Thierry Noir has recently painted what is the tallest mural in Britain on Barwick House on the South Acton Estate in London. The mural titled ‘A message to the Children of London. Brush your Teeth, at least, three times a day‘ but also dubbed ‘The Acton Giant‘ standing at 37 metres and a staggering 14 storeys tall. This is Noir’s first public artwork in London in 2017 and took a total of one week to paint. The mural was created in association with Artification as part of their public art programme to beautify the South Acton Estate. Artification are a London based arts charity who use art to catalyse change in communities. In 2014 STIK created ‘Big Mother’ alongside Artification on the neighbouring Charles Hocking House. Together Noir and STIK’s murals represent (at the time of writing) the two equal tallest murals in Britain. See below for the full photos of Thierry Noir’s new mural.

Photography by Rob Weir
Interview by Carina Claassens

If you’ve been to Shoreditch on a sunny day you would have noticed John Dolan and his dog, George, sitting on the High Street. George sits patiently while John draws portraits of him and the buildings opposite.  In this in depth interview we find out exactly how John became the artist he is today.

Where are you from?

Goswell Road in Islington. I’ve lived in London all my life.

How old is George and how were you brought together?

He is six years old. I was living in shared accommodation at the time and a couple of rough sleepers bought him for the price of a strong can of lager off a mad Scotsman. They had him for about a week and then gave him to me.

How did you train George?

I got him when he was one year old and he was one of those dogs who would nearly bite your hand off when you tried to pick up his ball. He was a cat chaser; he chased foxes. I just have an authoritative voice if you could say that. I had dogs growing up. You need eyes in the back of your head with dogs like these, especially when it comes to food. It’s just using your voice in the right way really. You don’t train a dog with your hand, you train him with your voice. With these types of dogs, they just love you and show so much love anyway – he’s very loyal. He’s a great bloody dog.

How long have you been drawing?

All my life, all my life, I’ve always had a natural talent for drawing – my grandfather was a good artist. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve actually picked up a pen and started drawing the way I am now. I spent many years in and out of jail and came out one day and I was homeless. I climbed into a building site, slept there and would get out in the morning before the builders came. This particular day I was in this building site, in Whitechapel behind the mosque, and there was a security guard that I didn’t know about. I had to jump over a wall – I landed okay but my ankle gave way and arthritis kicked in. As a result I couldn’t duck and dive. I had to literally walk up to people in the street and ask them for money.

I would never have dreamt of doing something like that but I had no choice. From there I started sitting down and when I got George I started sitting down with him. I trained him to sit in front of a hat and I would stand away from him and people would take his picture because he’s a beautiful dog. In the summer time I made a fortune but then the winter kicked in. I had to wrap George up because he was cold and it actually made for a good picture. I found it embarrassing just sitting there watching people throw money into his hat so I started drawing again. I started drawing just to get over the embarrassment and my drawings got better and better. The idea was to teach myself watercolour and I started drawing buildings. I started to draw houses and once I watercoloured the pictures and did all the rest of it I would put a calling card under the doors saying, “I’ve drawn your house, would you like to view it and buy the picture?”

I wasn’t a building drawer. What happened was I was sitting opposite the buildings that are on the other side of the road from where I usually sit, the old decrepit buildings, and I started drawing them to practice and get it right. I thought I would do it with these ones because they’re rotten old buildings.

Today I’ve sold more than 500 pictures of those buildings and they take me two hours to draw.

A John Dolan building drawing (note Burning Candy Crew):

Do the drawings of George sell well?

People started asking me for drawings of him and I would walk out of the house with four or five – they take me about 20 minutes to knock up – and I take them out and they sell.  The only time that I don’t really sell any stuff is when the weather’s gloomy but when it’s sunny, sat where I sit, I sell loads of pictures.

What is the most you’ve sold in one day?

Five.

Who or what would you say inspires you?

I like Gilbert and George – they walk past me every night and George always says hello to me. I love them. I don’t mind Tracy Emin. Jackson Pollock blows me away. And of course some of the old masters.

So you’ve just always had a natural talent?

When I was 13 I lost an art contract.  My grandmother worked as a cleaner and took one of my drawings in to show her friends. It was a fantastic picture, I copied it out of an old comic book – my grandfather used to buy me comic books.

A guy looked over her shoulder and said, “I work for a meat company in Spitalfields meat market, and I’m looking for a freelance artist. If your grandson can do us a trademark we’ll give him £5.” I just couldn’t deliver the goods; it was too much pressure for such a young mind.

Would you say that you are a street artist?

Yeah, I’m in a book about street art as a street artist. Up until the point that I went into the book I didn’t know what I was or who I was. If you asked me now what I am, I would say a street artist.

Have you ever sat anywhere else?

I pretty much always sit in the same spot on Shoreditch High Street.

Why there?

Because of those two buildings across the road – that’s all it basically is.

I can draw them with my eyes closed. In the summer I’ll go sit in Covent Garden and Southbank. The thing is, I’ve been sat in Shoreditch for such a long time that I don’t have to put signs up. People know me and if they want a drawing they buy it.

If you couldn’t draw and you had to do something else, what would it be?

I don’t know, fly an aeroplane? It’d have to be something good, not something bland like working in a factory or putting cream in doughnuts. It would have to be something good.

What do you do when you’re not drawing?

Sleep (laughs), because I’m always drawing. Even when I’m at home I draw.

What do you draw when you’re at home?

I usually finish pictures that I started on the high street or I’m given stuff to draw. A lot of people order drawings.

Do they just approach you on the street and ask you to draw something?

Yeah, “can you draw my dog?” or “can you draw my girlfriend?”

What’s the most general thing that people ask you to draw?

Where they live. They give me photographs.

What’s the most unusual thing?

Nothing yet, I’m still waiting for something strange.

Do you ever work in other mediums than you do now?

I sometimes work in charcoal, only the basics. I want to start using spray cans. I’ve had a little practice and I’ve got the gist of it.

Would you say your favourite thing to draw is buildings?

Anything really, anything that is a challenge. If I’ve never drawn it before, even better. I’m having real difficulty with a picture of a girl that someone gave me about a month ago. It’s of a girl’s face. She’s very pretty but I’m just not very good at drawing girl’s faces anyway. It’s not like a man’s face that’s crinkled and if it is it’s covered in make up. She’s a stunning girl but I just can’t bloody get her eyes right and I’m banging my head on the table. The amount of paper I’ve wasted…

I assume that most people’s reactions to your drawings are good?

Yeah, I get told every day that I’m very talented. It’s so nice and it’s strange because drawing is such an easy thing for me to do.

Have you ever had a bad experience while sitting on the street and drawing?

Not so much while drawing. But yeah, every Friday night – it’s nothing worth talking about – just drunk idiots you know. I am financially troubled and that’s why I have to do what I do – I’ll never badger people or ask people for money. If someone puts a bit of change or a £20 note in George’s cup I’ll always thank him or her. If they put a note in the cup and I have a picture to give them, I do.

If George could draw what do you think he would draw?

He’d probably draw me. I’d like to think that he’d do a fine job of it as well.

You say you’re a street artist. To what extent do you identify with the other artists you see on the street?

Like me they also stand or sit in the cold doing what they do. They’re open to criticism. I mean the amount of times that people walk past me and go “ah that’s shit”.

So it’s a bit like public art? You’re both public artists?

Yeah. I’m envious of people who paint on the walls because it can be there for a long time. I love it. There’s a lot of good stuff in Shoreditch and Great Eastern Street. I painted my living room wall for a little while.

Street Art London: Thanks John!

In September Dolan has his first solo exhibition at Howard Griffin Gallery in Shoreditch.
Over 40 international street artists and graffiti writers will also collaborate with Dolan as part of the exhibition. 

GEORGE THE DOG JOHN THE ARTIST
19-26 September 2013 (10AM-6PM)
Opening 7:30PM, Thursday 19 September 2013
Howard Griffin Gallery
189-190 Shoreditch High Street,
E16HU, London.

Martin Ron is one of the pre-eminent street artists in Argentina.  He paints hyper realistic surrealist imagery on a huge scale.  Upon invitation from Street Art London he travelled to London to participate in our Village Underground Wall Project and over the course of eight days painted a breathtaking mural.  Certainly a contender for one of the best ever pieces on this prestigious London wall.  We also talked a little to Ron to find out about his rationale for painting the piece he did. 

How did the project to paint this mural come about?

