a parade of shops, there is a wide outdoor first floor space (remember dear USA, we call the ground the ground and the one above that the first). A young girl played keepy-uppy with her small brother watching. She just went on and on, skilfully and flawlessly juggling the ball until with a deliberate deft flick off the outside of her ankle the ball was chipped on to the toes of her brother. He brought it under control and the game went on. The appropriation of this brutal urban mezzanine as improvised play area established what became a theme binding many of mural, intentionally or otherewise.
The issue is amenities, the provision of safe spaces or lack thereof for children to play outside their doors. A park playground half a click away isn’t much help for a hard pressed family with no time to supervise the kid’s trek to the communal recreation space. So many of the estates I visited had threatening “no ball games” signs. What problem is actually being solved here? Why such an authoritarian killjoy mentality? It’s just kids playing and stopping kids playing, stopping them doing the kind of things that keeps them occupied and out of trouble and developing social skill is bound to lead to trouble. Why?
As that young girl worked on her football skills I was 50m up the road photographing a pair of murals by Qwynto in a covered rat run featuring a cyclist and a girl with roller skates, slap bang in the middle of each was a “NO BALL GAMES” sign. The contrast between the prohibition on playing and the two characters off to play was compelling, ironic and hugely relevant. One resident told me she was delighted, that the murals were much better than the graffiti they’d had before.
On one estate a playground with sparse facilities hemmed by walls hard against social housing blocks had age limits on who could play there while every route to it had deep and steep stepped access, the opposite of ideal for responsible carers with buggies. Wom Collective and Toddjerm alleviated the sunken grimness by colouring the walls either side.
There is no doubt that Hatch Art’s neighbourhood colouring in mural commissioned for a new development in Brent Cross was bang on this “play” theme and would have provided a lot of fun for the young kids who got to play with the colours and the space.
Murals were painted on the walls of many playgrounds, courts and pitches, illuminating the idea that availability of play locations is a good thing.
On an estate in Harlesden with the customary notices banning games and risk, Aches’ ode to fun, a skater doing a kick flip off the speed ramp admirably disregards the prohibitions and connects sublimely with its location.
Mr Doodles did his celebrity appearance costume-and-paint fun thing with animals and pictogram symbolism on a railway bridge in Chalk Farm, let’s hope it doesn’t inspire any graffiti or trespassing and get buffed like Banksy’s 3 monkeys. Curiously this was one of several LMF2024 murals undertaken after the Festival period and was not on the original map of planned murals. To be well executed most plans require good improvisation!
The Richard Rogers’ signature architectural motif of cowls or dorade vents adorn Lloyds of London building, the Centre Pompidou (Paris) and Paddington Basin M&S among others. The pair outside the City’s Cheesegrater have been given abstract geometric makeovers by Itaewon, Anna Ovni and Nick Tez. Does the playful nature of the colouring diminish their function as Rogers’ signifiers or do they feed the ego by drawing attention to them?
Size doesn’t matter so they say, an aphorism clearly true of street art where so much of the best is genuinely small. This Festival report, if a pestle-and-mortar crush of too many photos and a few barely coherent words may be graced with such an extravagant term, began with a hint of height envy. Here are a few of the tallest LMF2024 murals starting with El Seed, the daddy of them all.
The stock in trade surface for the mural festival is the two or three story end gable in a location that wouldn’t be harmed by a lick of fresh paint. The trick then is to match really capable artists with availability in the Festival period to the wall. Or if it’s a street art supernova like Shepard Fairey, “Whenever you can make it mate.”
Other themes that came over big, bright and bold were flowers and portraits, little bits of maritime related painting, can never be too much of that and a few animals, always popular.
While admiring Philths’s gorgeous wallpaper flowers an elderly lady paused and said to me “there’s another beautiful one around the corner, a woman in bright garments”. Cycling far and wide across London photographing parked cars – sorry, LMF2024 murals, this unspoken “Never had tourists round here before” subtext came up quite often.
That “beautiful one around the corner” was this banger from Wedo Goas and the garments were sensational.
Sebas Velasco was a new name for me and his portrait in Lambeth was one of the signature murals of the 2024 event.
Qwynto also charmed with a playful pair of characters phoning each other either side of a gated block in Bloomsbury and as its not obvious, this pair were either side of the same block and not visible one from the other.
Having been to enough festivals and pestered enough artists to qualify as a public nuisance, occasionally mutterings are heard about “Backstreet half a mile from the main drag; only 3 colours and not even a ladder”, so it was impressive to see so many artists sublimate the ego and engage with small spaces away from the critical mass, all in the cause of brightening the parts no other arts reach. One elderly gentleman emerging from his front door opposite a cluster of utility boxes said “They used to be just grey paint, now it’s beautiful, brightens the place and I asked him if he’d do some more”. Sky High did.
Did you know London had a “Little Portugal”? Perhaps the surprising thing is that that should be a surprise.
The best spraypaint technicians are artists with a background in graffiti, which includes quite a number of the Global Street Art house artists. The mural festival recognised graffiti and included some great pieces but they tended to be on hoardings around building sites or other locations where a limited life can be expected.
The festival also incorporated an ill-fated link with the London International Pasteup Festival, the pasteups on the GSA donated wall not lasting even 24 hours before being tagged by the usual graffiti oriented claimants to that spot. A Pref mural inside a clothing retailer stretches the boundaries of what might be plausibly considered a mural in the context of the mural festival.
London Mural Festival 2024 has liberated London’s street art tradition from its East London epicentre. Murals have sprouted and spread and just about every conceivable post code. 12 Bikes rides, 245km, 1 hefty accident and 15 hours in A&E so that you don’t have to. Surfaces have evolved beyond mere boundary and barrier functions to become part of a brighter, more colourful and art filled metropolis. Walls have been activated in remote locations outside Shoreditch, way beyond in fact, there are even some KT postcodes on the London Mural Festival map – and that’s as broad a definition of London as you’ll ever find or need.
All photos: Dave Stuart
