Profanity alert! It is a long held tradition for graffiti writing to be edgy, either in location, style or content, and sometimes writing profanities disguised or otherwise is part of that attitude, without which street and graffiti art would be nothing. Some of the earliest graffiti from Roman times was essentially cock and balls doodles in public spaces.
Stivs, M32 roundabout, Bristol, March 2024
Stivs presents us with the word ‘FUCK’ styled with his exquisite calligraffiti writing that brings a bitter-sweet challenge. Great colours that smack you in the face and beautifully finished, this is graffiti art at its subversive best.
Nina Raines, Cumberland Basin, Bristol, April 2024
A piece by Nina Raines can only mean one thing, and that is a Bristol Mural Collective paint jam. There were several excellent pieces painted by artists of Bristol, unfortunately most unsigned, during the paint jam, and this one stood out. Nina Raines paints scenery for productions as a profession, and her skills have certainly come to the fore in this small piece.
Nina Raines, Cumberland Basin, Bristol, April 2024
One of the things I like about artists swapping a day in the studio for painting public walls is that they have a very different take from regular street/graffiti artists, not having any rules or conventions to follow, and often their work is incredibly creative. This piece is simple… a pair of arches, one with a cloudy scene and the other with something a little bit more cosmic, a nighttime sky, perhaps. I will try to post some other pieces from the paint jam, because the work of the Bristol Mural Collective definitely has loads of appeal.
Awkward tends to drop his pieces in twos and threes, which is something he can easily do because his mega-tag characters are generally quite small. On this occasion he painted one on the door at the bottom right-hand end of Dean Lane and the other on the wall of the swimming pool, about 50 meters apart.
Awkward, Dean Lane, Bristol, April 2024
This door is a candidate for the One Wall, Many Faces series of posts which I will get on to when I have a bit of spare time (thumbs diary, that’ll be 2029 then). Awkward has created a vision in yellow, with vibrant blue eyes and speech bubble set on a gorgeous black and red background. The characters he paints are a little bit on the eccentric, some might say, weird side, but they are distinctive and compelling.
Awkward, Dean Lane, Bristol, April 2024
The character on the swimming pool wall uses the same three colours which are rotated, so the face is blue, the eyes and background yellow and the speech bubbles red. The writing in the speech bubbles is usually a signature, AWK WARD split over two lines, and in this piece he has included a year date ’24’. It is always a great bonus to find his work.
Doors 261 – Doors of Nottingham, November 2023 (Part III)
I am writing this post yesterday on a rather nice LNER train travelling from Peterborough, via London, to Bristol. Of course, I took the opportunity during an overnight stay to find some doors and street art while in Peterborough, but that is not important right now (Police Squad reference).
This is the third and final part of doors from a Nottingham doorscursion I made in November last year. There will be a follow-up series of posts from Nottingham following a visit I made earlier this spring, but I’ll post those in due course.
There are quite a few doors this week, another rather eclectic mix, but that is what happens when you wander aimlessly through a place. I hope you enjoy them.
Huge depot hinged doors, Nottingham, November 2023High door with the steps mysteriously missing, Nottingham, November 2023Old door in an old wall, Nottingham, November 2023Door with floral gateway, Nottingham, November 2023Panelled arch doors, Nottingham, November 2023Vibrant blue door, Nottingham, November 2023A touch of Art Nouveau in these doors, Nottingham, November 2023Notts Bank Chamber doors, Nottingham, November 2023Recessed door up steps, with fine entrance, Nottingham, November 2023Peeled paint on a door creating a patina effect, Nottingham, November 2023Old building, with a single door (established 1643), Nottingham, November 2023
Farewell then Nottingham for a little while at least, it has been fun. I haven’t yet decided which collection from my files to share next, suffice it to say, I have tons. May I wish you a happy weekend.
If you have made it this far, you probably like doors, and you really ought to take a look at the No Facilities blog by Dan Anton who has taken over the hosting of Thursday Doors from Norm 2.0 blog. Links to more doorscursions can be found in the comments section of Dan Anton’s Thursday Doors post.
When visiting artists come to Bristol, they will often paint more than one piece, and in the case of some, such as Logoe, they might paint several over a single weekend. I think that this is one of two pieces painted by Jest Soubriquet earlier this year.
Jest Soubriquet, Purdown, Bristol, March 2024
The portrait piece is set on a Palestinian flag, thus making it a relevant contemporary addition to the complicated and troubled commentary on the conflict between the Israeli government and Hamas. The portrait is cleverly painted in a patchwork of colours that shouldn’t really work, but somehow do. This is a wonderful and highly distinctive piece from an artist who will always be welcome in Bristol.
There is so much to like about Bloem’s work at the moment, and more than that, she is a really lovely person and talented artist and jewellery craftswomen. Her pieces are becoming more confident with each trip out, and she is spreading her wings, improving all the time.
Bloem, M32 roundabout, Bristol, March 2024
This piece on the roundabout contains a few themes that she specialises in, for example the hand with sharp nails and the old-style brick mobile phone, with keypad. Springing from the phone display is a tangled growth of flowers, complete with personalities. The whole piece is set on a glorious red backdrop softened with a few patterns. This is truly stunning work from Bloem.
Marckinetic and Kid Krishna, Cumberland Basin, Bristol, April 2024
Two things to notice immediately about this wonderful collaboration from Marckinetic and Kid Krishna. The first is the diabolical weather – it feels like it has been raining all winter, and is something of a miracle that artists have been painting in quite the frequency that they have and the second is the bright yellow background drawing attention to the pieces.
Marckinetic, Cumberland Basin, Bristol, April 2024
On the left, Marckinetic has painted one of his FFS pieces in his unusual writing style using elongated straight-lined squares and rectangles to form his letters. The letter fill has a clever marbelled effect, and the very deep black drop shadow is filled with an inky night sky with yellow stars and suns. Lovely and original work from Marckinetic
Kid Krishna, Cumberland Basin, Bristol, April 2024
To the right is a rather more densely packed array of shapes and forms making out the letters CRIE. There is loads of colour and activity in the letters, which at times is almost overwhelming, and this is sometimes what you get with his work. Other times he will paint something so simple, he has it all in his armoury. There are lots of FFS tags all over the piece and a little “Four Five Six” to help us along with one of the acronyms for FFS.
Here we have yet another classy piece from Biers, who is enjoying an extended period of inspiration and productivity, he really is turning out some banging graffiti writing/character combinations, and challenging my knowledge of popular cartoon culture from the last few decades (which is, I’m afraid rather rudimentary).
Biers, Dean Lane, Bristol, April 2024
The colours and drippy fills in the WD40 are fantastic, and all very tidily finished. The ‘0’ I am guessing is an Easter egg, and the character emerging from it is Jesus, so I have to assume that the piece was painted over, or close to, the Easter weekend. Such is his purple patch these days, that I have several of his pieces that are becoming ‘trapped’ in my archive, which I really ought to do something about.
Natural adventures 