Street Art – Page 2 – Where is Phil now?

Sydenham Street Art Walk

Thursday 18 July 2013 – Sydenham, London.

When I was looking at the new street art over in Shoreditch on Monday I ran into fellow street art aficionado Darryl taking pictures of Alexis Diaz working on a new piece. Neither of us had been down to Sydenham to see the results of a recent festival so decided to head down and check it out.

It was another bright and hot day, nice for being outside but not so great for mid-day photography !

We got to see the bulk of the street art work, but missed out on all the pieces painted on shop shutters – rudely the shops were all open for business, during the day. So inconsiderate! This shop also had stacked their wares over a couple of pieces as well.

What we did see was pretty cool and it was nice that it was all reasonably well contained in the high street.

The Alo door and JoyceTreasure piece were the only viewable bits from the second hand furniture store.

Luckily all the big works were very visible and we were very lucky that on a third walk past the entire Millo and Hunto joint piece was visible. The first two visits had a car parked under the no parking sign!

Louis Masai mural – “Save the lemurs”.

I love this large piece by Alice Pasquini.

Dr Zadok.

This fabulous and large mural by Bailon was very hard to photograph in its entirety as it was up an alleyway. I took a few images with a plan to stitch them together, it sort of worked. I do need to practise on my pano stitching, I just don’t have the time right now. Enough to give you an idea though.

It was a good couple of hours out and about, thanks Darryl!

Shoreditch street art updated.

Monday 15 July 2013 – Shoreditch, London.

Shhhhhhhh, don’t tell anyone, but it was another glorious glorious day here in London with nary a cloud in the sky all day – so it’s a good day to for a ride up to Shoreditch for a street art walk/ride then! I have not been to Shoreditch for at least a week so of course there is a load of new things to see and photograph, and having the bike meant getting further – and more coolly. By cool I am, of course, referring to temperature, not me being stylish – something I definitely was not today!

I had a great few hours out and about around Shoreditch, I got to see a few things I was looking for and finally found a massive wall by ROA that I have tried to find twice before. I also ran into fellow street art aficionado Darryl who I met once before while watching RUN paint the wall at the Village Underground.

One of the things I had been planning on doing for a while was visiting the exhibition by RUN and Dscreet at the Cock and Bull Gallery in the basement of The Tramshed in Rivington st. It was really worth the wait as there were some great pieces on show there, as well as a very cool backdrop of painted walls, I bought a booklet on the show and am tempted to buy an art work as well.

After a wee coffee break I rode up Bethnal Green Road in search of the large wall painted by ROA a few weeks ago, and this time I found it. Though only having a fixed fifty mm lens on the Canon I could only shoot some of the details as there were too many cars in the narrow alley way to get a wide shot. I will go back as it is such a cool cool painting.

From there I rode around the streets of Shoreditch and snapped a few photos, most are on Flickr, but below are a couple as a sampler.

In a park behind Brick Lane I found a theatre group doing an outdoor rehearsal so I watched them for a while which was cool.

I was really excited to find this Phlegm that I knew was around but had never seen before, again I was not able to capture it all due to today’s lens choice. Weight won over flexibility – plus it is always good to shoot with a fixed a lens every now and then – keeps me honest!

Alex Diaz has been painstakingly painting this wall by hand with a tiny brush for most of a week, stunning piece.

A Jana and JS I have been looking for, I really like their stuff.

And a Stik I haven’t seen before.

It was a great few hours out 🙂

Street art update

Wednesday 03 July 2013 – London

I took my new bike for a spin on Tuesday and was just riding down City Road when I spotted this Toaster up on a window. Last week I found this video from the creators of Toaster and it is an amusing watch as there are not a lot of Toasters left in London that I can see I was quite pleased to have seen it. Of course, there are probably thousands of them all over London, I just do not see them!

http://www.thetoaster.co.uk/

And this new piece from Phomer.

Today I met a friend who has never been to London before and we took a pretty major walk around town sort of ending with a brief walk around some of the main parts of Shoreditch, as always there were new things to see – or things to find that I had missed before….

Conor Harrington in Whitecross Market.

Dscreet outside the gallery at the Tramshed, I must try and arrive there when the gallery is open as there is an exhibition of Dscreet and Run work that I am quite keen to see – has anyone been yet ?

DALeast

Stik

AngryFace

T*wat

Alo

And another Jana and JS, still looking for more of their new work before it disappears.

Thanks to Inspiring City for identifying the next two for me.

Swoon

Alice Pasquini

Some unknowns.

It would be nice to see some more political stuff around too….

The art of Leake St tunnel.

Wednesday 26 June 2013, Leake St, Waterloo, London.

