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Team get together
London the preferred venue
another train trip
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by Scooj
Recent experiences on the rail network have not been good, but I am ten minutes into my journey from Bristol to London and all seems well.
6601. Upfest 2024 (60)
Jack Lack is an artist from Stuttgart, Germany, who is a muralist who uses cans and rollers in his work, influenced by the graffiti scene. When I first saw this impressive and moving piece, I assumed the animal was a fox, but it was nagging me that the proportions of the snout, and markings were all wrong. It turns out that it is a red panda, and this is what the artist wrote about the piece:
Sometimes things are easier to comprehend if they are fluffy, so here is an endangered red panda dealing with a pointy nest. Hopefully soon we can steer the world to an increase in safe homes for everyone.
So it would seem that the red panda nestled in amongst some arrows is a metaphor for safe homes for everyone, and I guess that means domestically and those suffering in war zones or other disaster areas around the world. It is a powerful piece, but more than that it is superbly painted, and a stand out piece from the 2024 Upfest festival.
6600. Upfest 2024 (59)
Dave Bain is a reasonably well known muralist in Bristol, and I have featured a few of his pieces before in Natural Adventures. This was his Upfest 2024 piece, which as you can see took up the whole front of a terraced house, giving it that something special compared to its neighbours.
Dave Bain’s imagination and creativity have run wild in this floral piece which combined familiar shapes and figures with abstract ones. There may be a little symbolism in the piece too, with a spaceman-like figure holding up a polyhedral shape on a starry background. I feel that sometimes Dave Bain could be a little bit more adventurous with his colours, because this colour palette is quite subtle, and perhaps doesn’t do the artwork justice (my view only). An interesting festival piece.
6599. Upfest 2024 (58)
Peeping over a wall in Lime Road, is this extraordinary toy Troll piece by Katie Scott, who has been smashing it with her amazing toy work, including Barbies, over the last couple of years. Definitely this is one of the most memorable pieces of 2024 and unfortunately one of the most difficult to photograph. I think it is now time to yield to drone envy and ask for one for my birthday.
The whole piece, includes a woman’s hand holding the Troll, but that part of her work is hidden in an inaccessible and rather narrow lane. Although difficult to capture, the piece itself is perfectly painted, and one of the trademarks of Katie Scott’s work is the animation photorealism she manages to achieve, as if the image were from a Disney Pixar still or something like that.
Katie Scott painted an unbelievable Barbie doll at the Cheltenham Paint Festival in 2023, but I never got to see and photograph the completed piece. She is definitely a rising star, and her talent is out there for everyone to see. As for the Troll, I rather hope that it isn’t overpainted, because it looks so right where it is.
6598. Upfest 2024 (57)
Upfest is a huge opportunity for local, national and international artists to show off their artwork, and it can be exceptionally good exposure for some of our local artists, such as Sarah Trotter. I have only seen one piece before by Sarah Trotter, which was painted in Dean Lane as part of a Bristol Mural Collective paint jam, and I remember very much liking that piece.
Sarah Trotter’s elaborate and colourful style is a sumptuous feast for the eyes, full of richness and detail. It looks like this piece contains a fair amount of symbolism, with the centrepiece featuring a circle, a triangle and a sphere. Sitting above are wings and some beautiful feathers, and all of it set on a barren orange landscape and turquoise sky. Wonderful stuff.
6597. Upfest 2024 (56)
Since the stormy and wet winter weather started up in earnest about a month ago, fewer artists have been out and about, doing what they do best, a pause which frees me up to post a few pieces from Upfest earlier in the year. This one from SEPC is an absolute beauty, and one of the first I saw at this year’s festival.
SEPC is an artist from Manizales in Colombia whose colourful work embodies the connection of people in an urban environment, and his profile on the Upfest website is well worth a read. This was one of two or three pieces that the artist painted while he was in town. I love his humble approach, with plastic bags and boxes full of paint and kit for painting.
In his own words, SEPC combines photorealism with use of colour and incorporates various contextual elements. In other words, there is a lot going on in this work alongside the main portrait pieces, and all of it superbly painted. SEPC’s work was one of the real highlights of this year’s festival.
6596. St Werburghs tunnel (465)
I am always encouraged when I see studio artists exercising their subversive side by painting illegal walls, with their different take on street art, and a recent emerging talent is Lis AKA Le Imposter Design. Her work seems to feature nature a fair bit and in particular, mushrooms.
This piece, presumably entitled ‘party shrooms’ depicts three mushrooms or toadstools having a good time dancing to an imaginary beat. The piece was painted over the corner of a Hypo piece, but in a respectful way, with four black corner tabs, as if it were a photograph inserted into an album. I am loving the emergence of Lys and am very much looking forward to finding more of her work in future.
6595. Brunel Way (306)
Anyone who wanders around Bristol with their eyes open is likely to have seen toadstool pieces by Neoliberalizard, consciously or otherwise. I got lucky and actually encountered him while he was up a ladder, painting this piece, above the height of the recent Council buffing exercise, ha ha.
Although it is a relatively simple design, likely full of symbolism, Neoliberalizard has done a good job with this piece, and dozens of others that can be spotted around the city. Having met him, I think possibly I may have met him a few years ago, I hope to be posting more of his subversive fungi in the future.
6594. Dean Lane skate park (789)
The lateness of my posts today is down to a day of incredibly uncomfortable travel. I am heading to London on a train (to watch the mighty Arsenal play Everton FC) that is brim full. My booked seat is null and void, because all bookings have been cancelled, so I had to try and find a spare seat. Unfortunately the carriage I eventually found a seat in is quite noisy, the gentleman next to me has a stinking cold and the young lovers in front of me are very excited about their trip to America for Christmas to ‘meet the parents’, which is lovely, but I’m not sure I need to know every detail. I try to occupy my time by writing this blog post, but it is far from easy.
This container on the raised section of the Dean Lane skate park has quite a high turnover, but I would say that about three quarters of what appears here is ordinary, so it was great to find this superb combination piece by Smak. Smak has written his letters in a pleasing bronze/brass and purple combination, but it is the encircling snake that catches the eye. The snake is a kind of crossover between realistic and cartoon, looking a little bit like Kaa from the Jungle Book. I hope I survive the journey without going mad or contracting some revolting sickness just in time for Christmas. To cap it all, the train has just ground to a halt. Grrr.
Football train (Arsenal v Everton)
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Stationary train
destination feels distant
stress levels rising.
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by Scooj
Natural adventures 