Graffoto Round Up of the Year - Part 1

Welcome pop pickers! A post I have meant to do for the last few years on Graffoto has been a look back at the year, be it a good or a bad one. The problem in previous years was that I just always ended up leaving it too late in the holiday, my bingo wings thus being held down by my own weight in mince pies and turkey leftovers and sapped of the energy to bother.

So whilst the intention this year was to start this post pre Christmas in the hope it kicks me up the arse to finish the rest closer to the end of the year, here I am a couple of days away from New Year's.... So it's more than likely that this will be a post that carries over into 2012. I'll split the year into 4 parts so as not to make the post so long.

A picture heavy and word "lite" effort it's about my third post of the year and certainly the biggest on Graffoto. My favourite pictures and work that has gone up throughout the year, starting right at the top of January. . .

All pictures are by HowAboutNo except where stated.


Cept & Sweet Toof


Nychos & Vibes


Photo supplied by Mr S. Toof

Philth (indeed!)


Kid Acne's Artfags (Spectre also on the decaying shop front sign)


Plastic Bones


Dscreet & Kid Acne


AMAZING to see Zezao work up in London in his unmistakeable style


Milo Tchais also getting up more than I remember in previous years.


Roa


In fact this whole spot got a lot of action in 2011, Mr Sperme popped up and knocked out this one. Shame there weren't many others.


Ranking highly as my fave piece of the year...and it's a sticker :( Sadly Stormie Mills didn't paint any London walls that I found in 2011.


Slipping in a little bit of South Coast action . . .I found a nice little spot closer to home in Hastings. Unfortunately I have only managed to go there once with a camera in hand. Must change that in 2012.




Michael De Feo had a show in London and left a few flowers.

A few artists hit the Grand Union Canal at Broadway Market one weekend in March, am not sure there was any event other than perhaps a meet at a local hostelry. . .


Xenz


Teddy Baden


Dotmasters

Just oodles of generic damage was often my highlight of the year...more in later posts but this was a big big fave. . .

Gold Peg did a few activist/occupy related pieces through the year (more later) This was the first and boldest, the ad company blocking the message out days later.

Tizer went to Leake Street and did this piece in amazing quick time. I think the squiddlywinkswould call this one SICK!

Gold Peg hit some of the most eye catching and clever spots throughout the year as far as I am concerned, proving as always that half, if not more of the work is all in the placement.

My fave other placed spot this year was a piece by Revok, which featured on his blog



Revok was later arrested in April 2011 for failing to pay damages to the victims of his previous vandalism crimes

So that's it for part 1 of this round up which covered January to March (at least in the order I found them, as mentioned some of the pieces are years old) Part 2 to follow soon covering, you guessed it......April to June.

Hackney Wicked

Hackney Wick
30 July - 1 Aug 2010



Hackney Wick is bohemian, decaying, swampy and trendy though a lot of its post industrial bleakness is being surrendered to the concrete sports temples rising out of the mud and mire. Some of the resilient local artist community, 670 or so the promotional bumpf proclaims like some kind of statistical triumph, have had their doors levered open for the annual Hackney Wicked art festival now in its third year.


One of the coolest bits of work was an outdoor-internal installation called Tompson’s Tunnel, featuring miniature concrete steps leading up to a tunnel burrowing into the building with tiny Slinkachu-esque naked figures striding the landscape. The figures looked like they may have been wrapped in foil then lost their skin to first degree burns in some grotesque bbq related accident. The illusion of depth in the tunnel was enhanced by a mirror fitted at the end. Bugger to photograph mind.


Tompson's Tunnel


Quite a bit of live painting had taken place the day before in and around that White Post Lane car park including pieces Snoe, Cept, Seks, DScreet, Busk and Xenz.


Snoe, Cept, Seks, DScreet, Run (&Busk?)


Also in that same car park, intertwined down the structure of the back staircase is one of those robot wooden arms similar to the ones seen at Prescription Art in Brighton last year.




Normally you wouldn’t have polite access to these sweatshop buildings, various handwritten notices pleading for the return of missing items or threatening dire retribution if perpetrators of theft are caught indicate why. The best part of these buildings being open is the opportunity afforded for access to roof spaces and elevated windows, yielding panoramic views and close up shots of rooftop graffiti gems.


Sweet Toof



Sweet Toof


Arriving early like around mid-day, when stalls selling home-made carrot cake out-number carrot cake eaters, had the dual peril of artists still being tucked up in bed and if they were there, you were likely to be the only rubber necker keeping the artist company. You hope as you mooch un-certainly into the heart of the studio that your face doesn’t betray any particular look of horror.

On a hunch that he might have finally surfaced by 2.30pm, a return to the Peanut Factory found Joseph Loughborough aka illjoseph, bright eyed and demon breathed after a bit of a session the previous night.


Joseph Loughborough


Joe has been an artist I have admired for several years and the work on his studio walls was just stunning. Some of them are on his flickr account and without being critical of Joe's photography, flicks don't have a fraction of the impact of seeing these fo' real. Joe was sitting there producing one of his latest series of frenzied, fragmented and smudged charcoal portraits. For me this brief visit was the highlight and made the Eastwards schlep worthwhile (and the bit about demon breath probably isn't true).


