While shopping today in an old Bristol department store, Gardiner Haskins, in an area I don’t often visit, I discovered a whole area of street art that I haven’t seen before. So many murals.
I love this Sepr mural ‘no petting’ it is quirky and humorous. He is incredibly prolific in Bristol, and I am pleased to have found this work. More from this area to follow.
8/10
There is a lot of building work going on in the old centre of town, mostly the construction of accommodation blocks for students. Of course this means that there is a fair amount of permitted street art space on the hoardings around the sites.
Andy Council is an artist who lives in Bristol. His works usually incorporate dinosaurs or other animals and architecture, and much of it is about Bristol. You can see his work all over the place, frequently in community spaces that need brightening up. He is also the ‘go to’ designer for all sorts of leaflets and other communications material.
This work painted in 2014 is a typical piece. It is temporary and likely to be gone soon.
During the ‘See no Evil’ event in Bristol in 2012, Conor Harrington dropped over from his native Ireland and painted this mural in his distinctive style. It is called ‘the Duel of Bristol’.
Harrington now lives in and has a studio in East London. Like so many before him, he started off as a graffiti artist, but is now a celebrated muralist gaining worldwide acclaim. There is more about him in this excellent Frankie Beane post.
This mural happens to be located in one of my favourite parts of Bristol, tucked away behind the church of St John the Baptist and through the old city gate – I love the way it is framed by an ancient/modern setting.
8/10
Standing on the bridge at the bottom of Park Street looking North East, you are treated to the most wonderful stencil by Banksy.
‘Man hanging’ which probably goes by several different names was sprayed in 2006, and led to something of a watershed in a permissive stance from the Bristol City Council regarding what was then called graffiti. There is a lovely article written at the time from the BBC website. How things have come on in relatively few years.
I am fortunate enough to walk past this iconic Banksy twice a day at least, and I am never bored by it. In 2009 the work was attacked with blue paint, calling into question all sorts of difficult conversations about street art and graffiti and vandalism and ‘he had it coming to him for selling out’ etc etc. For me it is just a pity. It seems that with his art, if you are not there in the first day or two, it will get damaged or removed.
9.5/10
It is only right to mark my 50th street art post with my favourite stencil artist. JPS, an adopted son of Bristol is from nearby Weston-super-Mare, where several of his works adorn the holiday town streets.
This incredibly detailed stencil, ‘Spartacus’ is a tribute to the Welsh actor Andy Whitfield who played the star role in the Starz TV production of Spartacus. He died in 2011 aged 39 of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
I was lucky enough to photograph this work a day or two after it was completed on 13 April 2015. It is the detail of the clothing and belt that I think marks out JPS as an incredible talent.
The ‘Spartacus’, on the wall of the Queen Shilling night club, is only yards away from another JPS I posted on 8 July 2015.
9/10
In September I took this picture of a mural by Cheo. There are a couple of things worth pointing out. The first is that he has not included one of his signature bees – perhaps not cool enough for the subject material.
Secondly, this picture does not look like a commission and is in an area where there is a lot of ‘permissive’ and ‘illegal’ art. I would always put Cheo into the former of these two categories.
7/10
This mural by Nick Walker probably gets more exposure than most in Bristol, simply by virtue of being visible from Park Street and it’s incredibly high retail foot-fall. However, I am not sure many people register it because, in my experience, most people don’t look up, especially when they are shopping.
This work is rather corny if you ask me, a bit of a schoolboy joke, but it does show Nick Walker’s range.
I have refrained from publishing this picture for a while because I have been trying to find out who the artist is. The mural can be seen in a second story window frame opposite the wave and flegm mural featured a while back.
The witty picture looks rather old and appears to pre-date quite a lot of the other works in the area. I really should be able to find out who painted it, because it is signed, either MN or MAN. If anyone knows, please let me know and I will update this post. (UPDATE, The mural is by Dan)
Jodi, who painted this mural, lives in Brislington, Bristol. He is a direct contemporary of Banksy, and started as a graffiti artist in 1987 at the age of 15 at the Barton Hill Youth Club.
He left the graffiti behind him and studied design and is now an established designer and brand consultant. In 2008 he came out of ‘retirement’ and started working on street art commissions. This mural was completed for this year’s Upfest, and is a treat for those who like incredibly detailed and realistic work.
Jodi also took a commission in Millennium Square this year above the drinking water fountain, depicting the source of the water that the fountain is fed from. This commission was part of European Green Capital 2015.
Another gold mine of street art is the area around Moon Street, tucked away behind Stokes Croft.
This week I stumbled upon another couple of Kid Crayon wheatpastes. What I like most about KC is that he seems to have found walls to paste his works all over the center of Bristol, and I am quite enjoying finding them.
His style is very distinctive, usually colourful portraits. There is always something slightly menacing about the faces. Some people don’t consider wheatpastes to be ‘real’ street art. I think they are wrong, and that is that.
Here are some reminders of his other works:
7/10
Natural adventures 