I came to London after being invited by Street Art London. It’s an important mural project that gets together a lot of international artists who come to London to paint. It’s an interesting project and it’s exciting to paint the Village Underground Wall that is one of the best and biggest in Shoreditch, a neighbourhood where a lot of top international street artists have painted. Every few months different street artists from different parts of the world come here and paint the VU Wall one after the other. I am here in London in August with my girlfriend.

Background preparation: 

Why did you paint this artwork and what is the concept?

The concept of this artwork is following a similar line that I have been doing for a while with the theme of urban surrealism generating situations of fantasy through painting in the street. The public enjoy the humour in my artworks and I very often choose an everyday theme. In this instance, the badger that has been in the news a lot in the UK and was in fact the first news I heard about after I got here. After arriving in London I went to stay in the house of a friend in Oxford and when I turned on the television there was a story about British Prime Minister David Cameron wanting to kill badgers or reduce the population of badgers and the government was saying that the animals carry diseases. When I saw the news story I thought what a pretty animal, what is going on? I thought it would be a great concept for my next mural.

The hand depicted in the mural is that of his girlfriend who accompanied him on his trip to London: 

What title have you given the mural?

I’ve called it David and Goliath. The name David relates to the Prime Minister David Cameron while the badger is Goliath.

What do you think about the badger cull?

There are members of the public who are in favour or against it but I think this is a mistake and thought it would be good to use as a concept to generate awareness about the issue. What the mural represents is a complex machine without feeling, a mutant with a lot of power up against a tiny animal that in reality is adapting to the habitat around it. So what I am representing here is a powerful machine rising up against a little animal called the badger with David Cameron against Goliath.

Ron uses gloss paint to create his hyper-realistic works: 

There is a big machine in this mural. Why do you paint machines?

It’s a fusion and mutation between man and machine and relates to humans and the system. It like a deformed mutant that becomes complicated and loses touch with reality. It’s about man and the machine and the system trying to control the world around it, then it becomes too much and starts to break down. I like to mix man and machines sometimes in my art to try to generate everyday situations between the complex and simple. It’s the simplest things that usually work the best.

How long did the mural take and how long do your murals normally take to paint? 

It took a week more or less. Most of my murals take about a week but it depends if I am in a hurry or not. I try to enjoy the experience and meet new people, to speak with the people who pass by. if I have three days to paint the wall I will do it in three days, if I have 15 days I will take all the time necessary but the most important thing is trying to have fun.

The mural took a massive eight days to complete: 

What are some of the other themes in your murals?

I try to not represent global or general issues but smaller situations that speak about the context, the place and the space where I am. What I like most about painting murals is generating situations of fantasy that have a lot of 3D so that the technique can be so hyper-real that it generates imaginary situations that seem to really be happening. I like it so that the artwork jumps out of the wall and interacts with the people and environment around it.

What are your impressions of Shoreditch and London and the street art scene here?

It’s brilliant. There are lots of well known street artists painting here at the same time as me and graffiti and murals by some of the best known artists in the world. It great to be able to paint in London and meet some of these guys. I have had a great time painting this mural and met lots of new friends and everyone has been so welcoming and friendly towards me. The weather has also been really good while I’ve been here in London and Shoreditch is a fun place to hang out.

Badgergate: 

What do you do in Buenos Aires and is your role there as an artist?

I paint a lot in Buenos Aires and have painted more than 80 murals in the county of Tres de Febrero. Together with the district council, we work together to renovate and paint walls that are covered with vandalism or propaganda and get artists and residents together for painting projects. The program is called the Urban Embellishment Programme (Programa de Embellecimiento Urbano) and what the project is really about is the artists’ own expression and we have the freedom to paint what we like and the council supports us and provides us with all the materials. The residents like it because they have colourful and artistic new murals on their doorstep that brighten up the neighbourhood.

What is the street art scene like in Buenos Aires?

It has increased exponentially due to the amount of artists who are painting in the street and the residents are now getting used to the idea of offering their walls to be painted and understand more about urban art than before. These are the same neighbours who get in contact with the artists themselves to invite them to paint and make their walls and houses more beautiful. Everything is growing, the amount of residents who are receptive to street art and also the amount of artists who are painting walls. In this respect I think Buenos Aires is a lot different than in some other cities where painting walls is looked upon as vandalism. In Argentina the artists don’t have to paint at night, hide their identity or paint quickly to avoid being caught by the authorities. There are lots of big walls and buildings to paint around Buenos Aires for instance and the artists take their own time creating their artworks so their designs are often of very good quality and on a larger scale than in some other cities. Buenos Aires has now become a popular destination for some of the best street artists in the world to come and paint. They put themselves in contact with artists in Argentina before they come to visit and they all get together and paint big walls.

Jetpack shot: 

What are your plans for the rest of your trip?

I am hoping to paint some more walls and it would be nice to do a collaboration with another artist here in London. I am also going to visit Paris and Amsterdam with my girlfriend Erica and hope to have time to see a few of the sights in London before we go back to Argentina.

What are your plans for the future, do you want to paint in other countries?

I haven’t laid out a plan or specific objectives. My philosophy is to paint. I love painting and being able to visit new and exciting places like London and also meeting different people along the way. As long as I have the fortune to be able to do this I’ll carry on.

For one month commencing 10th July, Street Art London will take over ME London on the Strand with a five strong artist line up from the worlds of graffiti and street. Thierry Noir, BRK, RUN, Christiaan Nagel and Zomby will exhibit their works on canvas and project directly on the nine storey marble walls of ME London’s 30 metre high atrium, providing a stark contrast with the walls of the city.  Speaking about the exhibition, Richard Howard-Griffin, Director of Street Art London says: ‘It’s exciting to exhibit such an eclectic group of street artists and graffiti writers in such a rare environment and take these art-forms to new places and audiences in London’ 

Karim Samuels of Street Art London in the Void. 

Show details

Street Art London presents Outside In – BRK, Christiaan Nagel, RU, Thierry Noir and Zomby.
336-337 The Strand,
City of Westminster,
WC2R 1HA
10 July – 10 August 2013. 

Original canvases and works available for sale from all artists as part of the exhibition.  Email art@streetartlondon.co.uk for all buying inquiries. 

Salted Prints and Street Art London will be releasing fourteen new Screen Print editions at the show from BRK, Christiaan Nagel, RUN, Thierry Noir and Zomby.   Salted Prints have also produced a four artist collaborative Screen Print featuring BRK, RUN, Thierry Noir, RUN and Zomby – don’t miss that one! More details soon… 

BRK

Strongly influenced by the 80s New York classic graffiti style, BRK developed his skills on the streets of his hometown, Madrid, throughout the 90s. BRK is also a highly accomplished illustrator and old cartoon and comic infused influences can be detected throughout his work. Since emerging as a recognised graffiti writer BRK has made his mark in cities all over the world, finally settling in London in 2009 and joining the The Rolling People crew.

Christiaan Nagel

Nagel in Berlin October 2012 with Stik, Dscreet and Street Art London team. 

South African born Christiaan Nagel’s mushrooms are an iconic fixture of East London’s rooftop landscape. Drawing inspiration from the Surrealist and Pop-Art movements, Nagel seeks to juxtapose his bright palette with the surrounding city context. His works reference the notion of art as something ultimately unattainable as he seeks to place them at ever greater heights and in more unexpected and challenging places.

RUN

Gdansk, Poland

RUN is an important proponent of a new renaissance of muralism within international street art. Originally from Italy, RUN’s love of travel has led him to make his home in London and create many large-scale murals around the world, most recently in China and across Africa. A contemporary of other Italian street art greats such as BLU, Ericailcane, Dem and Hitnes, RUN’s work possesses a breathtaking sense of scale and painterly elegance.

Thierry Noir

The Berlin Wall, 1980’s. These sections of the Wall, featured in Wings of Desire, were salvaged following the fall of the GDR and are now held in a private collection in New York City. 

Thierry Noir is a forerunner of the modern street art movement. Throughout the 1980s he painted miles of the Berlin Wall illegally with his iconic imagery, leading up to its fall in 1989. Noir aimed to perform one real revolutionary act – to transform the Wall, to make it ridiculous, and ultimately to help destroy it. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall his artwork has become a symbol of freedom. Noir’s work and original pieces of the Wall can be found in public museums and private art collections throughout the world.

Zomby

Image courtesy of LDNGraffiti. 

One of London’s most respected graffiti writers, Zomby is a true precursor of graffiti in London. His style and approach have exerted an enormous influence over the development of graffiti in London. His simple letter style has for the last two decades been instantly recognisable across surfaces in London alongside his iconic characters. Zomby is part of Diabolical Dubstars (DDS), one of the most prolific and notorious graffiti crews to come out of London.

