Monthly Archives: August 2016

Brick Lane, Shoreditch

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There is a lot of street art and graffiti in Shoreditch and one of the streets where it is plentiful is Brick Lane.   There is much more than be covered in one blog post.  What follows is a selection of the street art that I saw in that area back in March.  I’ve tried to find the artist as often as possible…  but it’s not always possible!

below: Four people, quadruplets, standing at attention with eyes forward, on a wall.

paste up of four men standing in a line, shoulder to shoulder, on a background of graffiti tags.

below: Letters pasted on a wall, “Expand your comfort zone” but with D, U and Z missing.
A couple of faces looking on.

words on a graffiti covered wall that once said Expand your comfort zone, but some of the letters are missing and others are starting to peel.
below: Posters by agheras73 aka Arturo Garcia de las Heras

a row of posters showing a man in various jumping poses, each with a different coloured background, green, orange, red and blue.

street art of a man with skull face, helmet and googles on his forehead, ammo belt across his chest.

paste up of a woman's head, black sunglasses, with some red details and highlights on her face

below: On the left is a woman in profile by Irish artist Iljin.

three graffiti faces on a wall, one woman in profile painted in blues and two identical black and white paste ups of a young man

street art and graffiti on a wall, a woman in a green skirt suit and some creature's heads

below: Blue head, red head, @ne_illustration aka Nathan Evans.

two large heads by ne illustrations, a blue head and a red head.

below: Love, love bunny-ish paste up and love on polka dots.

a square paste up of a rabbit's head and a circular paste up below it, white polka dots on blue with the word love written in cursive in the center.

 

below: “This being human is a guest house.”

scribbled drawn line drawing of a face with a wide open mouth, amongst other written graffiti on the wall

below: He stands guard by the door while she watches the passersby.

a very small black stencil of a man with a target as a head, standing on a wall, with feet at sidewalk level . Near him is a woman's face painted on the wall of a doorway

below: A likeness of Frida Kahlo sitting cross legged with her hands in her lap, a few scribbles by Elsie and a paste up of Lt. Vincent and his cat  – his red, white and blue character is seen  running all over Shoreditch.

a paste up of Frida sitting crossed legged on the floor, hands in lap,

below: What do a plastic toy helicopter and airplane, a scrunched up foil wrapper, part of a German cigarette package (rauchen mindert ihre fruchtbarkeit = smoking reduces fertility), a pink pencil and a picture of what looks like Richard Nixon (who is it?) have to do with each other?  Not sure, you’ll have to ask artist Mr. Fahrenheit.  He’s the maker of the art with U R so Porno Baby.

street art picture of Richard Nixon's head, with red paint splattered below.

below: Queen Elizabeth over and over again (also the work of Mr. Fahrenheit), along with Pinch Rio whoever he may be.  Do the numbers on the poster have any significance?  The bottom line is a date but the others are a mystery.

many identical paste ups of Queen Elizabeth's head, outlined in different colours, pasted on a wall,

Blackall Street London

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Back in March I found Blackall Street, a small street in London EC2  too narrow for cars but with lots of room for street art and murals.

view of a narrow London Street with street art covered construction hoardings down one side, two young women taking photos of the hoardings on the left. New building under construction in the background.

below: “If there is light it will find you” C. Bukowski – a quote at the bottom of one of the drawings by @thunderc_nt aka Gabriela Chojnacki

three black line drawings of the head and shoulders of a woman with multiple eyes, all by thundercunt with #thunderc_nt written on them. Also a quote under one of the women

below: By street artist Mask.  This is only part of a piece that was a collaboration between Size92 and Mask.  A complete picture of the mural can be seen online in London Calling blog. The project was supported by Global Street Art as part of their ongoing Walls Project.

mural in pink and blue of a hand holding a face, by mask

below: Believe in Magic, or at least that’s what’s written on the paper used for this piece of street art.  A page from Heavenly Recordings, illustrated by Hugh Cowling.  I have no idea if this was just a scrap piece of paper that the artist had lying around, or if it has some significance.

paste up graffiti of a woman's head with words

stylized painting of a woman's face, street art piece, with long braided hair wrapped around her face in red and blue

below: It’s pointless, dirty mind

a group of pasteups on a wall. the largest one is of two guys in their underwear pulling their shirts up to reveal their stomachs and chest. One man has 'dirty' written on the shirt and the other has 'mind' written on his.

