Brick Lane, Shoreditch

Posted on August 16, 2016 by Mary C

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,

altered signs, London

Posted on August 15, 2016 by Mary C

There aren’t as many altered street signs in London as there are in Paris (previous Paris blog post), but they can still be found. Here are a few.

Red and white no entry signs.

altered red and white no entry street sign , backside of a Japanese suomo wrestler trying to lick up the white bar

altered red and white no entry street sign - the white bar is a table, black figure sitting at the table with hands on the table. cutlery in hands, no food on the table

altered red and white no entry street sign - policeman kissing the bar

altered red and white no entry street sign

One way signs

one way sign, blue circle with an arrow pointing left, a heart has been added to make the arrow look like it has pierced the heart

one way sign, blue circle with an arrow pointing left, aone euro coin has been added to make the arrow look like it has pierced the coin

Blackall Street London

Posted on August 4, 2016 by Mary C

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

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Mary C

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

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Mary C

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

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Mary C

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,

altered street signs, Paris

Posted on July 27, 2016 by Mary C

As you walk around Paris, you see a lot of altered street signs that are witty and well done such as this no right turn sign that has been changed into the Eiffel Tower.

graffiti altered sign, no left turn arrow turned into the eiffel tower

They are the work of Clet Abraham.

graffiti altered no entry sign, red circle with a white horizontal bar - added a figure that looks like it's struggling to pick up the bar

graffiti altered no entry sign, red circle with a white horizontal bar - added face on right side, lines on bar to make it look like an arm and a fist, punching the face

graffiti altered no entry sign, red circle with a white horizontal bar - added a policeman leaning over it, with hearts

graffiti altered no entry sign, red circle with a white horizontal bar - added figures to make the bar look like the front windshield of a car

graffiti altered no entry sign, red circle with a white horizontal bar - added eyes and nose above the bar, bar now looks like a mouth

graffiti altered no entry sign, red circle with a white horizontal bar - added a black hand that looks like it's squeezing the middle of the bar

graffiti altered square dead end sign where the T has been made into a crucifixtion, black figure of Jesus on it.

graffiti altered triangular sign of two kids running while holding hands, a finger is pointing at them, through clouds from the top of the triangle

There are some signs that have been altered by other people

graffiti altered no entry sign, red circle with a white horizontal bar - added a pasteup of a woman sitting, wearing purple robe and slippers and holding a white stuffed bear

…. some rather hastily done.

graffiti altered no entry sign, red circle with a white horizontal bar - added blue spray paint happy face

I also saw a couple of speed bump warning signs altered by M1000.

blog_sign_speed_bump_wave

blog_sign_speed_bump

Quite a few signs have random stickers stuck on them.

blog_sign_one_way_monkeys

graffiti altered triangular sign of two kids running while holding hands, blue circle stickers have been put over their heads

And then there is this sign, totally covered.

graffiti altered no entry sign, red circle with a white horizontal bar - added stickers that totally cover the sign

Other altered sign pages:
Florence
London
Madrid

Fishers Lane, Fitzroy

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Mary C

Photos taken of the graffiti and street art in Fishers Lane back in February.

below: Welcome to Bali, vol II by BMD, being drawn with a pencil, and it comes complete with a pink earthworm crawling through the mural and the building.

muralby BMD on the upper level of a red brick building. Cigarette box shaped box, front is green with a picture of an little island with one little palm tree and a large earthworm coming out of the sand. a large pencil is seen drawing the picture

below: Garfield gets in on the act too. He’s writing on the walls “Nothing but Trouble”

street art mural of Garfield the Cat holding a marker and writing on the wall, Nothing but Trouble

below: A mural by Drew Funk, Deb and Monkey the roller derby women.

a mural showing two women ready for roller derb

below: Part of the alley, with another mural by Drew Funk in the foreground.

view of a lane with graffiti and street art on both sides

below: Even though this paste up is fraying at the edge, it still looks interesting. The interaction of two people in blank masks.

fraying paste up (large) of two people in blank masks. One is seated. The other is reaching out to him or her, on a brick wall in an alley

below: Four square pieces of wood, each with an insect – or at least I assume that the one on the left once had an insect on it. The mosaic piece looks like something invader would make, but as far as I know he hasn’t been in Melbourne. It may also be a character from a video game?

four square pieces of wood mounted on a wall, each with a picture of an insect. Above it is a creature, walking on two legs, made of black and blue mosaic tiles

below: Paste up, a woman in profile, on the open hand of a woman – herself?

small black and white paste up of an open hand holding a round shape with a woman's head in profile in it.

below: A suited man with a bird in a birdcage instead of a head, at the rear of 285 Brunswick. It is signed javer.

paper pasteup of a black and white drawing of a man's torso with a birdcage instead of a head. One black bird in the cage. It's on a door with lots of scribbles graffiti and a sign that says 285

below: Two more javer pasteups. Another man with a replaced head as well as a misfit woman.