Street Art London staged a large scale street art festival in May.  The following artists were brought together in Chichester by Street Art London: Christiaan Nagel, Cityzen Kane, Dscreet, Hitnes, Liqen, NUNCA, Phlegm, ROA, RUN, Thierry Noir and The Rolling People. This is what we got up to.

Christiaan Nagel: 

Cityzen Kane:

Dscreet:

Hitnes:

Liqen:

NUNCA:

Phlegm:

Phlegm + RUN:

ROA: 

RUN:

Stik:

Thierry Noir:

The Rolling People: 

Street Art London Van: 

Street Art London are proud to present a major collaboration between world-renowned street artists RUN and Dscreet at the Cock ‘n’ Bull gallery, beneath Tramshed.

A Foot in the Door: RUN and Dscreet will juxtapose wall paintings with drawings, painting and sculpture, leading the viewer to reassess the role of environment and context in contemporary art. The exhibition runs from 28th June – 25th July and is open from 11am-6pm daily. The exhibition will include two new limited edition screen print editions from the artists that will be on sale in the gallery and through Salted Prints.

There will be an opening party on July 4th, 6.30-9.30 pm in the gallery. Come along for an opportunity to meet both artists alongside the release of limited edition exclusive signed prints. Free entrance, open to all.

Initially brought together to work on the outer doors of Tramshed, RUN and Dscreet have come together once more to reframe their work and explore ideas of interiority and exteriority in the art world today. Questioning how street art is perceived by bringing their work into the gallery, they play with the concept of the door as a literal means of crossing from one space into another and as a metaphor for changing perceptions. Turning their practice inside out, their work leads a viewer to see beyond the surface. At the entrance to the exhibition is a door on which RUN and Dscreet have collaborated. Framing the exhibition and marking the transition from the exterior to interior space, this door invites viewers to walk through to the other side, entering into a thought provoking space where paintings collide with murals.

Dscreet is an Australian street artist whose signature owl characters have been a mainstay on the London street art scene for years. Transitioning from the graffiti scene, his artistic alter ego is inspired by cartoon and comic imagery. On a deeper level, he explores the owl as a symbol of perception that lends itself to multifarious interpretations in many different cultures worldwide. Dscreet is also a talented filmmaker, and will exhibit a new film in the gallery during the show.

RUN is a London based Italian street artist whose works can be seen adorning street corners from China to Senegal. His recognisable style shows a level of detail and complexity rarely seen in street art today, evidenced through his vivid rendering of interlocking hands and faces in bright, arresting colours. RUN is interested in street art as a language of communication, creating playful characters that speak to diverse audiences on multiple levels. The expansive scale of his works captivates the viewer, affecting a renaissance of muralism that reaches beyond the boundaries of street art.

For more information please email press@streetartlondon.co.uk.

Street Art London are proud to announce a very unique project entitled, “Baroque The Streets: Dulwich Street Art Festival 2013” which will be happening between the 10th and 19th of May.  We have invited some of the biggest names in international street art to Dulwich in order to create an outdoor gallery of large scale public murals inspired by works held by Dulwich Picture Gallery, England’s oldest public gallery. The nine day long festival explores the position of street art, huge new global art movement that it is, in the continuum of art history and will see over 20 of the current masters of the street reinterpret and remix the works of the masters of old. The event will be accompanied by tours of the murals and debates led by academics and experts from both the worlds of street art and classical art alike. We have also taken over an entire house in Dulwich and are putting on a large scale exhibition of works for the general public.  The project is a collaboration between Street Art London and Ingrid Beazley, from Dulwich Picture Gallery.  Ingrid masterminded Stik’s project in Dulwich on 2012 which first introduced the concept of reinterpreting classical works from Dulwich Picture Gallery around the streets of Dulwich.  Three Dulwich Picture Gallery works that will be reinterpreted are set out below with the respective artists.  We will be releasing details of all associated events around the Dulwich Street Art Festival soon.

MAD C
Will be reinterpreting “Still Life with Flowers” by Van Huysum in a Stone Vase c.1720

Aims of the Festival

Speaking about the project Ingrid Beazley explains: “This event is about building bridges between contemporary street art and classical art by introducing new audiences to both genres. We hope that these sensitive and carefully thought out murals on the walls of Dulwich, referring to works in Dul- wich Picture Gallery, will inform all who view them and inspire people to enjoy both artforms”.  Richard Howard-Griffin, founder of Street Art London: “Dulwich Picture Gallery was established as the first public art gallery in England in 1811, a very radical notion at the time. It is an honour for Street Art London to sustain and highlight this legacy of public art in Dulwich and England by working with the world’s top street artists to bring these amazing works outdoors to a fresh new audience.”

Thierry Noir
Will be reinterpreting “Joseph receiving Pharaoh’s Ring” by Tiepolo, Giambattista’c. 1733-3

Phlegm
Will be reinterpreting ‘The Judde Memorial” by the British School (1560)

The Line-up in full 

Street artists participating in the festival are:

REKA (Australia),
Conor Harrington (Ireland)
ROA (Belgium)
Dscreet (Australia)
Thierry Noir (France)
Mad C (Germany)
RUN (Italy)
Malabroccca (Spain)
Phlegm (UK)
Agent Provocateur (UK)
Remi Rough and System (UK)

Over the nine day festival murals and installations based on the works of masters such as Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665) and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) will go up all over Dulwich, on walls of all sizes and shapes.  Some murals are going up in Dulwich as we speak so stay tuned for updates!  Installation street artists Christiaan Nagel (S. Africa), Pablo Delgado (Mexico) and Ben Wilson (UK) will also be contributing their own special reinterpretations to the festival.

Exhibition

Many of the participating artists have also taken residence in a large house at a secret location moments away from Dulwich Picture Gallery. Here they have used the entire fabric of the building to create a unique installation of works. There have also been one or two special guests at this house already such as The Rolling People.  This house will then be opened to the public for just one weekend over 17-19 May.  We will be releasing further details of this exhibition over the coming week.

Here are some sneak previews into the Dulwich Street Art Festival House:

Pablo Delgado:

RUN:

The Rolling People: 

Screenprinted Poster Release 

RUN has kindly created a unique very limited three layer screenrprinted poster to commemorate the Festival.  These will be released by RUN and Street Art London at the Baroque the Streets Exhibition House and online at 3PM on Saturday 18 May. (2 colour A2 screenprint on 310 gsm paper, £20.  Extremely limited extra colour ways and designs will also be available)

Village Underground Wall 

The streets of East London will also be getting a flavour of the Baroque in the shape of May’s iteration of The Village Underground Wall.  Fresh Spanish street art collective Malabrocca, which encompasses some of Spain’s best known street artists, will be reinterpreting A Castle and its Proprietors by David Teniers, the younger c. 1650 on the legendary East London  wall.  This will be happening as part of the Festival between 11-15 May so those in Shoreditch, keep your eyes peeled.  This iteration of the  Wall will continue Street Art London’s programme in collaboration with The Village Underground.  This project has thus far featured the likes of Pablo Delgado, Phlegm, Kid Acne, Thierry Noir & Stik and most recently The Rolling People.  You can get more details of this particular project here.

Dulwich Picture Gallery (est. 1811)

Please stay tuned for updates on The Dulwich Street Art Festival.
For more information please email: press@streetartlondon.co.uk or iab@streetartdulwich.org.uk

Images from Dan Witz.

How did you get started in the street art scene?

I got started doing street art in the late 1970’s as an art student in downtown New York City. Back then, the idea was that if the world was a fucked up place that desperately needed changing, and contemporary art (and art schooling) had miserably failed us in this respect, then it became our job as artists to not only challenge the system but also change it. Much as I enjoyed museums and galleries, they were part of the problem: clearly exhibiting paintings on some white wall somewhere wasn’t going to change many minds. So, in search of more immediate impact, most of my friends started bands, and I did that for a while too, but I was a painter at heart. Inspired by the awesomely graffiti subway trains, I started going out tagging (or my version of it).

When describing your work, what would you say are the main themes?

If there was a consistent theme running through the past 35 years it would be a wish to stop people in their tracks and make them go, “WHAT THE FUCK?!!?”. My style is suggested somewhat by theme (content), but more so by my need to avoid getting caught and arrested. For my first real street project, in 1979, I painted tiny realistic hummingbirds. Each one took about 2 hours to paint. New York City was such a chaotic mess back then that if I was quiet and kind of hunched over and folded my shoulders in, I could paint in public without anyone paying too much attention. In the 80’s and 90’s I made complicated multi-image sticker installations, each with it’s own intricate airbrush shadow painted on the wall. Installation was a complicated choreographed maneuver and could take up to a half an hour. I could get away with this if I worked in marginal (low income) neighborhoods and was mindful of what walls I chose. But, starting in the late nineties, with the zero police tolerance in NYC brought on by gentrification, I absolutely could not be seen in the act so my style was forced to adapt. The pieces I do now are made in the studio and installed on site, usually in under a minute. This need for speed has forced me to develop new techniques and – and I love the irony here – these technical innovations have given me the means to do much more street art than if the authorities had left me well enough alone.

