Thursday 24 November 2011

know your banksy from your roa from your stik?

we were planning on doing the london harry potter tour. who knows, maybe we’d have found platform 9 and three quarters. but it just didn’t have enough…street cred. instead, last weekend poxymash had the pleasure of going on the london street art tour, spending saturday afternoon wandering the streets of shoreditch in the cold winter sunshine and taking in the numerous pieces of social commentary that can be found on the surrounding walls.
street art has risen in popularity, rather like a wizard on a rampant broomstick, with well-known figures such as banksy commanding six-figure sums for a single piece. there are now many new, lesser known yet exciting artists decorating the walls of cities around the globe, such as roa, who is responsible for the skeletal bird below. a prolific belgian painter, he has spent the past year travelling the world, imparting his intricate animal pieces onto approximately seventy cities.


we also heard about stik, who in contrast to roa has maybe left london once in the last ten years! as such, many of his simple, yet emotive stick men can be found all around london. we saw numerous eine lettering pieces, such as this large r, next to a face by stinkfish below. ben eine recently shot to moderate fame when one of his prints was gifted by david cameron to barack obama.

if you are looking for a way to see the alternative side of london then we thoroughly recommend this tour. and if you’re worried about our lack of hogwarts experience, towards the end of the tour we actually walked past voldemort actor ralph fiennes!
[callum dickson]

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