Graffoto“It was 30 years ago today” that Nirvana released Nevermind, with apologies for that inept abuse of the Beatles’ lyrical mastery and the actual facts (release date Sep 24th 1991). One of the standout tracks on a standout album is “In Bloom”, Kurt Cobain’s lament on the impact of their growing success and within the […]
Why does a street art tour guide snap adverts? The answer is simply for love of the graphic response adverts provoke. The way people subvert, augment and modify adverts is pretty much an artform in itself. The printed advert becomes a host for forced artistic collaboration and capturing the “before and after” timeline yields […]
As we enjoyed a rare hot late May bank holiday in the UK, the Bank holiday Monday Shoreditch Street Art Tour discovered a fascinating range of new street art that had been put up since just the day before. One curious aspect was the number of gorgeous collaborations, in fact just for fun we could […]
A street art stencil has appeared on the wall of the former Reading nick and after making us wait a little while, Banksy has just this afternoon confirmed it as his, the tease. As usual the confirmation comes simultaneously via his website and his Instagram and for the second time in less than a […]
One of the biggest feuds in art-world history, street artist Banksy v graffiti writer Robbo rumbled on much longer than fans and art historians previously thought. In December 2009 street artist Banksy created 4 illegal pieces of stencil art on the sides of a canal in Camden, London. One of the pieces, the Banksy Wallpaperer […]
Shoreditch is full of little corners where street art survives and accumulates in layers, like a busy kitchen pinboard. Last week one such canvas near Columbia road was transformed by, in no particular order, Donk, Skeleton Cardboard, Rider and Tommy Fiendish into this beautiful paste up collage. Donk, Rider, Tommy Fiendish, Skeleton Cardboard […]
Redchurch Street in Shoreditch has changed dramatically over the years yet despite gentrification it still houses some seriously good street art. As part of the Shoreditch Design Triangle, itself a subset of the London Design Festival, I was asked to assess the impact of Redchurch St and the history of its street art. The […]
You didn’t think a killer virus was going to stop street artists did you? Shoreditch witnessed an outpouring of street art addressing the Covid 19 pandemic from a number of angles. It’s amazing what a street artist could achieve with that one hour outdoor exercise license non-shielding people had during lockdown! Thank You NHS, Artist […]
When I first began to explore street art one my favourite artists was and indeed still is French stencillist Jef Aerosol. This Aerosol masterpiece was on Hanbury street and marked more or less a the time that this wall was just beginning to be used for permissioned murals. Jef Aerosol 2010 Shoreditch street art was […]
All photos: Dave Stuart In the week we discovered new ways to test your eyesight, the photo archive continued to exhibit 20/20 hindsight with visual crackerjacks from the past. Mr Cenz has a spraypainting pedigree that stretches back over 30 years so it is not surprising that his style has evolved considerably. He is famous […]
This week in spite of the latest official guidance to follow unofficial interpretations of the law, there have been no trips to Durham. I have followed my instinct to remain at home to see what scum is floating on the surface of the street art photography archive. Ludo first put his art on London streets […]
Never in history have the words “relax lockdown measures” been so badly abused. Please stagger your viewing of this post and share with only one person outdoors. Here are this week’s street art little gems from the past. Jorge Rodrigues-Gerada is probably more widely known these days for his enormous land art portraiture but in […]
Is there light at the end of the tunnel? By the time you read this Boris should have made his “statement” to the nation and one suspects the tunnel will seem to be stretching much much further into the distance. Activities continue to expand to fit the time available and blowing the dust off the […]
“We can’t throw away all our hard work so far”. The current political aversion to trusting the general public with any inkling of lockdown planning could perhaps also be applied to the rich heritage of Shoreditch’s street art. This is the 5th compendium of the daily scrapings of the digital archive, is it really only […]
Diggin into the archives bring back lots of mostly good memories but some of these artists have done so much brilliant street art that picking just one or two highlights is cruelly dismissive of their street opus. Another week of suspended animation has rolled past so here we go with the 4th collection of flashbacks […]