What are your favourite materials to work with?

It’s a mix. I’ll use anything. My goal is to make it seem as if a real person (or whatever) is there. These days I start with digital media then paint over it using all the tricks of illusionistic painting I know. Mostly it’s glazing and contours and colour technique but I’ve really come to love the airbrush. No street piece of mine is done until I’ve touched it up a bit with the airbrush. Honestly, I’m not really sure why this works so well, but it’s super gratifying when I step back after airbrushing and everything snaps into 3-D.

What has been your most challenging and/or rewarding piece of work thus far?

The summer of 2012’s  Amnesty International collaboration in Frankfurt called Wailing Walls. That was the biggest, coolest thing I’ve ever done. Also, in 2010, Gingko Press published a monograph on my work, Dan Witz: In Plain View. 30 Years of Artworks, Illegal and Otherwise. Usually I’m not so pleased with published stuff about me, but I was very proud of this.

How do you go about creating your street art? How do you choose a street/environment?

Usually my ideas stem from a reaction to the last thing I did. With new pieces I try and amend the failures and shortcomings of the preceding project. Every time I begin a series, I don’t consider it successful until my previous year’s work looks obsolete to me. This can be challenging at times, but for once my chronically restless and dissatisfied personality turns out to be useful – my work keeps evolving and stays fresh and I’m usually pretty psyched to wake up in the morning and get to work.

As far as choosing where I put my stuff, that depends on several factors. First, my subject matter, where it’ll have the most resonance etc. Then the actual object and how it needs to be installed, and, as important as anything, is location: the pieces should be where the most people can see them – but where they won’t be too vulnerable, or where I won’t get caught putting them up. This last part involves a complicated calculus that is actually as creative a part of the process as anything else.

You’ve been creating street art since 1979. How has your work and the idea around street art changed since then?

When I started out I began using a simple message in a bottle approach to making street art. Location and placement were mostly random: the main idea was that free anonymous art with no promotional agenda existed. In the early 2000’s when street art started getting popular, this strategy got to be increasingly difficult, so I began conceiving and planning my work differently.  Rather than competing for attention on the public commons, I tried to make my installations so subtle and so integrated into the urban environment that they were practically invisible. Nothing was more satisfying to me than having hundreds of people somnambulate by my very obvious faux grates every day and not see them. Part of this came from my punk-rock background, my bite-the-hand-that-feeds-me need to twit the bourgeois-zee, but also this was my way of responding to all the brilliant new artists redefining what it meant to be working on the street.

All along street art has never been a means to get ahead for me. I still believe in anonymous, not-for-sale art as a meaningful response to art-world art – a genuine game changer. And I still enjoy doing it, everything about it, especially penetrating into places that conventional art making can’t.

Have you ever been arrested?

No. Or I should knock on wood and say, not yet. The law of averages gets me stopped by the cops every now and then, but thankfully they’ve never taken me in. I’m waiting for the day when they’re sitting in their car checking my license and one of them decides to Google me. You’ll definitely be getting those annoying legal-fee fund raising e-mails from me then.

What attracted you to the streets of London?

Mostly that I was brought here by Lazarides Gallery, and before that by StolenSpace. But I’ve always enjoyed working in London. These days, next to NYC it’s my favorite city to do street art in (or on, or to.) For one thing, the light in both places is very similar, which really suits the emotional temperature of my work. Also, when you get up close in London there’s a grit in the pores that’s a lot like New York’s. Since I’m usually transplanting a NYC grate, my pieces feel at home.

Why do you have such an interest in prisoners?

With these pieces the disenfranchised characters and grate imagery made perfect sense – they were a logical expansion on the previous years’ projects. As I began working though, I sensed a connection to a larger theme, I just had to do my daily easel-sit and paint my way there. Usually this blind alley way of going about my business would have been fine, I’m in no hurry and I’m not really one of those artists who is known for one kind of work and has expectations to fulfill. But for these pieces I was employing models, and we needed a story to work with. Also, with my production process being so complicated and time consuming (and expensive now) months of fumbling around has become impractical.

So while in the midst of this gestation phase, Amnesty International contacted me to collaborate on their 2012 campaign in Frankfurt. It was a perfect match. I’d already been painting prisoners, but the hook was that now these would literally be prisoners. More than symbols, these were real people with names and case histories.

I mentioned earlier that this was the coolest thing I’ve ever done. The best synergy ever, probably because it was about more than me, or art.

Why choose to transform phone boxes (in London).

Yeah, I was worried about this. I mean this had the potential to be corny or wrong footed, but honestly I just love that red so much I couldn’t help myself. And the prisoner imagery always seems to trump my reservations. Also the phone booths fit my code for defacement – in that they’re not really necessary anymore and so ubiquitous and taken for granted that they’re almost invisible. I’m pretty satisfied with this piece. Maybe because it was so difficult and challenging, what with the winter weather, the cameras, the weird traffic warden spy-guys, and the fact that those things are built like WWI battleships and are impossible to drill into. It wasn’t until my third try that I finally got the piece up, and as usual with me, overcoming obstacles and hardships makes the result a lot more gratifying. I should thank that traffic warden dude for chasing me off the first time. I would never have had the guts to put this one where I did if I wasn’t cold and wet and totally fed up.

What do you do when you’re not creating art?

We have a 16-month-old kid.

How has your style developed through out the years? Have you always preferred to paint in a super-realistic style?

Yeah, I’ve never felt a need to express myself in any other way. On one level all my work over the years has been about exploring what realist painting can do that no other visual media else can – what’s intrinsically unique about this way of painting. In the past I’ve used my representational skills to create the illusion of light and space and movement, which I’m still into, but these days it’s mostly about The Presence – that moment when you’re there, and you suspend disbelief and surrender yourself to the universe of the painting. This is what has always excited me about looking at art – that crazy moment when you leave your body and go down the artist’s rabbit hole to places unknown.

What are people’s reactions to your work? Have you ever had bad reactions?

Of course, doing street art is by nature an act of cultural aggression. That said; I understand that I’m working on the public commons and try my best to use discretion. But that said I’m still a punk. The most game changing part about the punk movement was that they didn’t care what anyone thought about them; they didn’t give a fuck about pleasing anyone and (sometimes, actively) even wanted you to dislike them. At the time this was a revelation to me, and really freed me from a lot of craven ambitions and hang-ups. So if everyone was happy about my work I’d be worried about it.

I think I mentioned this earlier but last year when I was using some pretty dark imagery I tried to make it so integrated into the environment that 99% of the people passing by wouldn’t even notice it. This was a lot more fun than it sounds. No one ever saw my pieces. And they were right out there in plain view. Watching everyone walk by oblivious to a naked chained prisoner two feet away from their faces was one of the most perversely satisfying experiences I’ve ever had doing street art.

Has the stigma attached to street art ever put you off?

Depends what stigma you’re referring to. Back in the 80’s and 90’s before many people were doing street art, the art world tended to look down on people like me. There was a general feeling that this was outsider’s art, and trained artists did it because they wanted attention and couldn’t get shown in ‘real’ galleries. There was even an insinuation that maybe we were even a little crazy (and not in a fun way).  But I’ve gotten used to being condescended to by arts professionals. In fact, whenever some smug curator type in silly eyeglasses gives me that armored “I’ve never heard of you” look, I get this private little puff of glee inside of me. I can’t help it; it’s like getting a secret glimpse of some endangered species – the emperor with no clothes. Although, I’d be dishonest if I didn’t admit that sometimes it crossed my mind that they might be right about me being crazy.

These days, doing street art has become such a hipster cliché that I suppose I should be embarrassed that I still do it. I’m not. Basically I’m too lazy to worry about hipster clichés.

What is your main reason for making art?

Do I have a main consistent reason for making art? I’m not sure. If I do it’s nothing too profound. Probably it’s something prosaic like, “it’s what I do best”, or “it’s all that I’m capable of anymore”. Over the years most things non-art related in my brain have atrophied away. Seriously, it’s cobwebs in here.  Dirty diapers and dried up old palettes, that‘s all I got.

