Bristol for the weekend

Headed over to bristol with some mates on friday night for Roger's stag weekend, which involved a lot of drinking and mischief, along with equal amounts of quad bike racing, hovercrafting, clay pigeon shooting and archery. Also included a leisurely brunch in the sun and checking out the updated graf in my fav Bristol haunt - Stokes Croft. Hope you enjoy...

Nice wall in the Croft 

This 7 colour stencil was on the Banksy spaceman wall 

Spaceman from Lidl 

The wall is down from Stokes Croft near the Holiday Inn 

 Raccoon and pissing boy

Silver surfer 

Didn't so much like this piece - liked the old manequins legs overhead tho... 

Trippy door 

 Nice

Darkness...

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Still in Amsterdam...

A sticker & stick-up smorgasbord (Click on image to enlarge)

A graf smorgasbord (Click on image to enlarge)

While I'm on the Amsterdam tip, I thought I'd chuck up these 2 pieces - 1 sticker batch and 1 graf batch. We spent a day on our bikes ripping around the city and stopping when ever anything took my eye, these are 2 of them.

Oh, and we're almost up to 12,000 unique visitors to the site, so keep watching and send the link to your friends as we head for the big time...
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Some bits & bobs from Auckland city

Nice 3-D Bug

Anyone remember Piggy Muldoon from the 80's? Component does!

Running wildlife

This one's for you Kava - put the knives on...

Love this humour!

Special thanks to Rizzla for flicking me over some recent snaps from around Ak city. Nice to see some good things going on there, and some good old Kiwi humour creeping in there too...

Trans-Tasman exchange programme

My pic from Taranaki St, Wellington (about 4-5 years ago)

Blacklodge!!'s pic from Melbourne (this week)

Saw a piece I recognised on blacklodge!!'s flickr this morning. Thought: I recognize that! Looked thru the photos I shot in Wellington about 4 or more years ago, and sure enough...

Interesting how many of our/their artists cross the ditch to make their mark, especially to Melbourne 'cause it's so inspirational. Blacklodge!! shot some of Otis's (Mephisto Jones) in Melbourne last week too. It's up on his flickr site now, check it:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebadseed/sets

The London Police at StolenSpace Gallery

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'10 Years On The Circle Line' by The London Police

It's amazing to think that it was ten years ago, in 1998, that The London Police art collective started propagating their now iconic "Lads" on city streets across Europe. The London Police and the lads personify the entire street art movement. It's impossible to talk about one (in England anyway) without the other.

So to celebrate their 10th Anniversary, Chaz and Bob (London Police's original team) opened '10 Years On The Circle Line' at the StolenSpace Gallery on Brick Lane in London.

So get down and see it before it shuts (26/4). The team at StolenSpace rock, and you can sign up get on their mailing list, and advance warning and guest list for their up and coming showings. They're handily located near the Big Chill Bar for when the free beer runs out too.

Here's the info:

StolenSpace Gallery
91 Brick Lane
Old Truman Brewery
London E1 6QL
tel: 02072472684
email: info@stolenspace.com
Admission: FREE

(thanks for the pic links Marc)

Some more Bethnal Green scrawlers...

Jef Aerosol. (click image to enlarge)

Word to Mother. (click image to enlarge)

Unknown. (click image to enlarge)

Bake. (click image to enlarge)

Unknown. (click image to enlarge)

Out and about - Easter in Bethnal Green

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Some pics from the streets of Bethnal Green from the other week. A lot of nice stuff going on there inc. Invader, Word to Mother and a few other fairly high profile scrawlers. Here's the first batch - more to come when time allows...

LAB's Bazaart in Bethnal Green

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Forgot to mention an exhibition I went to in March...

LAB (Little Art Book) with Randomcuts presented BAZARRT, a grand handpicked collection of original paintings, stencils, photography, pasting and installations from some of the most prolific and in demand urban and street artists around.

Housed in a massive, 5000 square foot venue in The Yard, Three Colts Lane - the heart of Bethnal Green, the exhibition began on the Thursday night, with bands, djs and live art, and ran through to Sunday evening. Unfortunately, I didn't find out about it until the Friday, so missed the opening.

Featured artists included Adam Mallett, AKINA, AlPs, AsboLuv, Ben Slow, BG Booniece, Blam, BonBon, Busk, Dan Kitchener, Dscreet, Eelus, Elfin, Eve Mulholland, Eyesaw, Fake (print release), Fark FK, Focus (print release), FORS, Gabriel Moreno, Gemma Ward, Grafter, Harry Yeff, Henry Reeve, Hutch, Ika Ooska, Inkfetish, Jilko, Jux, K-Guy, Lady Sew & Sew, Laura Ward, Lucy Tate, Luke Da Duke, Marco Marzocchi, Milo, Mishfit, Oh Death, Oliver Winconek, OTP, Pho, Pure Evil, Random Cuts, Rourke Van Dal (print release), Rugman, Snub, SPQR, Tek 13, The Krah, Vilchez (print release), VST.

A top exhibition, which included very competitively priced artwork compared to what I've been seeing around recently, combined with the opportunity to meet with some of the artist (and if you were really lucky and there at the right time even watch the artist create the work in front of your very eyes).

Looks like it's now set to be an annual event, so keep your eyes peeled around mid March 2010.

All Aboard For 100 Minutes Of Havana

Around August last year 100 Pieces of Havana project was run by design studio Intercity and Havana. This year sees Intercity working again with rum brand Havana Club on the next iteration of the project: 100 Minutes of Havana - a live, one-off art battle set to take place on Wednesday 4 March at East London’s railway arch venue, Village Underground. A selection of the artists due to take part in the art-off met up at the venue earlier this week to have a practice session, customizing one of the four underground train carriages that sit atop the venue…


A cleverly animated projection of Intercity’s 100 Minutes of Havana logo (above)will serve as a clock as Intercity’s Nathan Gale explains: “The original 100 Pieces logo was made from circles, representing 100 bottles – so for the 100 Minutes event we turned the circles into timers, each representing one minute. This also gives the logo a stencil-like aesthetic, making it perfect for the event. The art battle will be timed and a projection of the logo will animate the 100 minute countdown.”





Shown in these photos are artists Austin from NEW, Ian Stevenson, Andrew Rae, ALFA, Teck 1, Jimi Crayon, Mr K, Teck 1 and Stika – all practicing their various styles…

Whilst a whole range of pens, paints and spray cans were used here at the practice session, the rules of the forthcoming battle state that the artists will only be able to use colored acrylics and Edding pens on the 16ft high, 40ft wide white battle wall. The freestyle masterpieces created in battle will be created without the aid of sketches or pencils…

Going head to head in battle are two teams, one selected by Intercity from the artists that took part in last years 100 Pieces of Havana, the other put together by Monorex who organise the regular Secret Wars battle events. On the Intercity side of things are Ian Stevenson, Andrew Rae, Robbie Wilkinson, Andy Forshaw and Austin from NEW. And on the Monorex-selected team are the considerably more street sounding ALFA, Teck 1, Jimi Crayon, Mr K and Stika. The two teams will have 100 minutes to do their art thing - the work will then be judged by a Havana Club and Monorex representative as well as an all-important crowd vote, which will be decided using a decibel reader.

Special thanks to Havana Club, Emma@Balance PR, Monorex and Intercity for the pics and blurb.

London graf and paste ups

Stencil near Old Street (click to enlarge)

Paste-up near Old Street (click to enlarge)

Sticker near Shoreditch (click to enlarge)

Paste-up near Brick Lane (click to enlarge)

Been a while since I've posted up any of my observations, so here's a few from the other night from around Shoreditch and Hoxton. Noticed a wicked piece on Old Street too, but will need to go back in during the day to get pics that will do it justice. Watch this space...

New plague of rats in London

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A new plague of rats in town it would appear. Shot this one (if that's what you do with rats?) in Old Street yesterday. Banksy it aint, it's Zulu. The stencil is rather crude, as is the technique, but it had pride of place on an entire, freshly white washed wall just along from Curtain Road. Shot it with my phone, so the quality id somewhat ropey, but I like the way you can see the runs and scratches on the textured concrete.