Street Art London Tour

On Saturday I went along to a Street Art London Tour around the East End’s area of Shoreditch, and it proved to be amazingly inspiring! Left me truly wanting more.

Street Art London is an organization that is closely connected with the street art scene in London. They closely follow and work with various street artists on different projects and exhibitions. It takes much dedication as the street art is constantly evolving, sometimes a piece can last a couple of days and others for months at a time. Having such a close working relationship means that they can gather information first hand, not from a secondary source such as books and internet, making the information provided on their tours really exciting and real.
I used to live in that area and the streets (and back streets) are adorned with striking street art pieces that help create the urban visual buzz that the area offers. In between observing the street art, I did start to recognize different artists’s “hand writing” and what was really great for me is that on the tour I got to learn their names and a bit about their story!!
The walking tour took about 4 hours, with a lovely lunch in supa hip hang out The Book Club. I was praying that it wouldn’t rain and my prayers were answered  We met at the designated meeting point around Old Street Tube station early Saturday morning and once everyone that was booked in turned up, off we went.
I don’t know much about the graffiti culture but our guide was really helpful in explaining the difference between graffiti artists and street artist, their culture, the techniques used and why the artists would paint the way that they did i.e. their influences and training. The fact that Street Art Tours work with most of the street artists whose work we were shown means that they are capable to go in great depth about it all. Insider knowledge is always good!

I am going to include some of my favourite pieces that we were shown below

The first piece that we were shown was about 5 metres from our initial point. And it involved us looking down, at the pavement. Amidst chewing gum stained pavement some small brightly coloured art appeared! Artist Ben Wilson from Muswell Hill has decided to take it upon himself to make the city’s pavements slightly prettier, but painting over chewing gum stains with bright acrylic paint. His pieces are intricate and depict landscapes.

  

Christiaan Nagel is originally from South Africa and has been in London for about three years. During this time he has been installing large, brightly coloured mushrooms all around the city on top of buildings, bridges and walls.

Artist Ben Eine is well known for his vibrant typographical letters that either appear as a single letter or as standalone words such as “Scary”, “Exciting”, “Vandalism”, “Change” and “Calculate”. When creating single letters, they often appear on shop front shutters, indicating the first letter of the shop’s name.

   

Phlegm is a street artist from Sheffield. He trained at university as an illustrator, which comes across in his deatiles, monochrome pieces. He takes inspiration from etching and dip pen techniques, which he used himself in his self published comics whilst studying.

Pablo Delgado’s work was really striking.  Not only does he create complex characters with stencils, but also tells a story in each of his pieces, allowing characters to work together towards a particular narrative.

Seeing Roa’s street art was one of the highlights for me. His work is instantly recognizable as he paints large, monochrome textured animals. Originally he hails from Belgium and his biggest work is the Roa Crane on Hanbury Street (Summer 2010). He has also put up rats and birds along Brick Lane, but can only be seen at night, as they hide during the day as his works also appear on shutters.

 

Another of my favourite piece was by street artist Invader, who originally hails from Paris. His work is recognized instantly, as he pays homage to the Space Invaders arcade cade that took storm in the 80’s. He uses coloured tiles to represent the large pixelated characters that appeared in the well known game. The first character appeared on the streets of London in 1999.Many more have appeared since then, acting as little surveyors of the city!

(all images for space invader are secondary sourced)

I really liked Stik’s work, which not only appears around London, but has adorned places in New York, Berlin, Jordan and the Middle East. Stik is best known for his “Stik men”, which are monochrome simplified versions of the classic stick man. I find that although they are very simplified, they also manage to convey the emotion that the artist was trying to portray.

  

I have noticed Mobstr’s work before, and it was really exciting to see other works by him. He tends to use the same font throughout his pieces; strong, simple bold characters that convey a mixture of sarcastic, cynical and council provoking sentences. Brilliantly simple.

 

One of the most exciting was street art that I saw today was by street artist vils. I really liked this as he has managed to create 3-D work, which shows a complex and talented nature. Vils plasters onver bricks and then uses a chisel to carve into it once dried. This results in a large scale, modern version of an etching. A-mazingggg

Below are some other ones that caught my eye during our tour

 

SHOWCASE Cities @ Richmix Studios 19/12/12

Last night I went to SHOWCASE cities @ Richmix Studios (East London), which is is a Quirky show with ART, MUSIC & THEATRE on display.  Their aim is to provide a platform for emerging talent, and what a fun night it turned out to be! There is nothing quite so pleasant as to looking at art whilst listening to live music in the background whilst having a festive tipple

I was showing support for one of my flatmates Gary, as he was exhibiting a selection of his work.   Gary is an East London based artist who works mainly with collage. Inspired by music, religion, folklore, literature and dreams he creates quirky, stunning images that are visually gripping and hard to ignore!!