Is there anything that you dislike about the street art scene?

No. But I’m pretty insulated from the crass commercial side of the scene. And for the most part the artists I meet don’t seem to be threatened by me. Probably because I’m old. And I’ve never hit the money which seems to be when the friction and trash-talking starts. The truth is, my new work takes so much time and energy that I don’t have much attention span left over to worry about career politics or much else. And that crazy kid keeps me pretty busy too.

Thanks Dan. 
Street Art London
DanWitz.com

Christiaan Nagel is a South African artist, been based in London since 2007. We, at Street Art London, last featured Nagel’s public artworks in this post here a couple of years after they began to appear in London. Now we take a slightly deeper dive into the artistic universe of this mysterious artist. At first glance, the sculptural works of Nagel contrast with the wider milieu of street and public art to be found in Shoreditch presented two dimensionally on walls and subsequently the artist’s influences subsequently appear to be more diverse and distinct from his artistic peers in Shoreditch.

Christiaan Nagel ‘Mushroom’ in Hackney East London, 2010 

Richard Artschwager blp installation at the New York High Line (2012) as part of the public programme of Artschwager’s retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum

When looking at the works of Christiaan Nagel it is impossible not to draw an association with the late Richard Artschwager’s blps work around public space. Artschwager’s blps were black or white lozenge shaped panels that when applied to surfaces in the public realm that sought to draw attention to hidden buildings and structures inviting the view to look at their lived environment in a differently. In the same way Nagel, by installing his mushrooms in high and seemingly inaccessible locales around Shoreditch continues this tradition of wonder within one’s own city. The illegal and guerrilla approach that Nagel has adopted challenges established power structures around the ownership public space with Nagel also quite literally aiming to be at the top of any given structure.

Christiaan Nagel ‘Mushroom’ in Cape Town

Yayoi Kusama ‘Pumpkin’ in Naoshima, Japan 

A marked contrast however between Artschwager and Nagel is the latter’s liberal use of colour to break up the monotony of the city. The multi-coloured and botanical setting of Nagel’s artworks conjure aesthetic comparisons to the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s  iconic pumpkin series as do the analogous subconscious origins of the work. The symbolism of the mushroom form is kept hidden by the enigmatic Nagel although some origins around its discovery are known to stem from his inner psyche. Nagel was raised in Durban, South Africa during apartheid in a highly conservative and internationally ostracised political regime.  As an escape, Nagel gravitated towards an embryonic South African surfing counter culture and it is during this time is known to have experimented regularly with psychedelics derived from indigenous African plants.  Nagel has hinted that his obsession with the mushroom form arose through open ended experimentations in his board workshop with expanding surfboard foam while experiencing strong inner hallucinations through the use of psychedelics. Shortly after this breakthrough in 2007  Nagel would leave Durban for good to settle in London.

Christiaan Nagel ‘Mushroom’ Berlin, 2012. In dialogue with Berlin graffiti 

Upon arriving in East London in 2007 the South African transplant was immediately influenced by the artworks and buzzing art scene around him notably the early works of Banksy and Invader. Thus far Nagel’s psychedelic experimentations with mushroom sculptures had been contained to his surfboard workshop in Durban but such new artistic influences prompted him to venture out and start illegally installing them atop building and structures in Shoreditch under the cover of darkness. Two decades of surfing in the Indian Ocean had conditioned his body and honed his sense of balance. Nagel translated these attributes into a skill for free climbing buildings and structures in East London. Rapidly this public practice became Nagel’s obsession and he would spend days scoping out fitting locations for his mushrooms later returning at night to install them by scaling the building with a mushroom artwork affixed to his back. Over the course of 2010 and 2011 Nagel proliferated East London with mushroom sculptures and though this practice, Nagel met and formed associations with other artists such as STIK and ROA who had already developed international reputations at this point. Over time Nagel would be gradually drawn further into this nascent underground art movement, adopting its conventions, concealing his identity and joining other artists in spreading his Mushrooms internationally to cities such as Paris, Berlin, New York and Los Angeles.

Thierry Noir painting The Village Underground Wall (Feb 2013)

Why did you move to Berlin in 1982?

I moved to Berlin for one simple reason – because I couldn’t find my way in France. I was fired from every job I started. After a while I said to myself, I have to change something in my life, because if I continue like this I’m going directly into a dead end. I didn’t want to be unemployed. So I thought to myself, I have to change something radically in my life. At that time I had heard a lot about West Berlin, about the music. There were a lot of new wave groups. A lot of people had to live in squats because there were no flats. The new mayor of West Berlin said, “If I am elected, I promise I will clean all the squats from Berlin”. So he got elected in June ’81, and from that point on there was a big battle in West Berlin about housing, with a lot of police and violence. It was in the news everyday in France, so I said to myself let’s go there, let’s see what’s happened. So I started from nothing, with only two small suitcases. I came with an address, but after a few days some guys said to me you have to find something else. I was really on the street, with only my two suitcases, and I started from zero to live in Berlin.

Were you interested in art before you moved to Berlin?

Not really. I started to remark in West Berlin that everybody I met was an artist. So I thought, what a great city – I never met one artist in 20 years in Lyon, and now in one week I have already met 20 artists. I said to myself lets continue in this way; somebody asked me ‘Are you and artist?’ and I said ‘yes’.

The view from Noir’s bathroom in the 1980s (Photo: Thierry Noir)

What was it like living so close to the wall?

I found this house and lived there for 20 years. It was a youth centre – it’s still a youth centre. It was a former hospital but was abandoned because it was so close to the wall. The city of Berlin decided to make a modern, new hospital far from the wall. So in 1971, this hospital was still empty, and a lot of young people decided to occupy it and live there. There was a big battle with the police – one part of this big hospital was still a squat, and in 1978 it was legalised as a youth centre. When I came in 1982, it was already a youth centre, very close to the wall, and it was very special to live there. It was absolutely not like Lou Reed said in his song, ‘It was so nice, it was paradise…Dubonnet on ice’. It was really aggressive to live so close to the wall. Nothing happened really, but at the same time a lot happened, because this melancholic life was very aggressive against the brain. I thought I was getting a little bit crazy with this life by the wall, and 2 years after, in 1984, I decided spontaneously to start to make something on the wall. I got thousands of questions, everyone wanted to know something about this, because it was new – there were no big paintings on the wall, and everything which is new is a little bit disturbing. Everyone wanted to know at first, ‘Who pays you?’ That was the first question.

(Photo: Thierry Noir)

Why was it important for you to paint the wall?

It was like a delivery, to show that I am stronger than the wall; I can paint it. I had no idea about the political aspect of the wall, because at school in France we never learned anything about the wall, about that system of West Berlin surrounded by a wall, with East Germany inside. I had no idea what it was all about. Some people were very aggressive because they thought I was paid to make the wall beautiful. I had to stop sometimes and answer them, saying, “No you cant make the wall beautiful because it is a deadly border, and even if you put thousands of kilos of colours on the wall, this wall will never be beautiful.” It was important to repeat this all the time, because it was very emotional at the wall.

Another view from Thierry’s window over East Berlin (Photo: Thierry Noir)

So, did people respond badly to you painting the wall at the beginning?

Yes, they insulted me and treated me like I was a spy from France. It was like this at the very beginning until 1987, when Wim Wendors started to make his film ‘Wings of Desire’. It was an international success, and the Berliners started to think about what the paintings on the wall are all about, and then suddenly it was another time. In Russia, Gorbachev wanted to change the system, and even in the GDR it was different. Some new guys in the GDR wanted to change things, so it was a new time.

(Photo: Thierry Noir)

Did you see it as a revolutionary act?

It was a political act to paint the wall – even if you made pee-pee on the wall it was political (laughs). It was forbidden to paint the wall, so in a way it was a revolutionary act. At the same time, it was a mutation of the culture in Berlin, because it was impossible to find another place in Europe with kilometres of painting in the middle of the city. It was bizarre to see, like in Potsdam when suddenly the full moon would light the wall, and it would come up like a 3D object. It was something special, that wall. In another way it was a mutation of nature. The wall was 45 kilometres long between East and West Berlin and it was like a big camp for rabbits. There were thousands of rabbits between those 2 walls. They were very clever because they were sleeping in the East and then eating in the West, some leftover kebab and pizza left by the tourists, like at Potsdamer Platz.

Noir at the Wall in the 1980s (Photo: Thierry Noir)

Why did you paint in that particular style?

That style of painting came because I couldn’t finish my painting because of thousands of questions – everybody wanted to know something. I said to myself, I speak longer than I paint, so I cant finish what I want to do. So I started to develop a style of painting where it is possible to paint and talk at the same time!

