My unfinished Elate piece by me with help from Jenny and Drew, featuring  1962 rolling stock  fill and featuring personal additions from Envy, Time, Keen 53, Sharn.E, Prime WRH, Wish, Part Two, Fuem ACR, Carl 131, Merc, Coad 5, Fuel, Kis 42, Fued, Colt 45,  Cazbee DSS, Hit and Urge. People competed over the best spots on ‘the train’ to hit, just like in the old days, it was lots of fun…here’s the view across the river Thames from my spot…

After last years Covent Garden ‘writers bench’ reunion was so well attended and instantly became the stuff of legend, the organiser Keen 53 and Sian decided to take it to the next level and take it to a spot where we could all paint our own pieces with tunes ,a barbeque a gazebo and all the necessary bits and pieces for an amazing day out, but miles from anyone who might bother us and in a spectacular location ….

  A 7.30 start is a bit much normally but this was good.

…and a trickle of new arrivals…

…kept arriving… 

…until we had our own little mini festival going !!

There were so many oldskool writers painting and loads of legends passing through that it was hard to stay focussed on your piece for more than a few minutes until the next reunion, introduction and retelling of cherished stories …

Nearly everyone there was first/second generation (mid-late eighties) London train writer but there were some honorary additions to the roster who all helped to make it a magic day full of real golden moments that will be remembered forever by all.

In attendance were untold legends from Londons’ rich graffiti history of urban and street art, lost in the mists of time but resurrected in the sun to the live the dream once again….

the line up just went on and on as you walked…. 

  ….and seemed to go on for half a mile or so….

…. oh the joy of really not being sold anything … no stealth marketing, cynical serial media re-launches, product placement, fake posturing and definitely no toys, bandwagon jumpers, brown noses, me-me-me-ism,  investment strategies, gimmicks or hype (yawn)….

…instead we had over fifty legendary street and urban transit artists and true blood Hip Hop pioneers including Keen 53, Sharn E, Chic, Desire, Envy, Cop 205, Fuel, Prime, Colt 45, DJ Dexter, Bap, Kis42, Brave 1, Skore, Crok, Shye 131, Rave, Urge, Part 2, Crane, Time, Hit, Carl ST, Merc, Coad 5, Fume ACR, Cazbee, Doze, Ebs, Care, Owed, Kee, Fued 28, Rite, Crok,  Freehand, Urge, Ebee, Keylow, Jyer, Kem, Mef, Trans 1, Arian WD, Hert, Steam 156 and many more…..

…the art priceless @  $A-Dime-a-Dozen.00

 …the smiles and camaraderie heartfelt, contagious and refreshingly universal…

….our vocational thirst tempered by maturity and wisdom…

…the styles diverse, names earned and skills hard won…..

…and the day featuring absolute legends and cornerstones of global urban art history, some of whom were out painting for the first time in quarter of a century…

… ‘respect the architects’ I read on a certain brother’s shirt….

…never was a truer word worn…

….Elate and ‘OAP’ (old and proud) by Keen 53…

Freya, a dedication piece to her daughter,  by Sharn.E and a quick stick-up by Kis42

 Higher by Cazbee- nicked from his Flickr cheers Caz, great that you’re back out painting…

Big respect and mad love for all who reached and all those who didn’t make it but should have been there, see you next time, thanks a million to Tony and Sian for organising everything and hooking up so many legends in one amazing spot…

Praise be to the weather fairy for the sunshine, was soooo better than last years hailstone thunderstorm washout…. ta for listening gal you dun good dis time. Respect lol

For two weeks we relished the bliss of perfect English midsummer in the most mystical part of the country, Glastonbury, where ley lines meet and legends were born, in The Vale of Avalon, the ancient mythic gateway to the heathen goddess; a place of pilgrimage for millennia.

I was onsite with the team of militant revolutionary dreamers and genius engineers known as Arcadia, easily the best sound system around and quite possibly the greatest show on earth.

Their meticulous attention to detail and fantastic organisation extends to the busy site canteen who kept me fed and watered with an ever-changing array of fresh veggie delights and herbal teas….

