Across The Tracks and Through The Looking Glass

ONE FOOT IN THE GROVE ‘Christmas special’

‘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’

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My good mate, the inimitable Stik, launches his very first art event this week in the East End in the very posh sounding Mile End Arts Pavilion a stunning gallery space with a glass frontage overlooking a small lake.

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

Before

After

They are working their way around from Sclater Street to Bacon Street  buffing everything. Anyone painting on the remaining space is told to stop immediately and move on or be arrested.

I will be posting a memorial superpost featuring the best and the worst moments of this fantastic free space in the coming days.

It will be sorely missed by all and no doubt replaced with a mess of tags and throw-ups.

 

Many thanks to Hip Hop and Graffiti documenter and archiver Skire for allowing me to use shots from his amazing archive.

It’s thanks to people like him we can look back on a golden era.

This shot features vintage London handstyles including an old Elate tag at the legendary and much missed Groove Records in Greek Street, Soho, the Mecca for Hip Hop’s early days, and pretty much the main dispenser of all the Hip Hop Electro imports from the US in the mid eighties, and where I spent most of my money back then, starting in around 86.

The Groove Electro charts were our ever changing bible, and mainstay of the Mike Allen show on Capital Radio, the pioneering spirit behind UK Hip Hop.

This place was pretty well hit in those mad old days, as anyone who knows London’s graffiti history will see from the tags…

It’s nice to see my handstyle in its’ transformative phases, (starting with a small e and ending with a capital E at this point!) It’s on the top of the door frame below Rogue and above Noize for those having trouble….

 Also I can make out Drax WD, Jinx WD, Rogue, Crime, Up2, Dare2, Noize 207, Fuel, Daube, Cane 1, State of Art and Rome ACR amongst others I’m not 100% on. The piece was by the legendary Fade 2

If anyone else has any old Elate flicks I’d be very glad to hear.

The London Handstyles book is out now featuring tags by a selection of London graffiti writers from the mid eighties to the present, many who were considerably more prolific than myself. The launch party was on Friday in Rarekind Gallery below Chrome and Black graffiti art supplies shop on Bethnal Green Road by Brick Lane.

It was great to meet certain influential oldskool legends for the first time and to hook up with old friends.

The book is for anyone who wants to know more about the roots of the movement, reminisce about the mad old days or learn how to bomb their name effectively. Here’s a few shots from the party- I’ve posted pics of the handstyles rather than the heads who write ‘em.

 

 

 

Buy your copy and see pages from the book here

 

 

 

Libertine’s in Sheraton Street, off Wardour Street, Soho, held an exhibition celebrating 25 years of graffiti by legendary old school London writer Skore on Thursday 16th July.

Unfortunately it was only open for a couple of days and by the time you read this post will be long gone. I thought I’d upload some shots anyway…

There were photos of Skores work with a great piece by him in the reception area, with some characters by Crok. It was great to see so many old faces there and was the start of a mad evening that descended into chaos back East…. Read Skore’s personal history of London Graffiti here

Keep an eye on Skore’s unique and eclectic work here…

more shots after the jump…

Last Saturday 27th June I went along to the Covent Garden writers bench reunion to meet up with some very old friends, put some faces to old tags and drink some beer. The day started well with glorious sun…..

I started hanging out there in 1986, but it had been a meeting point since ‘84. Every Saturday afternoon through the late eighties it was a hive of activity with often over 100 writers signing blackbooks, showing photos and planning missions to get paint and then on to the train yards.

It was one of the first places in London to have proper graffiti art on the street, the work by The Chrome Angels on the hoardings around the Royal Opera House. As a young inexperienced writer it gave me a focal point  to meet up with those with more experienced, make friends and be taken along on various missions.

The sun was however short lived and the day took on a dramatically different turn…..pictures continue….

When we all went off to paint together at Tufnell Hall of Fame that changed very quickly….The heavens opened and what followed was a torrential hail, thunder and rain storm of epic proportions…

This was the size of the hailstones ricocheting around our shelter spot, every now and then over the roar you’d here a surprised ‘Ow!’ or a ‘Eek’ as they found their mark…it was like being pelted with icy stones.