below: Half man, half wolf.  I haven’t been able to decode the web address in the bottom right corner so I don’t have any more information on the artist at this time.

abstract portrait, half man and half wolf face

below: Aboriginal man, street art by Dale Grimshaw.

paste up of the head and shoulders of an aboriginal man with Donald duck cartoon characters running across his forehead.

below: Close up of Donald Duck, his nephew and a superhero.

close up of donald duck characters, as well as another cartoon superhero with the words "Rick wake up! You must free me to fight before it's too late"

street art picture of a woman in browns and blacks, long hair, amongst other graffiti

street art on construction hoardings on Blackall street in Hackney London. Light blue background. A young woman with hat all in dark pink, half of a woman's face (large) with bright red lips, blue eye and a multicoloured word London

graffiti on a brick wall

paste up of a large pink mask

realistic painting of a woman's face in profile on a wall, long blond hair

street art picture of a woman's face partially obscured by a brown tag

little bits of graffiti, marilyn munroe like sticker, a pasteup of a squid, a little girl in pink bra and panties, a yellow parody of a chanel perfume bottle

below: by Gary Alford

Man's face and the head of a blackbird, street art painting by Gary Alford

pasteups on a wall. one is a large beetle, one is a woman's head printed on a newspaper page (by porno baby), two are men's faces with the words "The Whealdstone raider has a posse". A picture of Warhol's Marilyn Munroe with dark glasses add has been stuck on one of the men's faces.

stencil of a man holding an umbrella, It is raining under the umbrella but not outside of it. Man is holding hand out to see if it is still raining.

below: Three telephone booths as windows into something.

street art, three blue British style phone booths behind bars, with a creature in front of them

below: A mural by Giusi Tomasello, an Italian born artist now living in London.

street art painting of a face with David Bowie like makeup and hair, although it doesn't really look like David Bowie

stickers and paste ups on a wall, faces,

street art portrait of a black man's face, with the word fame written above it and a small pink crown drawn on the side of his head

below: The Humble Magnificent and Hala Gurl amongst other paste-ups including a mash-up of Marilyn Munroe meets Dali meets some Asian guy.

blog_blackall_humble_magnificent

paste up of a skull, old mailbox broken, spray painted yellow and stickers on it

below: “If badgers could cull 70% of politicians, it may reduce ridiculous countryside policies but there’s no proof of that”  Street art by clancy aka Clancy Philbrick.  #clancyart

street art painting of a hunter in red jacket but with badger face standing over a person who is lying on the ground, one leg of badger person is on the other person's back

in an old window, one pane has a picture of a soldier and the other pane has the words Do you feel safer?

 

 

endless street art

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Or rather, the street art of endless.  Whenever I see, or think about, his street art, the song ‘Endless Love’ as sung by Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross comes into my head.  Not quite the vision that should be inspired by his work especially since a lot of his images involve weapons, big weapons.

below: No sign of guns in this one though… Queen Elizabeth with hard hat on, ready to work.

street art piece of head of Queen Elizabeth, wearing a hard hat with endless written on it, as well as a yellow scarf with Yves Saint Laurent logo on it.

street art piece of a person squatting beside a building, shooting an automatic weapon towards the edge of the building. A trash can and car are beside the building

on wood construction hoardings, a paste up by endless of a newspaper boy holding up a newspaper

street art piece of a person squatting beside a building, shooting an automatic weapon towards the edge of the building. A young man is taking a picture with his phone on the other side of the building.

a person standing with a white bandana on his face and a large gun in his hand

black stencil on wood of mickey mouse holding a revolver

Another image that endless uses a lot is a coke can.

a coca cola can painted as an endless classic where the words end less are written in the same style as coca cola on the iconic red can

A coke zero black can is turned into a can of spray paint in this street art paste up. Instead of coca cola it says end less

below: I don’t think the wonderful picture of the soldier on horseback is by endless.

two vertical street art pieces on a black building, with windows on either side of them. one is a soldier on a horse and the other is a white drawing by endless

below: This paste-up was on a wall on Blackall Street.

large black and white paste up of a woman in high heels and long flouncy dress

portraits in Shoreditch

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As I walked around Shoreditch and other areas in east London, I saw a lot of portraits by street artist Paul ‘Don’ Smith.  He’s been painting on the streets for more than 25 years, mostly portraits of famous people or characters from TV and movies.   These are the ones that I saw (March 2016).

below: Two portraits side by side.  On the right, from the TV series, The Avengers, Patrick Macnee as John Steed with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel.   On the left is #wooshinism  If I google that, I get photos of this portrait that people have posted on instagram.

two street art portraits, on the right is character from the TV shaw the Avengers

below: The title on this one has been covered over I’m afraid.  Any ideas?