Works that he included at SHOWCASE cities were particularly festive, basing his theme around objects/personalities that are associated with Christmas. What made it really exciting to see was his translation of taking traditional Christmas characters and giving them a dark edge, so that they exuded a sense of creepiness, giving them a dark edge. Here are the images from his work space…so proud!!!

Visit his Facebook page for more of this work on the following link:

http://www.facebook.com/events/393630507385846/#!/garyrussellart

Other artists included in this brilliant exhibition as follows, and their work can be seen on the link below:

Lucy Dee Johann Lester Edurne Aginaga Jorge Torres James Thurgood Sijimon Siddique Mushahid Hussain Mark McEvoy Sophie Bastien Dar Al Naim Mubarak Rebecca Elizabeth Blow Juri Poci Kerry Eggleton Emilie Thoorens Aimee Bowey Gary Jason Russell Damilola Oshilaja Hunter Eggers Nadja Ryzhakova Faryal Ahmad Ionela Lazar Simona Ruscheva

http://www.showcase-cities.com/

“Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s” @ The Barbican

Me and a friend stumbled across one of the most poignant and moving exhibitions that I have visited in a while, which was called “Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s,” showing at the Barbican. (We were trying to visit the rain room, but the queue was unbearably long, and that was after the 2 hour waiting sign!!)
Back to the exhibition…This major photography exhibition invites the viewer to experience strong political movements through vivid, strong photographic compositions that are equally as powerful visually and emotionally. Over 400 works were presented by both well known photographers and new undiscovered ones. The aim of the exhibition was to present some of the most inspiring voices in 20th century photography, in order to reflect on the world then – and now.

The photographers were working during two of the most memorable decades of the 20th century, documenting events, daily life and details within their social spheres resulting in utterly engrossing journey into the social and political realities of the 1960s and 70s. Some might say that the featured photographers fall into the “Photo-Journalism” category, even though they were recording images for personal sentimental reasons. A beautiful quote from one of the photographers Cartier-Bresson (photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism) highlights my point exactly by stating that photography should strive to find “a balance… between two worlds – the one inside us and the one outside us.”
12 key figures are featured within this exhibition, such as Bruce Davidson, William Eggleston, David Goldblatt, Graciela Iturbide, Boris Mikhailov, Sigmar Polke, Malick Sidibé, Shomei Tomatsu, and Li Zhensheng, as well as important innovators Ernest Cole, Raghubir Singh and Larry Burrows.

The 1960′s and 1970′s saw the World change dramatically through key social and political movements such as America’s colonialist misadventure in Vietnam to the the civil rights movement, which brought the world to a new modern age. Whilst moving from image to image, I could really see (and feel) the sacrifice and bravery of the people living in the chosen photographed areas. This exhibition aimed to provide ‘a history of photography through the photography of history’

Although I found all of the works moving in some way or the other, there were definite front runners whose images have stayed with me.

David Goldblatt has spent more than six decades photographing his native South Africa. His style is formal and documenting, but that does not stop the images from being thought provoking in the slightest. His images were taken in the apartheid era and truly highlight the “abnormal normality” of that time and place he was present in. In one of his images titled “Saturday morning at the Hypermarket: Semi-final of the Miss Lovely Legs Competition” taken in 1979-1980, a row of black faces in a mixed crowd stare at a line of young white women in swimming costumes, entrants in a Miss Lovely Legs competition. I can’t help but feel the high contrast in the social and general life conditions that these women did not share.

In another one of his works, entitled “The Maid’s Room,” a make shift bed is seen, with a chair where a newspaper is found with headline “Moon men on the way back.” The message coveyed here is that life goes on, in a grotesquely normalised way.

I really enjoyed viewing photographs from Ernest Cole’s collection of images, as he responded to his daily life in an endlessly resourceful way during his growing up under apartheid. he moved freely between the townships and the white sectors, shooting visual narratives that showed the true distance between the two. His most powerful image for me was that of a snatched shot of a well-dressed white man casually slapping a young black boy around the face as he walks past him on the street. The quote resembled something along the lines of “sometimes they would get money, others a slap.”

Having legally managed to change his ethnicity to “coloured” from “Black,” he was free to move to New York in 1966. He took his apartheid project prints with him and presented his work to Magnum Photos, which resulted in a publishing deal with publishing rights owned by Random House. The book, “House of Bondage,” was banned in South Africa.
One of the quotes found in the book stuck with me: “Chigago, the City of Signs,” which highlighted that cities were rife with signs that completely separated whites from “Non-Whites.”

Here are some others of my favourite shots from him:

Another important point to make about this exhibition is that it really showed how photography had developed vastly in a shoirt space of time during these decades. This is becauprior to what is known as “The Golden Age of Photography.” many employed photographers worked for the illustrated press meaning that they had little creative satisfaction after having to work with tight commision and briefs. During the 60′s and 70′s as photography progressed, many photographers went in search of documenting their own unique surroundings and were able to really project what was happening around them without having to conform to strict set of rules.
“Through this renewed approach to their practice, these photographers in turn challenged the common belief that the medium of photography was inferior to those of painting or sculpture, and thus established it as an artistic medium in it’s own right.”

Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s is at The Barbican Centre until January 2013.

http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=13613

Go See it.

Tim Walker: Story Teller (Supported by Mulberry)

I went to see one of my photographers Tim Walker a couple of weeks ago at Somerset House. What a treat it was

Walker is one of the most exciting photographers out there for me, not only because of his subject matter but also because of the extravagant scale he likes to play with within his compositions.

Everything in Walker’s pictures portrays the life, humour and colour use that he he himself finds exciting, resulting in fantastical, magical and intriguing images.

What I really liked about this exhibition is that it not only offered the viewer hi resolution photo images but also that there was an array of extraordinary props that were used in the photoshoots. The most impressive pieces for me where a giant swan, oversized doll (shot for italian Vogue) and an almost life-size replica of a Spitfire fighter plane….now that is commitment to your vision!!!!

Below I have included images from the exhibition that I took…I highly raccomend going to see this!

 

*Dazed and Confused-Spring 2012 Photoshoot*

I have a thing for butterflies…and this Dazed and Confused photoshoot sent me into a frenzy!

Combining Spring/Summr 2012 on trend pastel hues together with metallics and butterfly motifs, photographer Ben Toms transformed model Elza Luijendijk into an otherwordly creature. The styling by Robbie Spencer really brought out an odd ethereal vibe to the shots, which worked together perfectly. Hope you enjoy as much as I did!

  

  

 

*Felicity Powell- “Charmed Life, The Solace of Objects”*

I want to talk about an exhibition that I went to see with my friend as we’re both proper magpies for vintage objects. It was a couple of months ago, but it really stuck in mind! I found this exhibition really inspirational and interesting, as it contained varied objects collected over the centuries passed, all complete with explanations as to why they looked like they did and their meaning behind the appearance. Fab! It is a wonderful thing to learn about the psychology and traditions that society followed and still follow, and helps us to realise where all those little proverbial meanings come from. Even though the objects have been separated from their original owners, you can really feel their “magic” still, and can’t help but wonder if those blue beaded necklaces really did protect that child from contracting bronchitis, or if that box containing rice that was thrown over the newlyweds really did bring them luck to live a happy ever after. Needless to say, I spent a lot of my time staring during my visit here.

‘Charmed Life: The solace of objects’ is the result of the artist Felicity Powell’s intrigue with the collection of amulets collected by Edwardian amateur folklorist Edward Lovett (Borrowed by Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum). Powell was intrigued by the objects and the way they quitely spoke out personal narratives, most of which are now lost to history.

Here are a few official words from the exhibition guide:

“Amulets have appeared throughout history and across many cultures in an infinite variety of forms. Each has been invested with the hope or belief that it could somehow mediate on behalf of its owner. They are tiny embodiments of the anxieties we feel about our human frailties, their assumed powers often drawing on the dark arts of superstition and magic. Reflecting on the potency – sometimes alluring, sometimes repellent – of these much-touched objects, Powell found parallels with her own artistic practice. The films and artworks that complement her curation of the amulets show her own fascination with the small and intimate, as well as the accompanying compulsion to create images and objects “to butt up against and to act upon” –objects that might themselves, as in Montaigne’s description, help to anchor the soul”

   

I scribbled down some of my favourite objects that really spoke out to me.  Yes, I occasionally show my geekiness in public in full force

*Ryan McGinley*

I came across this photographer through a friend, and I was instanly taken by his work. Ryan McGinley combines realisms, cooky accessories and fantastical backdrops to create breathtaking images that you just can’t help to be drawn in by.   MgGinley was born in New Jersey and has been photographing since 1988, perfecting his techniques over the years. He is now currently based in New York city.

I have included my favourite photographs of his below…but check more out at his home page:

http://ryanmcginley.com/

 

*Dog Fashion Hairstyling*

Look at these! They are creepy, fantastical and amazingly clever…imagine HOW LONG these must have taken!

They remind me of Charlie Le Mindu’s wigs (which Lady Gaga is a fan of) as they use hair to create imaginitive, striking and in my opinion quite shocking head pieces…

Bet you haven’t seen something like this before!!

Enjoy.

*Philippe Jarrigeon Photography*

The photographs from photographer Philippe Jarrigeon have completely taken my breath away. Quirky, eccentric and with a Surrealist vibe to them, they are right up my street.

The photographer/publisher has the knack for making inanimate objects come to life, and the animate objects even more alive! He was born in France and trained in Switzerland. He has had work published in various magazine publications such as Manifesto, Double, L’Officiel, and Wallpaper* He has also worked alongside fashion designers and brands such as Baccarat, Dries van Noten, Maison Martin Margiela, Nike, and Swatch.

Here are a few of my favourite shots

  

  

  

*Mark Mawson Photography*