After about half an hour of this the heavens really opened and it turned to torrential rain, before long the trees provided no cover at all and deafening  thunder and lightning broke out directly overhead so by now fearing a direct strike and utterly drenched we made a dash and hid in various bin rooms and people’s porches. It carried on like this for about another half hour.

 

 

We emerged from our cover soaked to the skin but laughing to do some tags and take some shots. It was a brilliant day and certainly one to remember and laugh about even more in years to come. After this we all went to the pub and I dried off under the hand drier and carried on. I hope to see more old faces at the next one, but better weather next time please…

Massive, massive respect to Envy, Colt 45, Sham 59, Dj Dexter, Mess, Prime, Coad 5, Reez, Dev 666, Crane, Shoom, Time, Jano, Baps, Mear, Urge, Crime, Keen53, Don One, Fuem, Merc, Fued, Dsia and anyone I missed…Legends All !

 

Please note the ‘rant’ that previously accompanied this post has been removed for revision as it appears that some people completely misunderstood my point….

The Painting

In this painting I have gone back to the gritty roots of UK graffiti, to show where it all started, tags, throw-ups and early pieces on London trains.

The images from New York in the book Subway Art and the film Style Wars had radicalised fertile minds in 1984 where it incubated, mutated and developed through  important years of early bombing. By 1986 London writers had become numerous and dedicated enough that most trains were running with live graffiti on them and confident enough to concoct identities and assimilate styles more independently of New York influence, by now using our own indigenous cultural references and attitudes.

This is when our scene really began in earnest as a uniquely London phenomenon rolling on the oldest underground railway in the world. Pieces got bigger more beautiful and more original, raising the bar higher and higher.

This painting is not meant to be a complete list of London’s graffiti pioneers but features many of London’s legends. I’ve painted it from my own personal memories with input from my pal Envy, one of my old bombing partners, and from my experiences of the yards (particularly Loughton)  between 1987 and 1989.

Anyone who spent any time in the yards of London in the late eighties will instantly recognise the vintage rolling stock, layers of stains of old tags on the panels, empty cans on the gravel, and spookily quiet atmosphere in this painting.

It’s based on Loughton train yard. Check out the leaves around the outside and the trees to the left, it could be accessed through bushes and this was one of my favourite views of the fronts of the rolling stock as emerging.

I have put people’s tags and throw-ups in the places I remember them hitting wherever possible. I realise there are discrepancies that purists will notice, (I have included certain writers who didn’t actually hit that yard) but it’s not meant to be historically accurate more a ‘dream-yard’.

Featured writers are Robbo 484, Doze, Prime and PIC from WRH  We Roc Hard crew. Envy, Jano, Kis 42, Coma and Dsia from CD Criminal Damage, Elk and Drax from WD World Domination, Cast and Fuel (who kindly did his own F throw-up on the canvas) from Cold Crush Dukes, Chane and Grand from YDS Yardies, Tilt, Hit, Rate, Kez, Sham 59, Cop and myself, Elate.

If you look carefully at the ‘stainers’ of old tags you may be able to pick out a few others. …there are many more legends that are missing than there are included!! Massive respect to all….

Many of these writers were either better artists than me back then or more ‘up’ than me and did more pieces on trains than me but I was still there doing my thing on the trains for a good couple of years and I spent a lot of my best memories bombing with some of these guys, who showed me the ropes and took me to yards, the others I looked up to and emulated their work.

The early graffiti scene was however vital to my development and one of the biggest influences on what made me the artist I am today. I can almost feel the crunch of gravel under my feet, surge of adrenalin thumping in my heart and the sickly smell of the paint fumes…

I got the idea for this series of paintings as this was a time in history that most never got to see, so decided to try and get the vibe of  those mad days across as well as I could. Anyone who wants to see photos from this era of London graffiti should check out Rocking The City.

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I got my first copy of Subway Art in 1984 the year of its’ publication and it changed my life and that of thousands of others around the world….

Read more…