Did your speed respond to the danger?

There was danger in certain places, like for example Checkpoint Charlie, because it was well guarded, and it was near certain places where there was a small door in the concrete – in those places it was dangerous to paint. But near our youth centre, it was okay because we knew the border. The wall was not a border, but was 5 metres behind the real East-West border. It was important to know where this line was, as it was dangerous even just to run over those 5 metres.

(Photo: Thierry Noir)

What do you think of some current street art which takes much longer to paint, with lots of intricate detail, i.e. artists such as Phlegm or ROA.   Do you think it needs to be spontaneous to have the same effect?

You can’t compare this Berlin wall art with this art in London; it was different. The Berlin Wall was not an art project, but a deadly border. It very often happened to me that I made a big mural in the afternoon and one stupid ‘Michael’ put his name in front of my nice painting, and I said to myself, ‘Fuck you!’ I was upset, and then I thought what can I do? Shall I sleep in front of the wall? So I started to adapt to this situation in my painting. It’s often legal to paint now, so its okay if it’s complicated. But at that time it was impossible to do complicated things.

(Photo: Thierry Noir)

Are the designs symbolic?

Yes, they are now in a lot of countries a symbol of the new freedom in Europe. There are pieces of the Berlin wall almost everywhere now, in Los Angeles, New York, Yokohama. It is a symbol of the new freedom that is not coming from the sky, freedom that is not given to you, but that you have to fight for. If you look now on Wikipedia, you will see new walls all around the world. The speech of the new wall-makers is ‘do not compare these with the Berlin wall, they are nothing to do with it’, but I think, of course it’s the same, a wall is a wall and the reason is different but the wall is still there, and one day this wall also will disappear.

Noir’s segment of The East Side Gallery in Berlin (Photo: Thierry Noir)

Why do you use such bright vivid colours?

This is my way to paint; I don’t know why I do it like this!

Do you have any influences?

Oh yes I have influences. The weather for example, is very important, if its raining or not, if its winter or summer (laughs). And influences from everywhere – television, comics, the Internet, former painters.

Noir’s iconic imagery at the East Side Gallery in Berlin (Photo: Thierry Noir)

You said that your aim was to make the wall ridiculous in order to destroy it. Why use this form of political dissent rather than an overt political slogan?

There were already a lot of words on the wall. There were 3 categories – against the US army, every 5 metres ‘US go home’; a lot of racist comments, ‘Turkish go out’, and a third category were funny slogans and personal words. So I thought to myself, this is enough, I don’t want to do any more writing, so I did what I could do, and that is to paint.

You also said that ‘The wall created in Berlin an atmosphere of urgency, which gave artists the feeling of trying to survive.’ Do you think that in that way the wall acted as a catalyst for art? Were other artists responding to the wall in a less direct way?

The point is that the German artists never painted the wall…there was a kind of taboo I think. The German artists never wanted to paint, and also the normal population of Germany came once or twice per year to the wall and that was it. Maybe it was because I was a foreigner that I started to paint the wall. I heard that some people even made detours with cars not to drive along it…there was a very special atmosphere. Maybe because it was a shame, I don’t know. This wall was very strong for a German, stronger than for me because I came from France and I did not have this pressure.

Memorial in Berlin featuring Noir’s artwork (Photo: Thierry Noir)

In your opinion, how has street art changed? Is it still a revolutionary act?

Street art is new because at that time it was called graffiti. Now it is street art and now it is also commercial. I see in Berlin, every year for fashion week, Levis has a big event for street art, so I think the commercial aspect of street art is strong now. It is also legal to paint on the street. When I started it was not, there was not even any graffiti at all in Berlin at that time. There was some writing on the wall, but on the street there was almost nothing. The street art movement is very strong now, not only in London but everywhere. You can see graffiti in the Caribbean now. Even in China – a TV team from Hong Kong came to Berlin and we were talking about graffiti in China, which is very new. It started in 2008 with the Olympic Games in Beijing. At that time, to prepare for the Olympic Games, a lot of old houses were destroyed. People came in the morning and told people, ‘Okay, you have one hour to go’, and then they destroyed everything. After that people start to put big writing, graffiti on those houses, saying ‘stop’ in Chinese letters to protect them.

You were talking about commercialisation. I know that Peugeot and Mazda have used your designs. What do you think of them using your designs as symbolic of freedom?

It speaks immediately to the young generations. My work being used for advertising is the price to pay. Lawyers have to say if it is alright or not…I don’t want to think about it much more after that.

Noir and Stik painting The Village Underground Wall (Feb 2013) 

What do you think about current politically charged street art, like that of Banksy? Do you think street art can still have a political message or has the proliferation of street art in recent years undermined its ability to do so?

Of course, street art is political. Like I said before, in China, and also in Chile, in Santiago. When Pinochet took the government in 1973, his army broke the hands of painters so they could not paint anymore. I went to Santiago in 2009 and there are now a lot of paintings on the street that are very political.

How did your experience of painting the wall change after it fell? Tell us about the East Side Gallery.

The East Side Gallery is completely different because it was done in 1990 after the fall of the wall and it was not dangerous to paint. It was not a border anymore, so you can’t compare it. It is now more an homage to younger generations, to say look at the wall, the wall was not an art project; please do not repeat the mistakes of your parents.

The completed collaboration between Nour and Stik in Shoreditch, East London

What was it like to paint the east side?

It was very special to be on the other side and to paint the wall. The East Side Gallery is a large avenue which was at that time the way from the airport to the centre of East Berlin, and the East Side Gallery was also made like this to tell those VIPs that the wall will stay for a long time; it is very strong. So now it’s very special to walk along the wall, with thousands and thousands of people every day who come from all over the world. Everybody wants to write something on the wall, even if its not allowed. But that’s okay.

Noir painting in Shoreditch (Feb 2013)

Tell us about the time when Keith Haring painted over your murals on the wall.

Keith Haring was invited at the end of October 1986 by the Checkpoint Charlie museum to paint 100 metres of the Berlin Wall. The thing was, I had painted this spot of the wall with another French painter called Christophe Bouchet. We had wanted to paint 100 statues of liberty at Checkpoint Charlie for the celebration in July 1986 of the 100-year anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in New York. We did not have enough money for this though so we painted only 44 statues (laughs). But it was something! To paint at Checkpoint Charlie was very rough, because that spot was very guarded, by soldiers, by Stasi, by checkpoint police. It was not Haring’s fault because the Checkpoint Charlie museum had organised that five people would prepare the wall for him in the early hours, and when Keith Haring came at 11 o’clock it was already all yellow, but it was very bad quality so you could see our strong statues of liberty behind. He told me after he had wanted to stop, but it was not possible because a lot of press and television was there, so he had to start to paint over our murals. But it was okay!

Another wall by Noir in Shoreditch (Feb 2013)

Do you still paint walls in Berlin?

Yes, I have painted maybe five times now the East Side Gallery again and again, because it is very damaged by thousands of people every day. Everybody writes their name on the wall, from all over the world. When I go back to Berlin I have to repaint three big heads I have done in Schöneberg.

How do people respond to you painting now?

Now I am a classic. It’s completely different than when I started to paint. People don’t insult me anymore!

Noir below Steve ‘ESPO’ Powers at The Village Underground 

What street artists in Berlin do you like?

It’s hard to tell, there are a lot of street artists. I don’t know all the names. I like those two big paintings by two brothers from Brazil…Os Gemeos.

Noir at the end of his visit to London 

Do you see yourself as a forerunner to contemporary street art? Do you think of yourself as part of that scene or separate from it?

Yes, I am a part of this scene, of course.

What do you think of the London street art scene?

I don’t know very much because this is my first time here in 20 years!

How do you think street art fits into the wider context of contemporary art?

Street art is coming into galleries more and more; it’s great. I saw today in the newspaper that Banksy’s wall sold for £500,000 – some piece of concrete from the street. This shows that there is a lot of value behind this street art. Galleries see that you can make money with it, and they run after you and ask you to make a vernissage… it’s impossible to stop it I think. 

Link: Thierry Noir at Howard Griffin Gallery

Street Art London is hosting the iconic Berlin street artist Thierry Noir as he makes his London debut. Noir is a forerunner of the modern street art movement, famous for being the first artist to continuously decorate the Berlin Wall illegally from 1984 to pre-empt its ultimate fall in 1989. Street Art London is joining forces with prominent London street artist Stik to welcome Noir and introduce his art to the walls of Shoreditch and Dalston. The culmination of Street Art London’s programme of events will see Thierry Noir combine forces with Stik in painting a collaborative mural on the prestigious Village Underground Wall. On the 21st of February Noir and Stik will be exploring the continuum of street art history, the old school and the new school, within the broader context of art history at a talk in association with Street Art London and The Courtauld Institute of Art at Somerset House.