A couple, man and woman, portraits by Paul Don Smith, street art

below: Telly Savalas as  police detective Kojak, a TV series from the 1970’s.  “Who loves ya baby” was one of his catchphrases.

Kojak portrait, from the TV series, by Paul Don Smith

below: Statham, or Jason Statham, actor.  Kiss kiss bang bang.

street art portrait of a man with a gun to his head, Statham,

below: “The Message” a portrait of Malala, referring to Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani advocate for education for women and the youngest ever Nobel laureate.

portrait of Malala, by Paul Don Smith, street art, on a door

below: And one I don’t know.  Do you?

portrait of a woman, street art by Paul Don Smith in London, on a door

 

 

people on Fashion Street

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The Fairy Goth Mother store stands at the corner of Commercial St and Fashion St in London E1.  First the bright blue caught my eye and then the name of the store made me smile.  When I walked this area back in March 2016 I saw a lot of graffiti and and street art on Fashion St and I took the following pictures.

A storefront in a line of brick buildings, at an intersection, with blue wood window frames and door frame, a woman is walking past. the store is called, L and L, Fairy Goth Mother

below: Why so serious?  Joker’s face by Syd, one of a number of pieces (and people) together on a brick wall.

street art painting of the joker's face up close, bright red mouth, other features in black on white, with the words, Why so serious? bySyd

a wall in Fashion street, London E1, with a painting of the jokers face and some paste ups

below: Is this Liza Minelli?  Or someone else?

large paste up of woman standing, looks like Liza Minelli in red and white striped long top and black leggings, red shoes, on a brick wall

below: Wrapped up in Yves Saint Laurent.

detail of a paste up of a woman in a head scarf made of fabric with the Yves Saint Laurent logo all over it and a child, in grey tones

below: Another wall in Fashion Street.  Close ups of some of the graffiti are in the following 2 photos.

a man walks past a wall that is covered with stickers and paste ups graffiti and street art in Shoreditch London

below: Stikki peaches James Dean paste up man, Rebel with a cause.  A purple beaver, pistachio shell art, and can you spot David Bowie?  Hint, check the telephone.

stylized animal paste up by Costah, small blue beaver head, man paste up by stikki peaches, and other graffiti stickers and paste ups on a wall

below: The background of the collage is a page from the ‘Financial Times’ of 27 June 2012.  The white strips of paper have words printed on them, the same words over and over again, “UR SO PORNO BABY if you want it”.  The small white poster on the right says, “Danger, Community Support in the area: screwing the community and attacking the vulnerable”.

collage on newspaper, face, the word Baby many times, in a black outline

below: A mural on the side of Joe’s Kid Cafe, painted by Jimmy C.   It features the owner, Danni as a three year old child with her grandfather Joe.  Joe also ran a cafe in East London back in the 1930’s.

A man hugging a young girl, Joe's Kid is the title,

below: A person (Michael Jackson?) constructed of other people’s faces.   An interesting concept.  I don’t recognize all the constituent faces and perhaps they aren’t all famous people, but I can see Mohammad Ali, John Travolta, the Bee Gees and possibly Grace Jones.  The printed text on his T-shirt is more “UR SO PORNO BABY if you want it”.  The rant in grey on black is as follows:  Now you can’t stop me even thought (sic) U think that if U block me you’ve done UR thing and when you bury me underneath all UR pain I’m steady laughing while surfacing baby I’ve got what it takes and there’s no way u’ll ever get me.”

a street art peice in the shape of a person walking, made up of a collage of pictures of people's heads

 

Two paste ups on a wall, a running wolf with hind legs outstretched to the back, and a woman in an orange and black outfit

street art, collage woman's face with an eyeball in her mouth, scrawled letters of Howl Owl and a white rectangle with two black ovals,

below: Beside #31, Eastco Industrial Wear Ltd.  She has been since painted over with a mural by the same artist – another woman’s face but in purple tones.

a mural of a woman's face in profile on a wall, many colours, long hair, maroon background,