Graffoto Round Up Of The Year

This final look at the year now covers September all the way through to the end of December. Being that it was mild for the time of year, and there were a shed load of art festivals and paint jams in town, the surrounding areas had a nice smattering too.

Street art pastes and stencils seemed to be out of the window for pretty much most of this quarter, and I think that was also a big shift for the year. Good to see more talented artists grafting it at the side of a wall. Also nice to see lots of quick and dirty damage throughout town.

So that's it for Graffoto's round up of the action in 2011. At the beggining and at lots of points throughout the year it did seem like it was stale and not moving anywhere. Part of wanting to look back at the year at the begginging of a new one has shown that it was a busy and colourful year, full of lots of new names and techniques and people to watch in 2012.

The shift also seemed to go towards lots more "with permission" spots last year, I guess a big test for those shutters and areas may fall closer to Olympics time, when the council may decide to buff at random for no reason whatsoever.

Graffoto Round Up Of The Year - Pt 3

HowAboutNo rashly promised FOUR picture-rich blog posts to review what was up on London’s streets and alleyways in 2011, so I thought I’d contribute something at this stage covering the Summer months, mainly because with our productivity we might not complete this magnus opus until Dec 2012.

Dr D was present and correct throughout 2011, this particular poster reflected what we were all thinking but by pasting up on this scale on the A501, Dr D said it with a little more panache.




Small was beautiful throughout 2011,not only the likes of Isaac Cordal and Pablo Delgado (see VNA issue17 for an interview) but new to London’s streets were a collection of hand painted anthropomorphic pig sculptures by lovepiepenbrinck.




Italian artist Clet Abraham visited these shores early in the Summer and took the liberty of modifying a number of our street signs.



We didn’t see too much of Kid Acne on London walls this year but he seemingly did go out on a bombing mission one night in the company of Aida and Emma. Seeing my bike leaning against a wall on the fringes of the shot reminds me of the self inflicted stupidity that led to my bike being nicked from just 3 feet from me in Brick lane in October. Twat.




Stencils on old newspapers are Mr.Farenheit’s stock in trade, he (she?) certainly got up a lot throughout 2011. Supposedly the QR codes used in a lot of his paste ups do work.




Mobstr had a great year, frequently targeting street artist’s commercial agendas and, as in this one, the council buff.




Continuing to display a refined appreciation of vintage Burlesque as well as a faculty for hitting the high spots, Saki and Bitches turned out to be a continuing surprise and mystery – until her warmly received pop-out, sorry... pop up show in East London.







Ai Wei Wei had a piece running in Tate Modern in London and despite being unjustly detained in China for a long period was able to get these fearsome beasts up outdoors in London. OK, the courtyard, Somerset House.






Dain putting up some of my favourite paste ups EVER. This lasted 1 day and was then fly pasted over.

Stinkfish


C215 had at least a couple of trips to the UK in 2011, this was my fave from the year.


El Mac painted this piece shortly before going off to paint in the Bristol "See No Evil" event.

New names in 2011. . .

These artists may well have exhisted long before last year, but in 2011 they smashed Hackney/Shoreditch and Brick Lane . . .


Nemo


Nemo


Malarky


Malarky

Kata - who showed ealry spouts of activity in July/August...but not much else since.


Part 4 before the weekend is out....in your Face!

C215 - Midnight Dreams

Signal Gallery, London
23 July - 7 August

Globetrotter C215 hails from France and burst into the upper echelon of acclaimed street artists with an appearance as one of Banksy’s invited anointees at the 2008 Cans Festival in London. He followed this with a worldwide campaign of gritty single layer portraits of anonymous grizzled street people.


C215 - London 2008


His third London solo show (if we correctly recall one at Pure Evil’s or is that only in our alcohol befuddled imagination?), the second at Signal Gallery, introduces a marked change in subject and style. C215 told us he has spend the last four years working almost exclusively with subjects from the streets, whether they be people or street scenes. He built up a repertoire of some 800 stencil images but used this street stock regardless of whether he was painting on the streets or doing gallery work.