Leake St tunnel is a legal graffiti area near Waterloo Station and I was last there back in January and talked about it briefly in this post. One of my fellow street art bloggers, the always cool Inspiring City, went there at the weekend to have a look at a paint jam organised by London Vandal to raise money for cancer research. I would have gone if I had known about it !

I have not heard of most of the painters in action at the weekend so it was time to go and have a quick look see. Though I did not recognise much of the work, it was still pretty interesting and there were quite a few other people there taking photos as well.

Icon.

Artista

Unknown 🙂

There is a load more stuff to look at, mostly graf rather than ‘art’, but is a cool spot and worth a visit.

The (limited) street art of Ladbroke Grove.

Wednesday 19 June 2013 – Ladbroke Grove, London.

For a while now I have been wanting to check to see if there was any street art left near the Westway at the ends of both Portobello Rd and Ladbroke Grove. Yesterday I was meeting a friend for lunch in Shephards Bush so I took the opportunity to catch the tube to Westbourne Grove and have a look around, before walking to She Bu. Naturally I chose the hottest day of the year so far. At 26 degrees and with high humidity I really should have worn shorts as it was a sticky walk.

There are a couple of pieces at the end of Portobello Rd that I have seen before, mainly this piece by Banksy.

and this piece by Paul don Smith.

This piece by CODE FC, looks quite old as well.

I walked up Portobello Rd as I was looking for the Graffik Gallery which has a collection of very expensive work for sale, but was in between exhibitions. On the outside of their building was another one of the “Thomas the tank’ stencils I saw for the first time in Blackall St last Friday, I now know they are by iCON.

The area under the arches of the Westway was barriered off with hoardings and behind them I spotted a couple of Stiks as well as some other work but I could not get a clear look at them so I followed the Westway down to Ladbroke Grove in the hunt for some rumoured painting there. I did find two walls in the same block that had been painted. iCON seems to be quite prolific here.

As well as a piece by Elmo Hood

And a few other bits and pieces

I walked around a bit more but did not find anything else, though I was pretty happy to find any at all, the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is not really a street art / graffiti place !

Blackall St – ‘Art thieves operating in this area’

Friday 14 June 2013 – Shoreditch, London.

I frequently walk up to Camden on Friday afternoons and today I decided to go via Shoreditch and visit Blackall St, an alley off of Great Eastern St.

Blackall St, is a narrow single lane road surrounded on both sides by the back of office blocks, it is also the home to a wide range of graffiti and street art. I imagine it is worth a visit every couple of months to see what is new. It is a cool little street and I had an enjoyable twenty minutes perusing the large number of small pieces, too many to really take it all in.

I did not recognise many of the artists, so will start with the few I do know.

RUN

I have not seen any Bortusk characters since my first street art walk along Regents Canal back in December – and the ones I saw then have all gone from the canal walls.

MOTFU

MOTFU and Alice Pasquini’s lovers

D7606 stickers

And loads of other things, I really like the Thomas the tanks and the sheep.

The woman on the bottom of the door is by C215

Long live Southbank!

Monday 17 June 2013 – London

Even when I wasn’t living nearby I walked Southbank fairly often, nowadays it is my main walking route when ever I go across the Thames and into London City or the West End. One of the places I always stop to look at is the skate park in the under croft of the SouthBank Centre. The skate park has been here for over forty years and has often been described as the heart of skateboarding in London.

I am no skater, but I like the are as it is a small anarchic section of the otherwise clean and tidy tourist dominated Southbank, plus of course I like the fact that the graffiti changes all the time and that skaters of all ages and races use the park at the weekends – though it was very quiet on a weekday morning…

The owners of the Southbank Centre recently announced plans to redevelop the area into a retail park as part of a larger upgrade to the centre. The skaters would be moved on to a new purpose built area further up the river. The last thing the Southbank needs is less fun and more coffee shops….

I dispair when “progress” means destroying a cultural icon for the sake of more retail outlets.

More here http://www.longlivesouthbank.com/

Swan with hands – the completed RUN painting

On Friday afternoon I went back to the Village Underground wall in Shoreditch to have a look at the newly completed piece that I spent some time watching street artist RUN paint on Wednesday.

I did not take the Canon with the wide-angle lens, so could not quite fit it all in – it is a big wall!

I love the painting though – and it will be gone in a month…

From RUN to D*Face and a bunch of stuff in between.

Wednesday 12 June 2013 – Shoreditch(ish)

I follow a number of blogs and Bookface pages that have references to the London street art scene and yesterday I saw a photo of RUN painting the large wall at Village Underground. This wall is curated by Street Art London and features a different artist each month. I decided that today’s walk would be a street art walk back in the area around Shoreditch.

