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Champion’s league clash
ends in penalty shootout
Arsenal victors
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by Scooj
5878. Dean Lane skate park (695)
When I think about Hire’s art, I pretty much always visualise it in Dean Lane, and although he has painted other spots in Bristol, it is his favoured spot. This long piece of graffiti writing spells out ODIAH. I am not sure why Hire sometimes writes the word, and I have checked in Google translate that it isn’t a Polish word – something to ask him next time I see him.
Hire has prepped the wall nicely in this writing/character combination piece, creating something that is neat, clean and tidy. I suspect that writing on brick walls is a little easier as the uniformity of the letters can be measured on the brick courses, making things easy on the eye. I have no idea what the panda is all about, but it looks a little menacing, with its eye patch (clever) and broken bottle. It is always good to find Hire’s work, always.
5877. St Werburghs tunnel (410)
A couple of weeks ago, Ryder organised a massive Read and Weep (RAW) paint jam in St Werburghs tunnel, drawing artists from Bristol and beyond, to congregate in the darkness and damp and produce some amazing art in a party atmosphere. One of the artists, who doesn’t paint nearly often enough, was Lokey.
Lokey has a special place in Bristol graffiti writing, because, other than Zase perhaps, he is the only artist who paints his letters in an anamorphic style. Anamorphic in this sense means that the letters appear to stand out from the wall, almost as if you are looking through 3D glasses. It is on the same spectrum of art as trompe l’oeil, designed to deceive and confuse the eye. Clever stuff, and always very welcome.
5876. Sparke Evans Park (694)
This is a really interesting paint jam piece from Evey, celebrating Desi’s and her own birthday a few weeks back. The reason that it is interesting is that Evey has gone with a totally different style of graffiti writing from her comfort zone. This piece is a little bit more ‘hard-core’ and traditional, demonstrating her growing confidence and skills with a spray can.
I would say that this is a really great piece of writing, although I feel the bottom half is stronger than the top half, which may have something to do with the colour selections. The bottom half pops, the top half less so. This phenomenon is not peculiar to Evey, I see this in quite a lot of pieces of writing, where the top half drifts a bit. More contrast with the background might do the trick… but what do I know?
5875. Cattle Market Road (16)
The ‘dynamic duo’ continue to entertain us with their increasingly frequent monster/character collaborations. Since Mr Crawls and Mote teamed up, they have been creating some fabulous monster pieces spread around the city and they don’t appear to have a favourite spot, so finding them seems to be a bit of a random process.
This one, on the ever-shrinking hoardings behind Temple Meads station, features a bird from Mr Crawls and a monster from Mote, set perfectly on a chrome background, something they seem to enjoy adopting in their work. As they continue to work together, they are learning from one another, and here they have gone with a black border that matches in thickness, and draws the collaboration together. I have plenty more pieces in the can waiting for posting.
5874. Greenbank (108)
Laic217 seems to have a plethora of ways to surprise me. Often his pieces appear unannounced, and so discovering them definitely feels special, but what surprised me with this piece is that it immediately took me back to some of the very earliest pieces of his that I started photographing a few years back.
The character, for once, not a skull, is wearing a bucket hat with a satanic protection mask strapped to it. To the right of the portrait is a letter ‘L’ for Laic which has been hollowed out and blocked with a deep 3D drop shadow.
The face, with its harsh features, could only be by Laic217. I don’t know what it is about his style, but it is quite unique. Looking at the close up, it almost looks like it has been painted on a canvas with brushes, and maybe that is what gives Laic217 his uniqueness. This is yet another awesome piece from one of Bristol’s very best street artists.
5873. Brunel Way (260)
This fine column monster very nearly escaped my attention. Mote has painted so many columns under Brunel Way, that it becomes easy to miss new ones in the busy mix – there was certainly a double-take involved in finding this one.
Columns are fun to paint, but a real pain to photograph, especially the circular ones – square or rectangular columns are not so bad. This fish monster indicates a slight shift away from his bird monsters and has opened a whole new world of monster opportunity. I guess that Mote is going through phases or eras with his monster art. A nice modest piece.
5872. Dean Lane skate park (694)
It is not often that you find a Fade/Pekoe collaboration, but I have been photographing street art and graffiti writing for long enough to know that you should always expect the unexpected. I wonder whether this was a planned thing or whether they found themselves at the same place at the same time and decided to paint together. I guess I’ll only ever know if I ask them.
Pekoe has smashed it again with this wonderful portrait piece, and there is something about the presentation of her work these days that makes me think she is in a good place emotionally and that it is surfacing in her paintings. The subject has wonderful full lips, dark eyes, hoop earrings and an absence of tears. The decorative shapes help to break the piece up a little and add to it significantly.
You simply can’t hold Fade back at the moment – not that you’d want to – and his enthusiasm for painting walls is not only expressed in the quantity of the pieces he paints, but also in the incredibly sharp quality of his work. The letters here are very crisp, the transitions of the fills are exceptional and the 3D drop shadow nicely uniform. Fade comes across as a bit of a perfectionist, which is probably why he enjoys painting with Dibz so much. This is a very nice collaborative wall.
5871. Manchester, Northern Quarter
When randomly walking the streets of a town or city I am unfamiliar with, I am reminded of the iconic line from the film Forrest Gump “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get”, and that is pretty much how my recent stroll in Manchester unfolded.
I turned a corner and found this incredible stencil portrait piece by C215 staring out at me. He is an artist who has made a couple of appearances on this blog before, but I don’t think that he has ever painted anything in Bristol, surely it is time to change that (Upfest?). The stencils that C215 uses range from very small up to this kind of size, and he achieves this scaling without compromising his style at all. A memorable piece from my recent trip.
Biomass
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A billion billion
buried in our sandy shores
bivalve biomass
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by Scooj
Natural adventures 