I painted anarcho punk slogans since 82 then graffiti at the birth of UK hip hop in 84, onto London’s tube system in 86 through the golden age of train graffiti moving to acid house backdrops in 89. The nineties and new millenium saw me painting at traveller squat parties and Reclaim the Streets protest raves. Throughout the quiet renaissance of classical, surreal and visionary oil painting I was at the easel and fused my skills back with graffiti in Shoreditch in 2009 then onto MuTate Britain with the Mutoid Waste Company in Ladbroke Grove under the Westway…

Now in 2010 I feel glad to have played a small part by painting for the next underground zeitgeist, one which takes influence and energy from all those phenomenon and more, but boldly maps out a new frontier that is purely its’ own…ARCADIA.

Like all underground revolutionary movements the gold rush is for the inner treasure. The ultimate reward is the accomplishment of the dream and the actualisation of the idea. At Glastonbury 2010 Arcadia surpassed all expectations and reached dizzying new heights of inspiration, engineering, teamwork, sculpture, music, lighting, pyrotechnics, performance art and energy as this film shows….

The Build

When we arrived onsite the Afterburner stage was still in its early stages, the ‘legs’ of the spider are actually scrap from customs xray machines that used to scan containers and lorries. Pure genius…

The core of the beast is expertly manoevered into place…

…and it shows its’ face.

In keeping with Arcadia’s militant branding and apocalyptic atmosphere I did the line-up board using their trademark stencil lettering, and carefully distressed the fragments of plane for that ‘hauled out of the swamp 5 years after the crash’ look….

…with lots of help from capable hands.

The entrance arch is a couple of modified plane wings, possibly from a glider, it’d been rubbed down to the bare aluminium so to keep the burnished metal intact on the ‘pipes’ I used Belton’s amazing transparent black spray paint to get the relief modelling without losing the wonderful texture which gleamed from underneath as the sun caught the metal…The design was finalised between myself and Pip Rush and based on carvings on an ancient Aztec  temple….

Here’s a video of the build in progress.

The line-up boards go up….

I then cut back over the black with Belton’s burner chrome to get a contrast against the aluminium and carefully painted the pop rivets and ‘crazy paving’ seams by hand.

Pip was keen to use my ‘Circuit Splat’ style so I modified it to pure abstraction with a vivid tribal background on some pieces of aeroplane scrap to hang behind the massive ‘Arc Bar’, the sun was pounding down…

After painting ‘til twilight the lights go on on the new Afterburner for the very first time and the eerie entity blinks into life.

Next day the crew finish building ‘stage left’ so I can start the piece.

Across the field the punk tent takes shape

After being branded with the Arcadia logo by their prop maker and effects guy, Simon, he begins work on the dirty-metal-effect background for my piece….

…and I start blocking in the arrows. Some respectful inspiration drawn from amigo Keen One here, but in 3 dimensions and distressed with a strong Elate/Arcadia twist….

….and lots of rivets, seams, gleams, glints and the Arcadia logo in the centre….

….everyone seemed to really like this.

Here the graffiti began to fuse with scrap art by Simon and Sam…

Finally after sweat and dedication, blisters, sprains and minor sunstroke Arcadia opened on Thursday 24th June 2010 to the public ….

  …who went nuts….while many crew take the opportunity to sleep until rested before re-emerging to enjoy the weekend.

My art at the Arcadia Arc Bar ‘scuse the poor shots

You could feel the heat on your face from the other side of the field. Experience Arcadia, they’re doing amazing things.

I’ll let the Lords of Lightning sign off this post as only they know how.

All pictures of Arcadia build by me and Jenny apart from a few select shots of Afterburner show and Glastonbury used  with permission Creative Commons and taken by Luke Blackmore, lusciousblopster, mark-vauxhall, medalliamagpie, Tangentical, fussy onion, Al Green midlander123 and bfirsh; thanks to all.

Massive thanks to Pip and Bertie and all Arcadia crew.

Now he’s back 20 years later, along with oldskool steel writers Fuel, Skore, Mear, Crok, Don myself and a few of London’s more new skool to take the vibe back to the raw, enabling a potent and complementary mix of the hardcore underground vibes and tribes….

and back inside for another shot of me and Vibes….

