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Published: November 3rd 2012
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Walls have Ears. In Shoreditch they do! Shoreditch - home of the cool people – the Hipsters. We’d seen the new Scottish reincarnation of the Hipsters at the Roundhouse the night before, as Deacon Blue closed their UK tour. Shoreditch where big game roams the walls, if not the streets and the little people can still make an impact at ankle height. We went on a Street Art tour, which was not so much necessarily 2 hours of history and painted walls, but a lesson in opening you eyes to what is around you. Look high, look low, look for the big and small and the unusual. The Alternative London Tour comes well recommended on that well known travel review website and with good reason. It's technically free too, but donations are welcome. People have rent to pay, but there was no pressure. Pay what you can or what you feel it was worth.
The tour starts and ends in Spitalfields Market. Meet the man at the white goat, just past the fat cats earning their big bucks in the nearby corporate jungle. We had already had a walk around the Markets and a few of the streets adjoining Brick
Lane and ironically the tour started to retrace our steps. The worth of being with a group of random strangers was revealed within a couple of hundred yards, as on the same route we probably saw 5 times the art as we had 15 minutes before. The ones to watch out for are those at kerb level by Pablo Delgardo and the unusual little sculptures from Jonesey.
We made our way on to Brick Lane, originally occupied by the Huguenots and then subsequently by the Jews after the waves of immigration from Eastern Europe to London. Whilst there remains the odd bagel shop and rag merchants, it is difficult to miss that you are now in Bangla Town. The shop businesses are now dominated by the curry houses - all 52 of them in this concentrated area. The touts were out in force on a quiet Wednesday lunchtime, although it would be difficult to tell the difference between the establishments. A lunch special was on offer at most - £6.95 for a starter, popodums and pickles, curry, rice or nan bread. We pressed on with the tour.
The smaller street art needs a keen eye on occasion to
spot, but there is no missing some of the larger works by Roa. Giant animals cover the entire sides of buildings - clearly the work of an artist with a head for heights, a large step ladder and a lot of spray paint. We later learned that a cherry picker is the state of the art tool for these boys. Painting this high up can have the added advantage of putting the body of work out of the reach of the other exponents of art in the neighbourhood - notably the tag boys with their meaningless to the uninitiated eye graffiti messages.
As you head north on Brick Lane, it is crossed by the once dominant employer of the area - the former Truman Brewery. The brewery went out of business in 1988 and is now the home to a conglomerate of small business, exhibition spaces, pop up shops, bars and all things trendy. Street Art features, but it is more of a showcase centred on one of the remaining Banksy works left unmolested in this area of London. Shepard Fairey had a pop up gallery, in which he has an exhibition f a collection of works for sale
Jimmy C
...........Adelaide's finest to those with a wall (and wallet) big enough to hang them on! The walls had plenty of empty space, where the cheaper small prints had moved on from to decorate somebody's flat. The remaining choices weighed in at anything from £1,500 to £40,000. VAT was extra by the way! Who needs clever marketing campaigns, when you have a pop up shop near Brick Lane. We popped in for a look after the tour and left with a small free promotional poster. It's not the same, I know! The Truman Brewery is also home to the Rough Trade East store. As a vinyl emporium, I found it a bit disappointing. It was no Sister Ray in Soho, but it does have the bonus of regular appearances by live bands promoting their wares. We were please to note some socks of a designer friend in the window of another pop up shop – he would be pleased to see his Universal Works creations at the forefront.
The Truman Brewery gives way to the vintage scene, with a multitude of shops selling recycled clothing and other stuff. We passed more Jonesey, C215, a giant Roa hedgehog and the artist who has
become famous as the first to be hung in the White House. It is not literally mind - just a gift from Sam Cam and David to Barrack and Michelle. Ben Eine is apparently a widely admired expert screenprinter, (who holds the unofficial world record for the number of colours across an edition - 77 across 200 prints), is a mate of Banksy and five convictions for criminal damage. He is also now presumably shifting bucket loads of over priced material to all willing to pay. The world of this street art is fluid, so you might look at some of my photos and not be impressed with what is on display. However, by next week it could be a totally different scene – some works last a day, others months. I must apologise to the artists who I couldn't remember - so the labels on the photos are either wrong or just not labelled at all!
The political theme was quite ironic, given the day before. We were first in the queue for the public gallery in the House of Commons, having failed miserably to snap up any tickets for PM's Question Time on the Wednesday. Jack Straw
said “Good Morning” as we waited on our green leather bench, before climbing the stairs to the Strangers Gallery for a Health debate. Andy Burnham set about successfully savaging the new Conservative Health Minister, Jeremy Hunt. If it was boxing, it would have been stopped! The art of not answering questions for an hour is a real skill mind, so it was ultimately honours even and everybody is mates in the bar later. The big question remains as to why MPs bob up and down like a meerkat on watch. We thought about saving the badgers in the next debate, but we had an appointment at another House - this time across the water at the National Theatre. Philip Glenister aka Gene Hunt was doing an "Audience" on the set of his new play, The House. The play was sold out, but this was the next best thing. As he said, politics is acting for ugly people - their chance to play up to the cameras, which summed up the morning. It was a worthwhile experience even if to only hear him say "Fire up the Quattro"!
We were back in Old Street on the evening for the re-emergence
of Lisa Stansfield at XOYO - a bar with a small club in the basement. Too cool for words again, but to see Lisa in a small venue - pure heaven! The voice still remains - she launched into the back catalogue before slipping into some perspective new album tracks. It was so good, more words fail me!
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
SENSATIONAL
Sensational street art in this blog...well done