Thierry Noir & Stik, in conversation

Noir and Stik, in this public talk will explore their own artistic experiences, motivations and influences. The purposes, origins and future direction of street art will also be debated and considered by both artists. The talk will be chaired by Richard Howard-Griffin (Principal of Street Art London) and Hannah Zafiropoulos (Courtauld Institute of Art).

The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, London, WC2R 0RN. 21 February, 7:30PM (drinks reception afterwards).
Tickets free but limited. RSVP to hello@streetartlondon.co.uk. Signed editions of screenprinted commemorative Thierry Noir and Stik poster (detailed below) will be available at the event.

The Village Underground Wall presented by Street Art London 

Noir and Stik will follow on from Pablo Delgado, Phlegm and Kid Acne at the Village Underground Wall presented by Street Art London. The mural that both artists will paint together will form a very special collaboration as kindred styles and ideologies from distinct generations meet face to faceon the same wall.
19-20 February, Holywell Lane, EC2A 3PQ.

Thierry & Stik, ready to paint (Street Art London, Berlin, October 2012)

Thierry Noir

Thierry Noir was born in 1958 in Lyon, France, and came to Berlin in January 1982. In April 1984, Noir began to paint the Berlin Wall with Christophe Bouchet, in order to perform one real revolutionary act: To paint the Berlin wall, to transform it, to make it ridiculous, and to help destroy it. They covered the wall, more than 3 metres high, with bright, vivid colours, aiming not to embellish the wall but to demystify it. In Berlin, Noir lived metres from the Wall – his vivid murals were both a personal response and a poignant political statement.

Noir by the Berlin Wall in the 1980s

Painting on the wall was absolutely forbidden; it was built 3 metres beyond the official border so the east-German soldiers were able to arrest any person standing near it. Noir had to paint as quickly as possible, using the recipe of ‘two ideas, three colours’ as a celebration of the ‘eternal youth’.  Despite their bright colours and playful nature, the murals leave a lingering sense of melancholy: As Noir says, “I did nothing but react to its sadness”.

The view from Noir’s bathroom window in the 1980s

After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, his paintings became a symbol of new-found freedom after the reunification of Germany and the end of the Cold War.The fall of the wall gave birth to the East Side Gallery, a 1.3 kilometre stretch of wall upon which 118 artists from 21 countries applied their designs. In 1990, Noir painted 16 of his infamous faces on the wall, leaving a lasting testimony for future generations.

Thierry Noir on the streets 

Stik

Stik painted his characteristic figures on London streets illegally for years and was instrumental in raising the British public’s appreciation of street art. Today, he paints murals across the UK, Europe, Asia and America in association with organisations such as The British Council, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Amnesty International and the Big Issue Foundation.

Stik in Berlin (Street Art London: October 2012)

The Berlin Wall in 1990

Sheffield 2009

Kid Acne’s art can be seen on walls all over the globe. The Sheffield-based artist is best known for his comic-like illustrations and larger-than-life slogans. He recently completed his biggest London mural and Street Art London had the chance to sit down with this one-man-army to pick his brains. 

(All images save London 2013 are Kid Acne’s)

Why did you choose the phrase “OH MY DAYS” for the Village Underground mural?

I’ve been painting phrases for a while now. I probably did the first one around 2007 / 2008. I made hip-hop music for a number of years and when I was in a phase of making a lot of music I wasn’t really painting that much. I would write lyrics and ideas for songs in the back of my sketchbook and after a while I noticed I was writing more words in my book than I was drawing pictures in it. I thought I should really use them for something, so I started painting these slogans.

They’re just every day phrases that people say. I think it is nice to paint things that people can relate to, plus it has a lot of impact. Initially, it was almost as though the buildings were having a conversation. I painted one on my old art college before it got knocked down that said “You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone”. I’ve always had it in my head that if I did a slogan in London it would say “Oh My Days”. People don’t really say that up north, so for me it’s a typical London phrase. I like painting big, bold stuff. It’s a good excuse to paint letters without having to write my own name over and over again.

Sheffield 2008

I’ve always liked drawing. I just copied my brother – we used to draw a lot of stuff and I was never really into sport. I guess I developed the style that I’m known for now before I was really into graffiti. When I did get into graffiti, I tried to do what I thought was “graffiti style”. I soon realised that I was just replicating what other people had done and that they had done it much better before as they were the originators of that style – so I started doing graffiti in my own style, which was more illustrative. Since then it’s been about trying to refine that style or at least get the proportions right. I look at some of my old pieces they’re really lopsided, like they’re in a hall of mirrors.

You’ve mentioned before that you’re illustration style is something you adopted from your brother at a young age. How did your brother influence your style exactly?

Our style of drawing is just very similar. When I draw a character the facial features consist of one line for the nose, one for the mouth and two for the eyes, and that’s it. I don’t draw nostrils, eyebrows or extra detail. My brother and I used to draw in that style as kids and I got it from him – he’s two years older. The characters I paint now relate back to the drawings we did when we were four or five years old. I’ve just stuck with it. Same with the lettering style that I’m painting on the VU wall – that’s what I used to do on our gig posters, on the back of our record sleeves and in my comic books. It’s basically my own handwriting on a larger scale. There are a lot of really talented people that paint stuff in the street but they often take characters from other people’s comic books or they take typography from other sources. I like to present my work in my own style, no matter how simple it is.

Rome 2011

They’re kind of like a hybrid between B-boy characters and Fantasy Art, as well as children’s book illustrations. It’s all merged together. Sometimes I paint animals, a lot of the time I paint these female warrior characters, and other times I paint weird, random stuff.

I can’t really remember but we used to play tricks on my dad using our ‘magic powers’. We used to bury his cigarettes in the garden because we wanted him to quit smoking and stuff like that. So normally it was just like weird, silly little games. It was more about the idea of having a different persona or identity I guess. That idea has translated over to our art and music – it’s what we’ve always done, created different personas for ourselves or whatever.

Prolific people. People who paint all the time. Eine was painting around the corner while I was doing the VU wall and having people like that around helps to motivate you. I guess that’s my biggest inspiration – like-minded people who are consistent at what they do. I don’t want my work to be too refined; it becomes contrived when it’s too perfect. So, as much as I want my paintings to be neat and well done I also want them to be quite loose and raw. That’s another thing from doing graffiti, you have the mentality to do more stuff rather than one perfect thing.

Paris 2012

I started writing Kid Acne when I was fifteen and a spotty teenager. I had other names before that but I also wrote ‘Acne’ as a tag. A lot of hip-hop artists had ‘Kid’ in front of their names so I just took that idea. It’s was one of a number of names, but it was the one that stuck. I’ve been Kid Acne for almost 20 years now.

Sometimes it does but other times I might paint a wall just as an excuse to take a photo of the stuff around it. The wall I just finished (Village Underground) is a really good shape and size for doing big typographic stuff. Other artists have done more intricate paintings on there but it’s right by the train line and a lot of people walk past it – so for me, it’s good to go big and bold on something like that. I like big and simple stuff, but it all depends where the wall is and what mood I’m in.

I’ve definitely enjoyed every city I’ve ever visited to paint. Ultimately, it all merges into one – You’re stood in front of a wall painting and that’s it. After I did a bit of travelling a few years ago I started painting these slogans in Sheffield. I thought, “You know what, it doesn’t really matter where I am in the world”. Most people are going to see the work online anyway. It might sound cool to say “I went to Brazil or China or wherever” but actually there are loads of good walls where I live so I now paint more in my hometown. It’s nice to travel but I think it’s good to make use of your own surroundings. I don’t really paint in London very often because I feel like there’s such a big scene here already and the walls don’t tend to last that long. I can do the same piece in Sheffield and it might last three or four years.

Munich 2010

You don’t think there’s something to be said for the ‘outsider’ bringing a different style or perspective to a city?

Yeah, it’s all good – but I think some people only want to go where there’s already an established scene – it’s like jumping on the bandwagon to get recognition through association. I feel that building a scene in my home town alongside a small group of artists has more longevity in a way as it’s something we can all feel proud of and responsible for. I’m not responsible for the London scene – I’m just a tourist here.

Paris has a wicked scene for example and as much as I like painting there I’m not going to start trying to compete with all the artists who actually live in that city. It’s cool to travel but it’s also really good to paint where you live and push that above everything else. That’s what I feel I’ve been doing over the years, there’s a bit of a vibe up there now and it’s cool.