……and onto the wild, diverse art within, here’s Jimmy South of War Boutique

Lyle Doghead, LRRY and friend

Elate, Obey

Anarchist Crockery by Carrie Reichart

In Dog We Trust by Jolly Good, made with real dollar bills…

  Vera Bong

Dotmaster

The toilets…

New Arrivals…

What I have posted is a fraction of what is there, you really have to get down to this 12,000 foot space and experience the most revolutionary art happening London, probably even the world has ever seen.

The future is unwritten!!!

The Mutate Britain shop is now online check it here!!!!

Families are welcome to this multisensory extravaganza!.

Full dates and opening times below. We look forwarding to seeing you!

Opening times:

Opens December 4th to December 20th – FRI / SAT / SUN

Fri – 2pm -10pm
Sat-1pm – 10pm
Sun – 12pm-9pm

We are also open 2 Wednesdays for the Portobello Winter Festival on the 9th & 16th December – 6pm -10pm

FRI & SAT (NO ENTRY AFTER 9PM)

SUN (NO ENTRY AFTER 8PM)

£2 before 6pm / £3 there after’

www.mutatebritain.co.uk

www.mutatebritain.wordpress.com

facebook mutatebritain

www.myspace.com/mutatebritain

Here’s some more pictures from the MuTate Britain Winter Show. I’m going to be adding a whole load more as a separate post at the weekend at some point as I need to rephotograph stuff to a half decent standard.

This has to be one of the best art exhibitions anywhere ever in my humble opinion and I’m very glad to have had a hand in it….If you like your surrealism apocalyptic your graffiti groundbreaking your grime genuine and your people straight up this is the place for you…..We kick of with Rubbish Fairy and House of Doll

Mear

Skore TRC

Crok

Achy

Towns

Fuel

Joe Rush

   Elate Vibes Lyle Doghead and LRRY and Pakka

Lyle Doghead and LRRY and Pakka with plane by Sam Haggerty and Dotmasters

Teddy Baden

Joe Rush

Wreckage International

Joe Rush and others

Sam Haggerty

War Boutique

Joe Rush

Sam Haggerty and Joe Rush

Obey Giant

Wolf and PXL

Andy Seize

Elate Vibes

Dotmasters aka Bagsy

Sam Hagarty and Dotmasters

Liam Cordy

Joe Rush

Mutoid Dave and others…

Elate Cazbee

Pure Indulgence

Families are welcome to this multisensory extravaganza!.

Full dates and opening times below. We look forwarding to seeing you!

Opening times:

Opens December 4th to December 20th – FRI / SAT / SUN

Fri – 2pm -10pm
Sat-1pm – 10pm
Sun – 12pm-9pm

We are also open 2 Wednesdays for the Portobello Winter Festival on the 9th & 16th December – 6pm -10pm

FRI & SAT (NO ENTRY AFTER 9PM)

SUN (NO ENTRY AFTER 8PM)

£2 before 6pm / £3 there after’

www.mutatebritain.co.uk

www.mutatebritain.wordpress.com

facebook mutatebritain

www.myspace.com/mutatebritain

‘One Foot in the Grove’ is back from the 4th of December.

‘Our festival of underground art provides a welcoming, inclusive and visually astounding experience for all ages in an atmospheric 12,000 square foot setting just off Portobello Road. Walk amongst giant sculptures, installations and unique artwork and hang out for good times at our licensed bar with proper music and delicious grub.

We are featuring loads of new work including an epic wall by Elate, Vibes and Obey Giant that cracks and crumbles the Westway to rubble before your eyes!

There’s new work by Joe Rush, a giant collaboration by Sam Haggerty and Dotmasters, new pieces by Teddy Baden, Wreckage, Seize, Code FC, Bleach, Best Ever, Zadok, Fuel, Skore, Crok, Mear, Towns, K-Guy, to name but a few, also light installations, lasers, stalls, bric a brac, curios, and anarchist crockery.

