jana and JS – Where is Phil now?

I am some art.

Friday 14 October 2016 – London.

I have not been on a street art walk in Shoreditch, or anywhere else for quite a long time. I have dabbled here and there with a quick visit, but rarely have I been inspired to take photos. I have been to a few gallery openings with my mate Darryl, and have seen some pretty good stuff, but nothing has gone into the blog for ages.

I had a couple of photo exhibitions to visit today, both in the east end, and with a slight diversion or two, separated by some street art walls. It was time to take a walk – even if it was just a short one.

To be honest, the heydey of street art in this and most other parts of London seem to be over. That rush of 2012+2013 when fresh, new and exciting artists were being created locally or visiting from far of land is long gone. On the odd occasion I have had a look around, there has been nothing much to report.

However there was some good stuff out there today. I am bit out of touch now, so there are a few artists I do not recognise.

I will start with the ones I know, and very definitely my favourite from the day. I am a fan of Dale Grimshaw, I own a print of one of his pieces, but I have never seen one this big – on the back wall of the Village Underground. Brilliant! Those eyes….

I also really like the small paste ups of Jana and JS, I haven’t seem them around much, so nice seeing some of their work back in the country again.

The always colourful Thierry Noir.

Mr Cenz.

Dan Kitchener.

Ant Carver.

The rest I liked, but cannot name!

I am off to Berlin in two weeks time, it is a work conference, but I hope to be able to sneak off for a couple of hours while I am there to do some tourist things. One of which will be to check out some street art.

Two days after I get back from Berlin I am off on my travels to India, Australia, New Zealand and Dubai. I am almost organised now. Wahoo !!

Yep, Shoreditch again !

Tuesday 06 August 2013 – Shoreditch, London.

Another week, another street art walk in Shoreditch. With the ever changing nature of street art it is always worth checking out what is happening around the streets of Shoreditch. With the street art blogosphere full of stories of new works being painted over the weekend Darryl and I agreed to meet up at Liverpool St and take a lunch time stroll.

I was really keen to check out four new panels from Alex Senna that went up while I was away last week. However, I was already too late, with all four panels blanked out and a new commissioned advert was being painted in their place, damnit. I love street art for its temporariness, but hate it for the same reason!

Darryl and I walked around for a couple of hour, checking out a few of the new pieces as I discovered a few works I had not seen before.

This new work from Vinie and ReaOne is really cool, I really liked the hair made out of their names.

On Blackall St I found a rarely closed shutter with an old Dscreet owl and some Sweet Toof teeth.

And a new mashup from phonebox artist D7606 collaborating with Ben Murphy.

I was really looking forward to seeing this wonderful work from Otto Schade.

Brazillian artist Cranio is back in town and has been pretty prolific, fixing up some old pieces as well as adding a few new ones.

Shok-1 has done a couple of his ‘x-ray’ style pieces, this is definitely my favourite, I would really like to watch one if these being painted as I am intruiged as to how he does it.

As you will know I am a big fan of the work of Jana and JS and had not seen these small stickers before, I have seen larger copies of both of these around Shoreditch and the kneeling Jana is one of my favourite pieces of all.

The more I look around the alleys and doorways of Shoreditch the more work by French artist C215 I find, often these are small pieces tucked out of the way, but they are always worth stopping to look at.

It was a good couple of hours out, I was bummed to have not see the Alex Senna panels, but I have read about some more of is work being completed over the past week so maybe I will get a chance to find some next time.

this was cool !

I have uploaded a bunch more to my Flickr stream.

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….

Please wait here until you are useful. Thank you.

Saturday 05 January 2013 – Hackney, Shoreditch, Spitalfields, Brick Lane – London

London’s run of not too awful weather continued for a few more days so Saturday afternoon I met a friend up in Hackney to go hunt for some of the great street art that has been made in the area.

My friend knows the area quite well so it was more like a guided walk for me and it was a lot of fun – though I will never find some of the places we visited again, I should have paid more attention 🙂

We started in Hackney Central and walked down through London Fields to Broadway Market. The market is open on a Saturday and mainly sells food and drink, I had a nice risotto for lunch followed by a really nice proper Vietnamese coffee – complete with condensed milk, yum. The market and surrounding area is hipster central. Loads of skinny jeans, short beards and checked shirts, single speed bikes all over the place. Book shops and second hand shops lined the street around the market. I loved it here, in fact I was pretty much in love with all the places we passed, I could easily live here!

Now I have described it as hipster central, my photos show other wise, always happens.

There was a Stik next to the Vietnamese coffee stall.

The next stop was Regents Canal, there is a lot art and plain old graf along the tow path, it was a nice walk down to Victoria Park, the area has a kind of post-commercial bleakness to it, maybe bleakness is a bit strong, but it is a bit run down in parts, just my sort of thing. There were an awful lot of house barges as well, which will be a whole photo essay by itself one day.

I really like these small pieces by Bortusk Leer, there are loads of them all around here.

There was also an old Eric Monopoly as well.

After stopping for more coffee at another very hipster cafe we strolled down and around Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, Brick Lane and Shoreditch – I will confess to having no idea where one bit started and another stopped as I was too busy chatting and looking around at the sights – and spotting things to photograph.

I had one of lifes weird little experiences as we walked. A couple of years ago Sam, a friend of my daughter from Bristol came and stayed at my place in NZ while he was on his travels. He has been living in London for a while now and we have talked about catching up one day. I ran into him on the street. Very nice to see him and totally weird !!

There is some really good street art here, the area around Brick Lane is especially vibrant, I liked that some of the new boutiques have not cleaned up their walls.

Unfortunately we ran out of daylight so I didn’t get to photograph a ton of good stuff, but it does mean I get to go back sooner rather than later. It was a good afternoon !

After a quite delicious Vietnamese meal we went to look at a couple of Banksy’s and saw a guy painting on a wall outside a shop. We stopped to watch and say hello and it was Paul Don Smith, I said I had seen some of his work in Portobello Rd and we chatted for a while. He had recently been doing graffiti on a movie set for a coming Brad Pitt zombie movie – World War Z and was doing a small stencil for it. It was interesting to watch him at work.

I will be back for sure. A few of my favourite pieces.

This is my favourite ! Jana and JS

Ben Eine – according to a graffiti tour guide we overheard as he was leading a tour in Brick Lane he is the only British artist to ever have work hung in the White House…

Jimmy C, there was one amazing Jimmy C that was too dark to photograph – I just need to be able to find it again. His pictures are very detailed.

More street art. [edit] Hmmm, seems WordPress has changed and I cannot do a slide show any more. I don’t like the “gallery” mode, oh well. m[end edit]