The museum show I did a couple of years ago in Sheffield. It was a big deal because it was my first show in my hometown. It was the biggest project I’ve worked on and over 50,000 people came to see it.

Barcelona 2009

I never expected to do a museum show but I don’t really think about it as such. There’s always someone else who’s bigger than you or more famous and there are always others who are up and coming. I try to concentrate on whatever project I’m working on at the time and once I’ve finished that project I move on to the next thing.

(Laughs) Yeah sure, all the time. I’ve got it now while painting the VU wall. Some people hate it, some are indifferent, but if you try to appease everyone you end up diluting your output and start second guessing everything. Once you do that your integrity and individuality goes out the window. When I’m painting in the street I know the public is going to see it so I want it to look ‘well done’ at least. Other than that I can’t really worry about what people think of it or if it lasts or not.

More people know about street art now but there are still the same arguments and controversies that there were 20 years ago. People are still in discussion about whether it’s art or vandalism. In a lot of ways it hasn’t really changed at all. It’s just that more people are aware of it now and have an opinion on it. I guess one thing that has changed is the documentation if it. There’s no denying that it exists! All the hype around street art has had a sort of knock on effect to graffiti writers too. People have started looking at their work more as a result. Across the board you have so many different styles, you have some people who are very accessible and commercial and some who are very off-key and niche. I think that diversity is really good. In the beginning of the hype around street art – people were only really interested in the accessible stuff but now I feel they’ve started to actually look at individual artists more.

Sheffield 2009

I can’t imagine not doing it – it’s part of my life. It’s not always in the street but I’ve always painted and made stuff, from music to illustrations, exhibitions, printmaking and fanzines. I sort of switch between all these different things, which keeps me occupied. I have a few creative outlets in that sense.

Definitely. They used to be very separate but now they all kind of merge together and it’s more harmonious. There have been times in the past when I was battling one thing against the other but it’s like having conflicts for no real reason. No one has asked you to do this stuff, you’ve chosen to do it – so it’s better if you’re happy about it I think.

In the beginning the music and art started off as the same thing. They were both ways of presenting imagery and narrative. All the lyrics were similar to the style of drawing and they were telling the same kind of story. Then they started going off in different directions. As soon as that happened it felt like I couldn’t do both, I had to do either one or the other. I stopped doing artwork altogether for a while, and then I stopped making music for a few years and now I think I’ve got the balance back.

London 2013

There are certain elements in what I do that are quite commercial or easily accessible and there are other parts that are not. For me, it’s about finding the right balance. As soon as people started saying “Oh I love those characters, they’re so cute” I started making them less cute, or I’d stop painting them for a while. Not to deliberately sabotage my own work, but as a means of switching it up and keeping things moving.

At the minute I seem to have gone full circle, both my painting style and music is not that dissimilar to what I was doing in the late 90’s. I spent a lot of time exploring various ideas and now I think everything is cool and I’m happy with what I’m doing again.

What do you think about the rise of interest in street art?

There are various components that make something fall into one category or another, but there are always individuals on the periphery of whatever that is and they’re usually the most interesting. They’re doing their own thing regardless of fashion. Even if you didn’t like their stuff at the time, you tend to look back and think, “Oh yeah, that was cool. Their stuff was really different” and they’re the ones who get remembered. “Street art” and “urban art” is irrelevant in many ways. If you paint a wall in the middle of a field, it doesn’t become “field art” or “rural art” all of a sudden, it’s just art – either good or bad.

London 2013

If you couldn’t be creative and had to choose any other profession, what would it be?

I would be an archeologist digging up bones with Time Team.

I’ve been working on this animation called ZEBRA FACE so that’s been a pretty big project for the last 18 months or so. It’s nearing completion. Other than that – I’m just painting, making fanzines, music and staying out of trouble.

Kid Acne become the latest artist to participate in Street Art London and Village Underground’s Wall Project with one of his signature slogans – OH MY DAYS.  Acne’s piece cements Sheffield’s early domination of the Wall since he follows fellow Sheffield based artist Phlegm onto the wall.   Working in brutally cold conditions Kid Acne managed to get the piece up over three days and even had time to put up some signature Art Fags on the carriage ends atop the wall with Dscreet.

This latest piece represents the next step on the way to establishing the most prestigious street art wall in the world in the heart of Shoreditch.  Each month or so Street Art London and Village Underground will invite a leading street artist to the Wall.  For all the info on the project head over HERE.

The finished wall: 

About Kid Acne:

Kid Acne is a versatile artist, born in Malawi, Africa, and today based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire alongside fellow artist Phlegm.  He began painting graffiti outdoors aged 12 and has been active in that arena for over 20 years. Kid Acne’s creative output transcends myriad genres encompassing fanzines, animation, graffiti, street art, muralism, screen printing, hip-hop and music production.

He has exhibited his work all around the world.  Acne brings his signature visual aesthetic to his work on the streets which is extremely varied and diverse. One thread of his street work involves painting huge, jocular slogans around the globe in his own handwriting.  ’OH MY DAYS’ on the Wall being another addition to this already extensive body of work. Kid Acne is also known for his mischievous ‘Art Fags’ and his Stabby Women characters which pop up wherever he should travel.

Street Art London will be featuring an in depth interview with Kid Acne over the coming days.

The making of the Wall: 

Rush hour in the morning on Day 3:

Carriage Action. 

Kid Acne and Dscreet also got up on the carriage ends atop the Wall.  Two classics: Kid Acne with a quiver of Art Fags and Dscreet with an Owl (his first in the UK this year): 

For even more on the Kid Acne OH MY DAYS wall.  Head over to the Village Underground Wall presented by Street Art London site HERE.

Here is a round-up of the Broken Fingaz‘ most recent work on the streets of London.  The fulcrum being a collaboration between crew members UNGA and TANT on the walls of a derelict pub close to Shoreditch.  Impeccably executed, it shows off three frames that are typically  characteristic of Broken Fingaz’s unique styles.  This, and other recent works, build on an already impressive catalogue from the Crew’s last visit to London in May 2012, recorded here, and which notably includes their accurate and vibrant mural along Hackney Road.

TANT was around in London a little longer than the rest of Broken Fingaz and also got up a number of fast black and white frames around Shoreditch the night before he jumped on the plane to get back to Israel.  We haven’t put all of these frames in this article and those in Hackney Wick and Shoreditch should keep their eyes open for more.  TANT and UNGA also put up a piece on Bishopsgate, close to the Square Mile.

About Broken Fingaz Crew 

For those unfamiliar with the work of Broken Fingaz, they are Israel’s best known graffiti crew and hail from Haifa in Northern Israel. Broken Fingaz consist of four members who are DESO, KIP, TANT and UNGA. Their style is incredibly unique and builds on a range of talents and disciplines within the Crew such as illustration and design. They work with a distinct colour palette and visual aesthetic often working within frames betraying their backgrounds in illustration and comics.

Check the Christiaan Nagel shroom..

Broken Fingaz Crew at work

Here are two of the ‘frames’ that TANT got up shortly before jumping on the plane back to Israel

Two quick portraits by UNGA and TANT respectively, close to the Square Mile, typical of Broken Fingaz’s style and aesthetic 

Having completed the big wall at Village Underground as part of Street Art London’s curated project on that wall Phlegm moved onto the front Village Underground walls on Great Eastern Street.  Here he produced a context specific piece on the four panels relating to the characters portrayed on the other side.

This marks the end of Phlegm’s week long trip to London, during which he managed to get up some fantastic work.  This piece follows on from RUN back in December 2012 and of course sits below the iconic slogan from Steve ESPO Powers. (ESPO’s piece formed part of his A Love Letter To You Project which originally comprised of over 50 large uplifting typographical murals along the elevated train line in Philadelphia and since spread to other cities including London and New York.)

This wall is part of Street Art London’s collaboration with Village Underground, check it out —>Village Underground Wall presented by Street Art London.

More photos after the jump.

About Phlegm 

Phlegm is one of the most exciting street artists in the world. He is known for his intricate, precise black and white style through which he portrays fantastical characters and creatures from his imagination. Initially Phlegm started out as an illustrator, producing hand-crafted zines and books. Soon he began to transplant the worlds and stories that he created on paper to the outdoors on a huge scale.  Phlegm hails from Sheffield and this is where the bulk of his work is to be found. Long abandoned warehouses and factories around the Steel City’s hinterland house immense and rarely discovered murals.

Phlegm at work:
Outlines:

Details: