Street Art

[Richard A Thackeray]

Wooler
Northumbria

Senior Management & myself were up there all of last week
I only saw this one, as it was adjacent to the public toilets

It's the bus-shelter, in the..... erm...... bus station

Visible, towards the bottom, on the right
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3450202

 

[booze and cake]

 

[booze and cake]

 

[guitarpete247]

Here's a picture I saw in Leicester last month.

 

[booze and cake]

Nice one @guitarpete247 .It is by the Australian artist called Smug and was done for the 'bring the paint festival' in Leicester in 2017. @Fnaar posted another excellent one of theirs in Glasgow back on page 24. That was a recreation of St Mungo, the patron saint of Glasgow, and references the story of 'the bird that never flew', one of Mungo's 4 miracles. Link here: https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/street-art.221565/post-5061439
As that was based on someone, I had a look to see if the one in Leicester was of anyone famous or with a connection to Leicester, but it appears the man with a beard is simply a friend of the artist. There was another 'bring the paint' street art festival in Leicester this year. Here's a link with some pics and locations of the new works if @guitarpete247 or any other Leicestershire based folk fancy seeing more: https://inspiringcity.com/2019/05/26/the-murals-of-the-leicester-bring-the-paint-festival-2019/
And here's a couple of my recent finds in London.

 

[booze and cake]

And the last pic above is just an advert for Invesco, and they're harping on about 'change' or something. If their pic of the lady with Apple earpods seems familiar, it references the classic painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, known as 'the girl with the pearl earring', painted in 1665. This is what the original looks like.

 

[booze and cake]

And some finds in Camden

2 excellent works by Fanakapan.

And I laughed out loud seeing this rather excellent 'urgh street art!' tile mosaic of Brian from Family Guy.

 

[booze and cake]

Here' some Halloween based works. First up in Hackney a joint tag by Voyder, who did the text written in blood that says 'Voyder', and Fanakapan again, who did the ghost balloon.

Don't see many ninja turtles these days, but some still lurk under the arches in Waterloo.

And on Brexit deadline day, one for our serial liar of a PM, Bojo. He'd rather be dead in a ditch than ask for an Brexit extension he said, another broken promise, from a man who has made a career out of being useless and talking mostly rollocks. Along with the utter lies on the Brexit bus about the EU costing us £350m per week, he has often deliberately spread false rumours designed to inflame xenophobia and play to our worst 'little England' instincts, as this article from back in 2016 explains. https://www.newstatesman.com/politi...-myths-and-our-disgraceful-press-followed-his
And this artwork by Irony in Stockwell, where Bojo is dressed as the evil clown from the Stephen King horror 'It', also references some other bogus Bojo claims.

In one hand he holds a banana, referencing Bojo's false claim, and one of the most stupid and long running myths about the EU, that Brussels was banning bendy bananas. This is of course not true, nothing is banned under the regulations, which simply set grading rules for importers requested by the industry itself. Explained here: https://www.theguardian.com/politic...launches-the-vote-leave-battlebus-in-cornwall
In the truth vacuum's other hand (he also had a rant about EU regulations on hoovers which was similarly ill-informed), Bojo is holding some kippers. This refers to another rubbish recent claim Boris made condemning the EU's Health & Safety rules for fisheries in the Isle of Man. This is another case of utterly fake news, the case described by Johnson did not even fall within the scope of the EU's powers. A significant detail the dumb blonde omitted was the Isle of Man is not even in the EU, so were not bound by the regulations in question, which instead were imposed by the UK's own Food Standard's Agency, to ensure food remains safe and fit for consumption. https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-lied-kipper-tells-16606709
But as we know this is the Government that don't want to listen to experts anymore, we can only presume because they will expose the lies and misinformation that Boris and his cronies are peddling daily. Boris is a serial cheat, his personal relationships are a train wreck, he appears to have dropped his trousers and mis-spent public money after blond American Acuri waved something probably scantily clad in his direction. Boris has had many bedfellows over the years, but the truth has never been one of them. The man is all tricks and no treats. If he came round my house this evening he'd be getting some of this:

Happy Halloween!

 

[Reynard]

Ah, the turtle is Michelangelo. I was more of a Donatello kind of gal myself...

 

[booze and cake]

 

[booze and cake]

 

[booze and cake]

This past weekend marked the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. To honour the occasion 2 street artists whose works have featured before in this thread, were invited to paint two original sections of the wall that are at the entrance to the Imperial War Museum in London.

The one on the left is by Thierry Noir. Thierry was the first person to illegally paint large stretches of the original wall, which he started back in 1984 (of all years). This act inspired others, and over the next few years artists and locals alike began to write messages of dissent and political commentary on the wall. Hundreds of people were shot crossing the wall from East to West. The wall was a menacing, oppressive symbol of the Cold War that represented a divided world, but it was suddenly transformed into a 'palimpsest of protest', and the messages on the wall became a symbol of hope and change. When the wall fell in 1989 some sections were deliberately left as a lasting memorial. Many artists, including Thierry, were invited to paint the eastern face of these walls as a visual enactment of reunification, which can still be seen today.

Here's a Thierry Noir work I photographed from back on page 74 in Acton, the Plug from the Beano type character is apparently meant to act as a reminder to children to regularly brush their teeth.

The other artist is Stix, whose huge stick figures are loosely based on Japanese calligraphic characters known as 'kanji'. His works express the struggles facing communities the world over. Here's his 'big mother' mural I photographed way back on page 3, that's near Thierry's Acton mural above.

The work represents a mother and child looking forlornly on from their condemned council building, across the expanse of private luxury apartments being built around them. Stix also did a work in Brick Lane called 'a couple hold hands in the street' showing a woman in a niqab holding hands with a second stick figure. That work was done in 2010, just days after the attack on a Swedish cartoonist who depicted prophet Mohammed as a dog. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/14/copenhagen-attack-cartoonist-lars-vilks
Nine years on and 'a couple holding hands in the street' has been embraced by the local Muslim community and beyond as a symbol of unity, a 2017 survey voted it in the top 20 favourite UK street art works. Here's 'a couple hold hands in the street'.

It's because both artists use street art as a tool of social change, that they were chosen to paint the slabs of wall at the Imperial War Museum. The work is titled simply 'Wall' and on the one hand celebrates uniting the people of east and west Germany. And on the other hand it acts as a sad reminder that since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there are now more people separated by walls and physical barriers than there were 30 years ago.

A certain over size Umpa Lumpa is hell bent on making a similar wall. We all know that's not going to end well, luckily it looks like time is running out on that fool.

More: https://thierrynoir.com/berlin-wall/ & https://www.christies.com/features/Interview-with-street-artist-Stik-8942-3.aspx

 

[booze and cake]

Some Extinction Rebellion related pieces I've seen across the city recently. This is in Penge.

Thom Yorke from Radiohead, hand it over!

This is on a side street off Brick Lane.

Why it matters and why we should be alarmed: https://www.nationalgeographic.co.u...populations-are-plummeting-and-why-it-matters
And Jane Mutiny started a big one the Village Underground wall on Holywell Lane.

She was regularly interrupted by some terrible rainy weather so progress was slow.

I popped by every day for a week, but even after a few consecutive dry days it didn't progress beyond this...

....so I checked Jane's Twitter and Instagram accounts for any updates, and it was there that I discovered the above picture is the finished product. Here's why. Jane explains "on the left side of the image are animals which are very near to extinction, the animals in the XR symbol are already extinct, and the right shows animals and plants thought to be gone, but are actually still out there in the wild".

"The right side shows New Zealand's South Island Takahe, thought to have gone extinct in 1898, they were found living in a remote mountain region in 1948. Since then careful breeding and release programmes are helping boost the population".

"The plant at the top is the Pycnandra Longiflora, a beautiful flowering bush once abundant in New Caledonia. Thought extinct for 100 years until 2016 when it was rediscovered. The butterfly is the chequered skipper, a British species which went extinct in the 1970s due to poor woodland management. Captive breeding programmes have brought the species back, but they still - like all these species - remain on the brink".

"This middle section shows the passenger pigeon, an American species which famously went extinct due to extensive hunting in the late 1800s. Word had it that it was once so populous, flocks would fly over for hours at a time. The last one died alone in Cincinnati zoo in the 1930s, her name was Martha. On the right is the Round Island Burrowing Boa, from Mauritius, last seen in 1975. At the bottom is the Pyrenean Ibex, a goat from the mountains of Europe, which went extinct in 2000. Next is Spix’s Macaw, native to Brazil. This was also last seen in the wild in 2000. There are a few in captivity, but the gene pool is not wide enough to repopulate the species in the wild. They are known as being ‘functionally extinct’.

"The left side side shows the animals which are on the brink. The Kakapo is a flightless parrot native to New Zealand there are only 213 known in the world, making them critically endangered. Under him is the tiger quoll, a marsupial from Australia, which is near threatened. Not extinct, but critically endangered, the beetle is the American Burying beetle, found in the USA of course. They are important because they bury small dead mammals and birds and help keep life moving on".

"You’ll have noticed how all these animals are half only painted - this was a purposeful statement to show their steady disappearance from our world".

Forget about snakes, spiders and sharks, the world's most dangerous species is undoubtedly.....

 

[booze and cake]

Also considered extinct but still roaming the back streets of east London.

Due to government cutbacks Hackney's warning signage budget has been dramatically reduced, and the knock-on effect is corners are being cut, and errors are being made......

....any fool knows that's a velociraptor and not a T-rex.

I came across this link offering 55,000 free trees to Londoners, in an effort to increase London's tree canopy by 10% by 2050 and help tackle pollution: https://londonist.com/london/great-...iving-away-50-000-trees-to-londoners-for-free
Which is good news, as I don't think our man made alternatives make suitable replacements.

And I'm not the only one that thinks that.

Araucaria Araucana, more commonly known in the UK as the Monkey Puzzle Tree, was so called as it looked like a monkey would be unable to climb it.

 

[Spartak]