Joseph Loughborough


In, around and beyond Hackney Wicked photographs 'ere

Burning Candy - Getting High, Battering Clouds in 2010

all photos: NoLionsInEngland except Romanywg where stated


One of the joys of cycling to work is chancing across fresh graff and street art. This morning, even with only half an eye for walls, rooftops and side alleyways I found two unexpected specimens of Burning Candy rooftop freshness.


Firstly, thanks to a minor deviation down a route I don't take often, there was this pair of freezing monkeys.


Mighty Mo


Then in the 3 lane mayhem at Kings Cross, a glance skywards revealed this beautiful collection.


Mighty Mo, Gold Peg, Tek33


These high spots Burning Candy are hitting aren't your so-remote-its-as-safe-as-legal zones, we are talking high in the clouds and high eyeball count, that’s Kings Cross above and the one below is London's Oxford Street.


Mighty Mo, Gold Peg


Prominent in all this rooftop activity have been Gold Peg and Mighty Mo. Gold Peg is setting new standards for girls on rooftop illegals, matching the boys cojones for cojones.


Burning Candy in force


Graffoto believes most of the rooftop jobs featured in this post have been done in the past couple of months, Kings Cross is part of my daily bicycle rat run and I didn’t spot that Kings Cross nest-feathering yesterday. [edit: found someone's flick dated yesterday]


Mighty Mo, Gold Peg


To us who gawp in admiration from ground level, it is fascinating to ponder the logistics of access and the elevating (literally) joy of painting with panoramic views of the surrounding rooftops and the streets below. That thought brings Will Robson-Scott’s rooftop photography to mind for capturing some of that buzz but we’ll leave that until we finish the Graffoto Crack and Shine review, if and when we can be arsed (if you can’t wait, check out Art Of The State’s review, we are coming from exactly the same angle and wild appreciation) [update: Crack and Shine Review].


Gold Peg, Sweet Toof


Its getting hard to recall a time when various members of the crew weren’t getting up on walls around London but this current burst of graff creativity seems to go back to this epic legal wall painted by all BC bar Cept who was flat out on his solo show (LLB’s contribution was un-finished due to man-flu and painted over). Photo by epic art and urbex photography legend Romanywg.


Burning Candy - photo Romanywg

Big up Burning Candy, keeping it real and getting high in 2010.

click here for other flicks of Burning Candy on manouevres high off ground

Update Wednesday 20th: Looked over my shoulder as I cycled through Kings X this morning to see if there was a fixed ladder for Peg to get up to that balcony on the spire (there wasn't one). I then remembered the golden rule of graff spotting, bit like life: wherever you are going, always look over your shoulder!

DScreet - Words Up

Pure Evil Gallery, Basement

London

13 - 24 Dec 08

photos: NoLionsInEngland except HowAboutNo where stated

Acid-eyed flourescent owls have been roosting around London, night and day, for the last six years or so. Like their more conventional rural cousins, these DScreet painted urban owls can be harder to spot in the daytime, specially when shutters go up.

Photo: HowAboutNo

A lucky tangential glance might catch them on vans alongside Burning Candy and ATG types

When a guy is getting up on walls with the likes of Burning Candy, Kid Acne, and SEKS then you know that a serious talent is afoot.

DScreet can mix it up a bit wildstyle with the letters on the street, as seen here

A rubble filled basement (that’s the crowd – the floor has quite a few loose bricks too) houses DScreet’s first ever gallery show and dayglo owls roost among DScreet’s other letterform art.

A curious feature of the owls is that they always present their left side, so one wonders what they are hiding on their right. They have the most intense 1000 yard stares and sabre-toothed hair-does and, whether they are the cute little baby ones or the big burly adult bastards, they are always armed with “shake-hands-at-your-peril” talons.

Four caged owls hang from beams in the basement space, their dayglo fur actually subdued in comparison to their radioactive eyes which dare you to engage in a retina burnout staring match.



In case the colours are too muted for anyone, DScreet has done one owl in twinkling blue and pink neon light, though for added effect the colour of the eyes manage to cycle through yellow when warming up.

One pair of owls is done as an embroidery piece which the label proudly proclaims to be made of 67,000 beads. That this fact is known is the scariest thing about this one, though the eyes on these owls are gorgeous. Excuse the pic, the rough aesthetic in the Pure Evil dungeon never lends itself to subtle lighting.

About half of the works on show are word pieces rendered in a blocky style with a jarring crash of colour reliefs. The irregularity of the 3D effects on the words ignores the generally accepted rules of the form.

Like So Many Strange Gods


The effect of the letter shapes and most particularly the colour combinations challenges the observer to ponder if there is some truly kinked inner pallette in DScreet’s mind. There are amusing details not to be missed, check the hara kiri letter O at the end of this piece.

That the irregular shading and inconsistent 3D effects are DScreet’s intentional distortion of the form may be supposed from the words themselves and the titles, most notably this Men Crazed With Shadows.

Men Crazed With Shadows

More twit-twoo from the show can be seen here.