Street Art London: Discover the City's Vibrant Murals

Stencil Art | The Moniker Art Fair is going on and I had some busy last days, visiting all the live paintings by Herakut, Case and Titi-Freak and having fun at the VNA magazine issue party. But what’s more interesting is the fact that during the last days a lot of amazing new street artworks popped up around the Village Underground in London’s creative area Shoreditch! One really impressing is the new stencil artwork by internationally famous artist Boxi. He painted a whole wall in his well-known greyscale style including three of his brilliant multi-layer stencil spray-paintings. A must to see for every stencil art enthusiast in London! ...

Graffiti Documentary | As already mentioned, I photographically documented the creation of that new “Calculate” mural by famous British graffiti artist Ben Eine in London - But I was not alone! The graffiti wall is part of the Moniker Art Fair which will open its doors today and therefore a lot of other people and documentarists joined the creative process. Also a camera team by Babelgum was there and filmed the entire creation progress! Their video is online now and shows in almost three minutes how Ben Eine and his crew painted the mural in about two days. ...

London Graffiti | London-based graffiti artist Ben Eine is probably one of the most famous British graffiti artists and that not just since David Cameron has given one of his paintings to President Obama. Eine’s bold letters especially those on the shutters and of course the so called Alphabet Street are well-known around the globe! Last weekend, I met Ben while he and his crew spray-painted a new wall in Shoreditch as a part of the Moniker Art Fair which will open its doors this Thursday. Again he clearly arranged big bold letters, this time forming the word calculate. ...

Exhibition Review | Yesterday, the “Blind By Stardom” exhibition by English born urban artist Word To Mother (By the way a really nice guy!) opened its doors at the Stolen Space Gallery in London. It’s the fourth exhibition by Word To Mother in these rooms and of course I visited the show, which features paintings in mixed media on wood, canvas, found objects and installation pieces and was highly impressed by his fantastic technique and the more or less hidden joke in his artworks [*]! ...

Last Friday, I visited the launch party of the new and really recommendable urban art book by Tristan Manco called “Street Sketchbook: Journeys”, which is something like an extension of the original “Street Sketchbook” from 2007. Street Sketchbook: Journeys continues the theme of an artist’s creativity by looking further at the idea process. Featuring in-depth interviews and illustrated with sketchbooks and behind the scenes photographs this book follows the artistic journeys of thirty extraordinary artists from around the world. (press release) ...

Yesterday, London’s Pure Evil Gallery opened its doors with a lot of hype and TV cameras for the “New Paintings” exhibition by famous Banksy-basher and old school graffiti artist Robbo. Of course I visited the opening and took some shots of the paintings, including a lot of drips, colors, paint and kitsch, but I’m still unsure what to think about that exhibition… I talked to some people and asked them what they think about Robbo’s paintings and stencil artworks and one of them told me that the whole exhibition is maybe a big fake. Although it’s not the Anti-Banksy exhibition I’d expected, Robbo may wants to show how easy (and in that way stupid) it is to create street-art-like artworks in his opinion. ...

For those of you who like the commercialization of street art, the next month will be pretty interesting: In Berlin, the “Stroke.3 - Urban Art Fair” will take place between October 7th and 10th (more about that commercial street art event later!) and in London, the “Moniker - International Art Fair” will take place between October 14th and 17th. Because I’m currently in London, I’ll write about that Moniker-event first… ...

As you know, I’m currently in London and therefore still on the search for some great impressions of that interesting city, I could show you to complete something like an unusual city portrait of London… Today I found round about 1400 scanned diapositive-photos in doveson2008’s “London, England 1940s to 1980” photo-collection on Flickr, which is a massive historically photo-portrait of the UK’s capital! These are mostly undated red-bordered Kodachrome slides (although some have handwritten dates on which are given when present). I’ve always found these to be very colour faithful, despite the odd cyan shadow here and there. They are my favourite type of any slide, with the best having a richness of detail and quality that’s unbeatable, even despite some darkening over fifty-odd years on some of them. (doveson2008) ...

Monochromatic Shades, the stencil art exhibition by famous political stencil artist SPQR, is running for one week now at Signal Gallery in London. A few days after the opening I visited that very interesting and highly critical urban art show to take some photos… SPQR is exploring the Art of Protest/Protest Art conundrum. He looks into the ability of Art to protest about the evils of society as he sees them. Included in his line of fire is the art world itself, with is fashions and favourites and at it’s core, a hollow commercialism. Themes that recur for the artist are ‘surveillance’ culture, brainwashing media and the need for acts of defiance to counteract these ills. This is brilliantly achieved in his work, with a tough humour, which is distinctly lacking any sentimentality or soft edges. (Signal Gallery) ...

Here is a photo-series of another London-based graffiti artist: Dan Kitchener was already in action, when I accidentally met him at Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch some days ago. He was going to spray-paint a much larger version of his Urban Landscapes and finished the large-scale and more or less greyscale piece after six or seven hours of work… Those of you who want to see more nice photos of that pure graffiti action, have to take a look on my new “Street Artists in Action” project over there on Urban Art Photography! ...