2 paste ups on a boarded up space on a wall. One is a person with a black t shirt with the word Misfits on it. The other is a man sitting on a stool but instead of a head he has the speaker part of an old gramophone

below: One more javer paste-up. This time it’s all about water, water falling from the sky and small puddles below. The words written on the background paper are definitions of scientific terms dealing with liquids, terms such as dew point and absolute humidity.

paste up of a black silhouette of a man holding an umbrella and walking through large rain drops.

below: A bird by Sugar, a street artist who likes to paint murals of animals.

mural of a large bird head, light grey head, blue and black beak, brown body feathers, sign by sugar, on a white wall in an alley

below: At first I thought the title of this piece is Lost the Plot, but that’s actually the moniker used by the artist who painted this.

street art in teals and magenta, with words written small in the corner 'Lost the Plot' signature seems to be NCWB

below: Unfortunately I can’t figure out who the artist is for this one.
a large text street art piece in black, white and red, on a fence,

below: He looks at the world through a different set of lenses.

graffiti and street art on a wall, some scrawls and scribbles but also one man's face, wearing glasses with red and white concentric circles instead of lenses

below: This sad looking girl was hiding in a very narrow space.

paste up of a black drawing on white, a girls head with very long hair looks over the top of a group of high rise buildings, cloud ans round sun behind her

below: A little hummingbird hovering on the wall.

a stencil in teal and black of a hummingbird hovering

below: Another view of the lane.

the backs of buildings in a lane. An old wood fence, with a tree behind it. A taller white building among some shorter buildings. sunny day, blue sky, Melbourne Australia.

below: Babushka dolls paste up

2 large paper paste ups of babushka doll shaped women. One with eyes open and smiling and the other with eyes closed.

Starchild Stela

Posted on July 14, 2016 by Mary C

As seen around Montreal on the weekend of 14-16 June 2015

below: first, an oldie on a page from a French book. I’m not sure what book it is, but it includes the words “protège la virilité de l’époux” which translate to “protects the virility of husband“

Starchild Stela character, a girl with shoulder length and slightly curly hair, drawn on a page of an old book whose words are in french.

Using stickers, paste ups, and spraypaint, Starchild Stela is a graffiti artist who combines cute feminine characters with slogans. I’d like to say that they are ‘common sense’ slogans but unfortunately they aren’t. For example:

“my body, my choice”

Starchild Stela character, a girl with shoulder length and slightly curly hair, two girls in the center of a doily, with the words 'my body, my choice'

and “consent is mandatory”

Starchild Stela character, a girl with shoulder length and slightly curly hair, sticker on a window, pale pink background with pink bows in a pattern, with the words 'consent in mandatory'

and “support survivors”

Starchild Stela character, a girl with shoulder length and slightly curly hair, black and white sticker of a number of girls in a group (5) with the words 'support survivors'

“destroy rape culture”

Starchild Stela character, a girl with shoulder length and slightly curly hair, paper on a wall, peeling and only part of it is still visible, painted pink,

“leave me alone”

Starchild Stela character, a girl with shoulder length and slightly curly hair, sticker on a grey metal pole, pale pink background with little pink bows pattern, with the words 'leave me alone' written under it

“gender studies”

Starchild Stela character, a girl with shoulder length and slightly curly hair, in yellow on a red brick wall, with a word bubble that says gender studies

Starchild Stela character, a girl with shoulder length and slightly curly hair, large painting in blue on a red brick wall with the words Stela Aurure Nila scrawled in black beside it.

Starchild Stela character, a girl with shoulder length and slightly curly hair, painted in pink on a red brick wall with the words femme malia written in cursive beside it

lovebot goes to Montreal (2015)

Posted on July 14, 2016 by Mary C

Lovebot went to Montreal for MuralFest 2015

He was spotted all over town!

below: Spelling it out, L O V E high on a wall.

four large wheatpaste pieces high on a brick wall. Lovebot in profile facing right makes an L, then a lovebot facing forward for O, then a lovebot heart for V and finally another lovebot in profile, with arm sticking out, to make E.

below: Out for a walk with lovebat (babybot with wings?) flying behind.

wheatpaste lovebot walking, with small lovebat? or baby bot with bat wings, flying behind

below: He was seen hanging out with some of the locals….

a small lovebot wheatpaste on a wall above some street art painted creatures, one cat like animal in red and one pinkish creature with long green hair.

below: or with friends

a large lovebot as part of a large painted mural on a wall.

below: Or just hanging around by himself

lovebot wheatpaste on a red brick wall on a building at the entrance to an alley

lovebot wheatpaste on a red brick wall with lots of hydro wires and cables

below: Because not all the locals were friendly!

A light grey lovebot sticker beside a sticker of a girl with bandana over the lower part of his face and she is pointing her rifle at lovebot. The sticker of the girl is by Enzo Sarto and his name on it.