C215 - London 2008


For C215, the key element of his work always has been the street, a homage to that environment and the people who through necessity or misfortune have to make the streets their home. With the epic catalogue of work developed for this theme, C215 says he now feels the freedom to separate his work of the streets from the work on the gallery.


2010 (honest - that's the title)


C215 had come to recognise a regrettable paradox between his desire to work for the streets and his growing gallery significance, it discomforts him to feel he might be moving into a genre of artist who profits from the street communities rather than just document, celebrate and give back. With this show C215 marks a clear separation in that the subjects are almost entirely un-touched by the influence of homeless street dwellers.


Odysseus


C215 has dramatically broadened the colour pallete in this work, gone are the almost two tone sweeps and sepia styling of paste compositions. The application of colour on the faces now seems to be more about contour than skin tone and texture, the backgrounds are more about loose abstract rather than the patterned background he preferred in the past.


Blowing


The coherent direction in this collection is the link between visage and mind. Apparently each of the subjects is based around friends, family and people familiar to C215 rather than anonymous people from the streets. The abstract background becomes a glimpse into the state of mind and various levels of frenetic mental activity. Sometimes the background speaks of confusion, others intense motion and speeding neurons.


Lost Mind


Yet occasionally C215 slips down the gears to serenity, almost


Volare


With is background as a street artist C215 of course prefers anything but canvas, the compositions here are executed on a variety of bits of recycled wood, “salvaged” street signs and other random bits of metal.


Shaker


Amusingly, the picture that lends its title to the title of the show is actually a painting of a mannequin


Midnight Dreams


Clearly the greater work that goes into each of the pictures doesn’t transpose easily to the thirty second hit of a single layer stencil but we have recently seen examples of this more colourful direction on some legal walls.


Signal Gallery - 2010


C215 has managed to maintain the integrity of his relationship to the streets by now differentiating his gallery product, he doesn’t do the indoor spectacular or epic stunt installation of some of his street art peers (yet?) but concentrates on producing consistently gorgeous paintings. This is a lush show, well worth popping in to Signal Gallery to experience if you get the chance.

More photos of Midnights Dream artworks here.

C215 - Shoeshiners

Signal Gallery, London
19 June – 11 July


All photos: NoLionsInEngland except Romanywg and Artbleat where noted


There are only a few people in any art niche who can be said to set benchmarks, who are the constellation in the heavens that every looks up and points at. In the world of street art stencilism, C215 is one of those novas.




Hailing from France with a background that might described as challenged, C215 first came to wider attention in London when he bombed spots east to west and across the centre with his trademark monochromatic stencil portraits featuring grizzly men, suffering but saintly women and portraits of his young daughter pouting moodily.




C215 almost always marries the subject to the location, the rough grimy street corners provide a natural habitat for gentleman wearing the crude, un-kempt look of a life on the road on their faces. From Morroco to New York, Istanbul to Sao Paolo, C215’s forte is seeking locations off the beaten track and not blessed by an over-abundance of first world consumer luxury (like Hackney Wick).


c215, Delhi, Oct 2008. Photo: Romanywg


C215 was one of the original stencillists showcased by invitation at Banksy’s Cans Festival in May 08 and his spot was one of the highlights of the best street art show of the year. The hyperactive and swift working C215 had by year end visited the UK several times and ran dangerously close to stepping over into excessive bombing which, unlike tagging, isn’t such a good look for street art.


C215 at Cans Festival, 2008


However, after a break from these shores, C215 has returned to London for this his first London solo show. The intimate space afforded by Signal Gallery has given C215 a great opportunity to demonstrate his art without the stress of limited time (he generally gets his street pieces done in less than 30 secs).




The most striking observation upon entering the gallery is how much richer the images become when C215 is able to introduce multiple layers, acrylics and a broader pallete into his work. C215 combines lush colours and characteristic detail in the stencil with a strong eye for composition, not one of his images fails not hang together in a realistic manner.