For a change I had a bit of a plan of things I wanted to see so I took the tube to Old St and walked down from there. I was looking for a piece on one of the side streets off of Old St, but could not find it, so not such a great start, though with the temporary nature of street art, there is a reasonable chance it had already been painted over.

I did find RUN easily enough, a little bit behind where he planned to be today, but working away on a new masterpiece.

I had a little look around the area towards Great Eastern Street and found some new characters by Space Invader.

A new piece by Otto Schade – thanks to Inspiring City Blog for giving me the name of the artist.

Broken Fingaz

ROA

Curtain St mural.

When I was watching RUN paint I heard that Broken Fingaz were painting on a wall up Hackney Rd, painting over one of the few remaining Toasters in London. This shot was taken back in winter, which I guess is obvious from all the snow…

I will say the new piece was done at the request of property owner !

I also found this new piece by American artist Giai on a side street.

I wandered back down to Brick Lane as I wanted to photograph this Tame Iti (A controversial figure, well known to most New Zealanders) that I spotted when I was last here.

I wandered up and down some of the side streets around Brick Lane on the way to my final destination and found a few pieces I had not seen before. Starting with a ROA pig – on Bacon St 🙂

A Malarky

A new piece by Fin Dac

A Dscreet

A RUN

A Stik, I really like all the little Stiks drawn on the door.

I also discovered that RUN is the artist behind the telephones I first saw at Baroque the Streets a couple of weeks ago.

Another fabulous Daleast

And some quite cool little stickers by d7606

My final planned destination for the day was the exhibition at Stolen Space gallery and a visit to D*Face’s workspace upstairs.

It was a good day out and I will have to go back next week and see the completed RUN work, plus the recent ROA mural that was my original plan before I got distracted up Hackney Rd.

I love it when I find some Phlegm!

Sunday 02 June 2013

It was another gorgeous English summer day so after breakfast we decided to walk along the Southbank, cross the Thames and visit Temple. Temple is an old part of London on the north bank of the Thames, and is one of the legal centres for the city. It is always busy during the day so I was keen to visit at the weekend and have a look around.

At the weekend, especially in summer, the Southbank is very busy, the council provide a lot of activities during the summer period – entertainers, art and a small beach full of sand to relax and play on. So, pretty much a time to avoid it really! But mornings are never too hectic and even at 10:00 there were not a lot of people around as we walked down from London Bridge. Blackfriars Bridge.

While I was running on Thursday I had spotted a new work by Belgian artist ROA on the wall of the Southbank Centre. I was really pleased to see this as the building is notoriously ugly and is screaming for something to be painted on it, and this year seems to be the year ! This year they are celebrating “Neighbourhood” on the Southbank so there are gardens set up and a bit of art has made an appearance, the first thing we saw was this mural which looks very new.

Just around the corner was this more alive installation of wheelbarrows filled with vegetable and herbs, very cool.

I found the ROA piece high up on a wall.

And WAHOO – just below it was a new piece by my favourite artist Phlegm! Very unexpected and very exciting too.

Round the corner we found a pop-up cafe and museum with a Beano theme. I used to love the Beano comic when I was child and had to have a photo as Denis the Menace.

We crossed over the Thames and found ourselves outside Somerset House, which had an exhibition on by the late New York fashion photographer Erwin Blumenfeld. The exhibition space in the East Wing of Somerset House is really good and a great place to see photography. Blumenfeld shot a lot of images for Vogue, Harpers, etc in the 40s and 50s and was quite innovative in his day.

To our dismay we found that the gardens and area around Temple is closed at the weekend, which was a real shame as it was the main objective for the day. We sort of wandered aimlessly for a while, up past St Clements church – the official church of the RAF.

We decided to walk right through the city to the East End and have lunch in Spitalfields, we passed Fleet St along the way. Fleet St was the traditional home of UK newspapers for centuries before technology and computerisation caught up with it and the old printing presses were shut down and new printing sites were set up further east in Wapping. It was a hugely contentious time, with a number of violent demonstrations.

We had a nice lunch in a Vietnamese place in Spitalfields and then carried on wandering around for a little bit longer, my feet were starting to ache after a couple of three or four hour days of walking in flat soled shoes. This guy was beatboxing in Brick Lane and was phenomenal, not usually my cup of tea, but there are exceptions to most rules and he was definitely one of those.

I was trying to not look for street art, but when you are up in the east end, it just kind of jumps out at you ! I really liked this new work by Chinese artist Dal-East.

And this older piece by Broken Fingaz that I have not seen before, both in Pedley St, just off Brick Lane.

We concluded our walk by strolling back to Liverpool St where El got a train back to Walthamstow and I got a bus back to London Bridge. It was a really good weekend, finished with home-made pizza while watching a pretty dreadful England draw with Brazil in a football friendly. I still love the view from my balcony 🙂