We don’t see too many new pieces by Turoe these days, so to come across this one was a nice surprise. The writing spells 2REAL, which is a little different, and I wonder if it is a corruption of TUROE – probably not.
Of course, the whole piece is outstanding, as you would expect. The fabulous chrome letters are picked out with little white highlights. What works particularly well is the complementary nature of the chrome and blue colours. Yet another fine example of Turoe’s talent.
The more you look, the more you find is a saying that can definitely be applied to Logoe, as I found another five recent pieces by him last weekend. There was a time when Logoe was an occasional visitor back to Bristol, and he would write half a dozen pieces each trip. Now it seems that he is maintaining the volume while increasing the frequency. It’s a lot to keep up with.
This piece is definitely something of an outlier compared to most of his script writing, but in the same breath completely recognisable too. Of course, the LOGOE letters give it away, but the other signature feature is the horizontal scattering of oval dots. Fat letters in complementary browns, nicely presented, what’s not to like?
Kool Hand’s work just gets better and better and in this piece he returns to his trusty baseball cap-wearing orangutan, but rather than being a flat face on piece, he has added a three-quarter profile and depth to his character.
There is loads of movement in the basketball, which you can imagine is spinning on the orangutan’s finger. The whole piece is beautifully finished and set on a grey urban skyscape with tall buildings on the horizon line. I rate this piece very highly because it marks a shift to a new level for the artist.
This is another wonderful piece by Zubieta, and I really like what I have seen of her work so far. I know that I have at least one unpublished piece in my archives, which I will need to dig out, because we don’t get to see her stuff on the streets nearly as often as I’d like.
Painted as part of the recent paint jam in the Elton Street gallery, Zubieta is telling a story about how ‘love stings’, featuring a woman and a stinging insect masquerading as a butterfly full of love. Perhaps this is a tale of failed relationships of deceitful partners – who knows? The colours follow the paint jam theme, and the piece is beautifully executed. Tidy work from a great artist.
Cort is a quiet artist who, it would seem, likes to keep himself to himself. I have met him on two or three occasions, but I think it would be fair to say we have probably exchanged about ten words between us. He had just finished painting this rather attractive piece alongside Hire, and was sitting on the grass chilling.
I have long admired Corts work, which is different from most of the stuff you see in Bristol, but in recent years he has started to add characters to his writing and here he included a bear, who has a passing resemblance to Fozzy Bear. The letters spell Kortos, and are unruly in their shapes, but reasonably uniform in size. Cort’s signature fill incorporating circles or dots can be seen on the K R and S. This is a fun, vibrant piece from another of the Polish contingent of artists.
If anyone can tell me what is going on here, then I doff my cap to you. Some fabulous anti-style graffiti writing from Taboo with a pink flamingo holding a Halfords bag in its bill, and the words “I’m Champa(i)gn, you… Lambrini”.
The colours here are striking without being gaudy, and I have to say I love that red colour, and I think it works very nicely on the light blue background. The whole thing feels slightly anarchic or eccentric – it would be nice if there was a word that meant both of those things – ‘anarcentric’ perhaps. More great stuff from Taboo.
I met Klashwhensober shortly after he had ‘repaired’ this piece, which speaks volumes about how much the artist cares about his work. I know how important graffiti writing is to Klahwhnsober, nourishing him and providing a strong focus in his life.
This outstanding piece in the dark, sooty underpass shows Klashwhensober at his artistic best. Beautifully crafted letters with a stripy 3D drop shadow are filled with beautiful complementary colours and some ‘meteors’, leaving a trail in the lilac section. Another day and another fine creation from a lovely artist.
Hypo has had a new lease of life recently – perhaps his work/domestic circumstances have changed, but he is out and about painting more than I have seen since 2015, so much so, that I felt compelled to compile a gallery of his work last week.
As well as an increase in the quantity of his work, I feel like there is a commensurate improvement in the quality of it too. This is a lovely piece that pops out of the wall thanks to some clever shadow work and use of white highlights. There are several colour transitions in his fills, at least seven, and the finishing with dots works nicely too. In most of Hypo’s work there is a bilateral symmetry and that really comes to play in this piece. Fabulous work from this established Bristol artist.
Counterintuitively, sunny days are a bit of a nightmare for street art photographers. The nature of urban art is that much of it is surrounded by tall buildings, street and park trees, telegraph poles, lampposts and road signs, all of which cast dramatic shadows when the sun shines. I try not to post too many pictures with shadows, but sometimes it is inevitable, and my impatience to share a piece trumps my desire to return to the spot to re-photograph it when conditions are more favourable. That happened with this wonderful collaboration between Mudra and Peggy.
This is what I would term a true collaboration, where the whole piece is a mash-up of elements from both artists, and it becomes difficult to be certain who painted which bits. The highly designed piece has adopted the paint jam ‘house colour palette’ used by their fellow artists who painted other boards on the same day. The flower and eye elements are almost certainly by Peggy, and if you look closely you can see Mudra’s name split into two parts. This is a fine creative piece and very much in keeping with the Elton Street gallery.
Because Stiff paints only rarely, it is always a pleasant surprise to come across one of his pieces. Stiff is one of two Bristol artists who regularly (almost exclusively) feature alien scenes in their work, the other being Nugmoose. Their styles, however, are quite different, and they are easy to distinguish from one another.
Stiff always paints on a black buffed wall, which instantly marks out the piece as one of his, and also provides a clean canvass on which to work. In this scene, a man is looking at a doppelgänger of himself, which turns out not to be all that it seems. His look of horror is comical, as tentacles reach out to catch him. A lovely story piece by Stiff.
Natural adventures 