C215 at Signal Gallery, photo: Romanywg


Though the show C21 has been inspired by locations as diverse as Morroco, India, Afghanistan, Delhi and London, the core matter of this show is one man’s diary of international adventures


Afghan woman


Afghan woman has an ambiguity of possibly being a girl or young women with a wide eyed beauty yet her face suggests a calm serenity or perhaps a maturity derived from the responsibilities of running a household from a young age. C215’s pictures convey a emotional depth rendering almost all other stencil artists flat by comparison.

The time afforded C215 in studio work allows him to broaden his subjects to the wider scene and context of his portrait subjects. Apart from a rather oddly twee vintage London scene, C215’s grittily realistic life scenes are at their best when he is focussed on the working environment of his subjects from less developed parts of the world. In Painting In Mirleft we see a working artist but in a rather rough cast studio reflecting characteristically spartan accommodation but at the same time capturing the nobility of honest endeavour and a sense that even in outside the high tech consumerist society we take for granted, there is still call for artists producing beauty and culture.


Painting In Mirleft


Anyone who has seen C215’s online collection of photographs may have spotted that in Delhi in particular, C215 was captivated by the numbers of very young shoeshine boys working the streets. This feeds into the show n the form of several shoe-shine boxes with the personalities of their possible owners painted onto the fabric of their livelihood. If plight is an appropriate word to describe their condition, then the plight of the shoeshine boy feeds C215’s concerns. The work of the shoeshine boy brings someone on a very low income right into the society of the well off middle class, places him kneeling at the feet of his betters in society, indulging the shoe-wearer the luxury of a shiny shoe, a seemingly trivial pre-occupation in comparison with the knife edge hard fought survival of the rag-shod urchin at his feet. Pennies scattered around the box emphasise the in-equality of incomes and the scraps from which the shoe-shine boys must make their lives.


Shoeshine Box 1, photo: Artbleat


The nature of the image on distressed wood of the shoe-shine boxes revisited the collaborative sawn up cello done with his friend the photographer and street art documenter Romanywg and shown at Corked last year.
The show includes several landscape pictures. In the various trackside and train station images C215 seems to be responding to the very similar compositions done by stencil master Logan Hicks (see also Cans festival).


Austerlitz Station


Several images of street scenes showcase C215’s mastery of a certain kind of urban clutter, a dishevelment common to back street locations where functionality and economy are the priorities and pretty privet hedges and civic pride area long way down the list.


Five Star Carting


In Five Star Carting above which is based upon a trip to NY last year and wittily including a street C215 left at the scene , the observant may spy a cheeky nod to the reigning queen of the current crop of street art documenters which definitely wasn’t in the original street scene.
In the scenes which incorporate a vehicle, the ability to render a totally convincing metal sheen and the sculptural bodywork detail is quite incredible. The detail of the wrinkled clothing of the market porter and the detail of the toppled wooden crates and the street scenery visible though what may be railway arches brings in a phenomenal level of realism.


Mirleft Market


My favourite piece was probably one of the least characteristic of the show, a seascape with a view of rippling waves passing through the end of a (British?) pier, breaking towards rocks in the foreground and coming in from the horizon behind. The image don on found board dissolves and softens towards the edges creating a sort of sun falling into the sea with encroaching darkness looming overhead. There is only one thing to quibble within this image and this is the case in several of the pictures, the C215 stencil looks in-appropriately heavy and oversize.


Seascape


There are only a limited number of stencillists – Logan Hicks, Artiste Ouvrier among others, who can cut a stencil with the intricacy and realism of C215 and the art of his images probably surpasses even those masters. I thought my days of being wowed by stencil artists had passed so this collection is not only a delight to behold but is a pleasant surprise too.

The set of pics from the show can be seen here and pics of C215’s London street work over the past year or so can be seen here