We have rehung our gallery room that offers exclusive posters, prints, originals, sculptures, photography, clothing and object d’art that make perfect prezzies for you and your discerning friends and family.

We provide that much needed alternative to the Xmas chaos of Oxford Street – so don’t miss out on the best show in town.

See giant fire-breathing robots walking, drink at our licensed bar, see and hear film shows, trains thundering past and experience an authentic friendly festival vibe in the heart of London.

This promises to be London’s biggest, most inclusive, interactive and underground street art event this Christmas.

Families are welcome to this multisensory extravaganza!.

Full dates and opening times below. We look forwarding to seeing you!

Opening times:

Opens December 4th to December 20th – FRI / SAT / SUN

Fri – 2pm -10pm
Sat-1pm – 10pm
Sun – 12pm-9pm

We are also open 2 Wednesdays for the Portobello Winter Festival on the 9th & 16th December – 6pm -10pm

FRI & SAT (NO ENTRY AFTER 9PM)

SUN (NO ENTRY AFTER 8PM)

£2 before 6pm / £3 there after’

www.mutatebritain.co.uk

www.mutatebritain.wordpress.com

facebook mutatebritain

www.myspace.com/mutatebritain

New Elate graffiti at Stik’s street art event in Mile End, East London that finishes This Sunday see blog post with full details here

Sorry for the lack of pictures and updates on this event, my camera broke, so many thanks to Art Of The State for stepping in with this, check his excellent website and blog for more pictures of this show plus lots of amazing underground and not-quite-so-underground art plus awesome photos of punk bands in furious action.

I have a new camera now so expect to resume normal service.

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It runs to the end of the month in which time it will be transformed…..Stik will be painting live onto panels that line the building, so will myself, aswell as Fuel (Cold Crush Dukes), Spat (1Time), Ted Baden (Mutoid Waste) Milo and many others.

Come down for a cuppa and shoot the breeze ‘til you’re bewildered with a load of solvent damaged compulsives; you could even take a panel home to build a funky BMX ramp for the wife’s Christmas present or maybe even that kennel for the Vicar’s pitbull….(or you could just stick ‘em on the wall, yawn…)

Here’s Stik’s Press Release

Silhouettes with spray-cans glinting in the darkness have long journeyed through the East End to the austere walls of the rail arches in Mile End, an underground showcase of underground art.

Now, in broad daylight, the elegant new Mile End Arts Pavilion opens its doors to some of the most notorious graffiti artists in East London.

This unique venue offers the opportunity for you, the viewer to observe from behind glass or get down and dirty with the artists painting LIVE! (Protective masks are available on the door)

Each week will feature a new wave of artists, sourced locally with a smattering of special guest painters.

Show is open each Wednesday to Sunday from 12-6 pm

Wednesday 4^th November – Sunday 29^th November.

Press Day Saturday 8^th November

Stik

Stik curates the show and appears in it. Featuring in the Mutoid Waste Company’s current headlining event in Ladbroke Grove under the Westway, Stik is also the alternative artist featuring in this week’s Big Issue Magazine.

Whilst producing murals for authorities such as Waltham Forest and British Waterways, Stik’s black and white figures have illicitly been lurking in the cityscape for almost a decade.

Stik is proud to present a hand-picked cross-section that showcases some of the most talented and innovative artists on both the local and global stage.

Elate

A graffiti writer from London’s 1980s heyday Elate’s vision transformed and he has painted classically in oils for the last 20 years under his real name, Jon Hammer.

Now Elate is back painting the streets of East London fresher than ever. Inspired by his surreal and apocalyptic discoveries in the studio he is truly pushing the limits of the art form.

Fuel

Universally regarded as one of the true Kings of London’s ‘Golden Era’ of train graffiti, Fuel’s multi-coloured emissions are once more adorning the public domain.

Milo

A Brazilian artist prolific on the streets of East London, Milo takes an abstract figurative approach relating to nature, human behaviour, the mind, its’ movements and ways of manifesting. This results in dense, mind-boggling colour-scapes.

