GraffotoIt’s back! Eine’s SCARY on Rivington Street, familiar to many many Shoreditch Street Art tour guests as the penultimate piece of art on the tour has been restored to its original colour scheme. EINE SCARY 2021 Repaint Painted in 2007, back in the days when if a street artist wanted a wall they had to […]
“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 […]
The graffiti scene recently lost a true virtuoso with the passing at a very young age of Jano. Jano was a master of style. He pulled off the almost impossible feat of constantly innovating and developing new directions while always remaining distinctive and instantly recognisable. Jano – Sclater St London 2009 Jano writing “Human”, […]
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 […]
10 years ago the Institute Of Contemporary Arts was besieged by connoisseurs of graffiti photography when a small group of dedicated amateur graffiti photographers (there was no other type) curated by Delete and comprising himself, Buddz, Lee 102, Howaboutno, Joeppo and myself (under the pseudonym Nolionsinengland) created an exhibition of graffiti photography. It wasn’t […]
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 […]
“Grace” ALO BSMT Space, Dalston 15 October – 1 November 2020 In an urban landscape where portrait street painters are overwhelmingly drawn to either the technical proficiency of photorealism or its diametric opposite cartoonery, ALO’s expressionist fisogs stand out! Dalston 2020 His street art career started with small paste ups in 2011 and […]
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 […]
DisCONNECT South London 24 July – 24 August 2020 Crunching up the gravel drive to a flight of steps leading to a house in a posh terrace set back from leafy Clapham Common, we peered through white double doors in an anonymous raised ground floor entrance. As a setting for a cutting edge […]
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 […]