Carrot on the streets of Belgium

This was photographed in Antwerp. I think it looks great, and goes well with my ethos of displacement. Don't know anything about the artist/function, but it would be pretty fuckn cool if it doubled up as a recycling center of some description don't you think?
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Francoise Neilly massive portraits in Paris

Click on image to enlarge

Francoise Neilly's massive, colourful portraits are delicious to look at. Even more wonderful – and particularly infuriating to those who have timidly dabbled in painting – is to watch her create them. In a beautiful video posted on her site, she, in her confident, strong hand, wields her painting knife shaped like a miniature garden trowel, and makes painting look easy like cake frosting.

Click on image to enlarge

Click on image to enlarge

Click on image to enlarge

She paints her vivid, passionate canvases - some as large as 195 x 62 centimeters - from black-and-white photos, further proof of her unfailing ability to interpret light, shadow, hue and tone by applying brilliant colours and daring strokes.

Born in Marseille and brought up near Saint-Tropez, and now living in Paris, Nielly is at home among bold contrast and dazzling light. Check out her work on the site:

https://www.artsy.net/artist/francoise-nielly
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Artist vs total asshole

The article in the Londonpaper March '09

Here's an article I meant to put up a while ago while it was fresh, but last night I was in Dalston and it sprung to mind. In March Banksy put up a piece on a building in Gillette Square, and Adam Hart, the building owner, was going to apply to have it protected under a planning permission law (see attached clipping).

Banksy's stencil in Gillette Square, Dalston

Going...

Going...

Gone!

Unfortunately for him, some complete fuckwit decided that it'd be a good idea to go over it. Now this makes me kinda angry, and hightens the public debate in favour of graffiti being vandalism when a piece of street art (still considered vandalism by law, but with obvious artistic and aesthetic merit) is countered by an ugly scrawl with the aesthetic merit of a Friday night piss puddle.

I know there is still a large public split on this debate, but what would you rather see - art, shit, or a nude wall? I'd be interested in your opinion...

Crop art in the rice fields of Japan

A Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds of thousands of rice plants, the colours created by using different varieties, in Inakadate in Japan

Napoleon on horseback can be seen from the skies, created by precision planting and months of planning among villagers and farmers in Inakadate.

Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan. But this is no alien creation - the designs have been cleverly planned and planted. Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye. Instead, different colours of rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields. As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to emerge.



The largest and finest work is grown in the Aomori village of Inakadate, 600 miles north of Tokyo, where the tradition began in 1993. The village has now earned a reputation for its agricultural artistry and this year the enormous pictures of Napoleon and a Sengoku-period warrior, both on horseback, are visible in a pair of fields adjacent to the town hall.

More than 150,000 visitors come to Inakadate, where just 8,700 people live, every summer to see the extraordinary images. Each year hundreds of volunteers and villagers plant four different varieties of rice in late May across huge swathes of paddy fields.

The murals in Inakadate cover 15,000 square metres of paddy fields. From ground level, the designs are invisible, and viewers have to climb the mock castle tower of the village office to get a glimpse of the work.

The farmers create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru roman variety, to create the coloured patterns between planting and harvesting in September.

Rice-paddy art began there in 1993 as a local revitalization project, an idea that grew out of meetings held by the village committee. In the first nine years, the village office workers and local farmers grew a simple design of Mount Iwaki every year. But their ideas grew more complicated and attracted greater attention. In 2005 agreements between landowners allowed the creation of enormous works of rice paddy art. A year later, organisers used computers to plot the precise planting of the four differently coloured rice varieties that bring the images to life.
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Thisisludo from Paris

'Boombapaver' - Paris

'Gunflowers' - Paris

'Launcher' - Paris

'Launcher' - Paris

'Mine' - London

Some nice pieces from a dude called This is Ludo, a French based artist. I like his anti-war as nature themed pieces. These are some from Paris, London and Italy.

Check out more at: http://www.thisisludo.com
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Elbow-Toe near Redchurch

Peter Rabbit - Elbow-Toe (click on image to enlarge)

Was lucky enough to have yesterday off work, and it was fine(ish) so decided to take a stroll down Brick Lane/Redchurch/Shoreditch/Hoxton hoods to see what was going down. Lucky to catch the Elbow-Toe piece near Redchurch Street. He is a NY based artist that has been concentrating his skills mainly over there, but has dropped a number of pieces over here too, one of which I was lucky enough to photograph yesterday. I'm gonna feature some of the pics here over the next few weeks, but for the moment go to: www.flickr.com/photos/hamstar/sets.

The thing that struck me most on my wander was how short a shelf life graffiti and street art has. There were some really nice pieces up in this area not more than a few weeks ago, and they are all gone now - covered by absolute crap! Now I'm not an art critic, and I'm no ones ambassador, but I know what I like, and for that matter what I don't, and it does upset me when what I think is special is covered by the random scribblings of a retard. That's my rant for today, but I will be re-covering this subject again soon...

In the mean time, check out more of Elbow-Toe's work on:

http://www.elbow-toe.com/street.html
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