See Milo’s online shop here

Spat

For the last 12 years Spat has enjoyed exploring and painting the streets and derelict wasteland and tracksides of east London. Initially a pure-street ‘graffiti-bomber’ in recent years he has progressed to full colour pieces, commissions and screen prints.

Teddy Baden

Teddy Baden is part of the Mutoid Waste collective, his compulsions and love of dogs led to experimenting stencilling techniques, using varying sizes and characters of over four hundred breeds; viewing them almost as ‘alien creatures’ Teddy shows an interest in the ‘hairy ones’ almost like someone would tree types or cloud formations.

Run

In a style of his own Italian artist Run uses brush and roller to create giant, polychrome heads and faces on the streets for which he has become known and widely published.

Also appearing ;

Snoe, Smaki, Grems, Stenzilla, Suns, Roots plus many more to be confirmed.

Stik’s brand new blog is here

For those that haven’t heard, the exhibition One Foot in the Grove by Mutate Britain is currently on under the Westway, Ladbroke Grove, West London; each weekend until November the 1st 2009, 12-10pm.

The Westway is where the UK graffiti scene started in earnest when the Clash bought Futura 2000 there to paint in 1982.

The Mutoid Waste Company are a travelling band of punk-squatter mechanic artists led by Joe Rush that infected the acid house party movement with their dark and surreal bio-mechanoid humour, building scrap metal  wastelands and delirious mindscapes in a shock juxtaposition of realities guaranteed to give any trip a hair raising edge.

Think Heironymous Bosch versus Tron and you’re getting somewhere…

Inspired by the desolation of the 80s to escape into a parallel post apocalyptic universe they inspired a generation to create, myself included.

Some of the best acid parties I attended in the late Eighties and early Nineties had input from the Mutoid Waste Crew or their many splinter groups Circus Irritant, Circus Warp, Splattered Fantasy etc,  these plunged my young, impressionable and highly expanded consciousness into a Bermuda Triangle of anamorphic archetypes, cyborg spectres and grotesque apparitions in parody of human and machine form, fractured and echoed by laser and strobe, syncopated and shaken with deafening electronic bass.

The vibe was always intensely surreal, the most outrageously attired and hideously painted forms appeared from the flickering fog in theatrical convulsions, the music was the most twisted repetitive acid, deep and tribal, which stripped the senses gradually to total derangement, beat after pounding beat, until finally at one with the music the chaotic environment and your inner world became one.

Now twenty years later the Mutoids are under the Westway, and it’s not a squat, the police are not outside, the pounding house and techno has been replaced by an eclectic mix including ragga, reggae, punk, soca and rockabilly and the sweating, swaying trance-dancers have grown into bespectacled media professionals pushing buggys.

They still roll out the 303 acid sound when the fire-breathing machines get loose though…

Their amazing signature art, friendly warm family atmosphere and tongue-in-cheek vibe is however present in abundance, accessible and inspirational to the whole family, exhibited together with an array of street and graffiti art, so when I was asked to come and paint a wall I was honoured to oblige, being able to give something back to the community that gave so much inspiration to me in the mad days of the late eighties and early nineties!

It was very short notice so I improvised with some graffiti letters with a twist ….

There is no doubt in my mind from the captivated expressions on the faces of their visitors that their inspiration will grow into new and exciting ideas in years to come.

 Lyle Doghead and Lrry

Oh and by the way everything is for sale!

All photos by Jenny

So in their own words….

Below you will find details of how to get there and when it’s open. It’s one of London’s biggest underground art events ever. So don’t just hear about it, watch the video, read the info, explore the blog and get down to the show! We promise to look after you with our fully licensed bar, delicious food and inclusive festival atmosphere. There honestly, really and truly is no better way to enjoy art.

Open on : FRI 12-10pm / SAT 12-10pm / SUN 12-9pm

Ends: 01.11.2009

Location: 3-6 Acklam Rd, London, W10 5YU MAP

Entrance: £1 before 6pm – £3 thereafter

Website here Mutate Britain

This one is on Brick Lane, East London, at number 194, Bar 2012.

Filmed and produced by Writer’s Block for Dont Watch That! TV

writers block – elate on MUZU.

See more videos at the Writers Block Youtube Channel