Some things are just too
funny; Johnners and Aggers
corpsing still kills me.
by Scooj
- Reminded of a small piece of cricket commentary:
Tag: Bristol
590. Upfest 2016 (84)
One of the largest pieces of Upfest 2016 is this magnificent mural by Odeith. It is located on the same wall where this Thierry Noir pair was painted for Upfest 2015 and it shows vividly how different art pieces can change utterly the character of a wall.
Odeith was one of the festival’s lead artists and one I haven’t written about before, although I think I have seen his work on the Interweb. He is from Damaia in Portugal and has been spraying since the 1980s. Odeith has worked a lot with perspective and shading to create some amazing 3D effect pieces, a style which he called ‘sombre 3D’. This piece, however is something else altogether.
It is brilliant for so many reasons. Firstly it is an extraordinarily lifelike painting of Benny Hill (anyone not know who he is?) and it is technically excellent. Secondly it is hugely topical and relevant, being a commentary on the Brexit vote in the UK. It openly mocks the vote, implying that UK (Plc) is a clown and viewed as such by the rest of Europe, and probably much of the world. I love this wall and all that it says. It is a constant reminder of our national stupidity. As an aside I ought to say that I always rather liked Benny Hill – especially in the Italian Job and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
589. Upfest 2016 (83)
I like 23 Magpie’s work so much that I recently bought a small piece that she was selling through Instagram. It is waiting for a frame, along with several other things that need frames…I really do need to earn a little more money.
As well as her official work, 23 Magpies left a treasure trail of paste ups all around North Street, some of which I have posted on this blog, and others that I have yet to post. I think I may have got them all, but I can’t be sure. This is a fox painted with a design onto sheet music, something that she does quite a lot. It is always a pleasure finding one of these.
588. Upfest 2016 (82)
OK, I know, I just posted a piece by Face the Strange, and here we have another one. I have done this deliberately because I think that each of them deserves a post to themself. Occasionally I will combine pieces by the same artist, but mostly I like to concentrate on each work. It just so happens that there are two by FTS in a row.
I love this small paste up. It could have been easily missed, lurking on a doorway behind a tub of recycling. But take a closer look at this TV set and you will see that there is a still from ‘a Clockwork Orange’ and in the spirit of things, FTS has replaced the heads of the characters with oranges wearing bowler hats. Any artistic reference to this great film has to be a good thing. This wheatpaste is witty and fun, and the style of FTS’s work is always slightly unsettling and anarchic. Great work.
587. Upfest 2016 (81)
Face the Strange seemed to have a great time at Upfest 2016, spreading the love all over North Street with a fine selection of his wheatpastes, each one of them curiouas and humorous.
This one seems to show four red-shirted gentlemen with projector or television tubes for heads. Nobody said that peculiar wasn’t allowed at Upfest, so Face the Strange has provided it in bucket-loads. A commentary on techno-geek-physics-heads? Reminds me a little of Kraftwerk, remember them?
586. John Street (1)
Some pieces in Bristol are really hard to photograph and this is one of them. It is a large work by 3Dom sprayed on the side of a business unit in a residential area of St Werburghs. There are always cars and vans parked outside the unit, so the pictures are from rather awkward angles and distances to avoid bonnets, wing mirrors interfering with the shot.
I spotted this some time ago and have tried, unsuccessfully, to get a single clean shot of the whole piece. It is a 3Dom classic. Dreamlike and fantastical. I am not entirely sure what exactly is going on in the picture, but looking at the detail of the piece brings out more than first meets the eye.
For example, the leg is like an X-ray exposing the bones, and the shoes are literally rooted to the ground. The head is like a light attracting moths and insects and the whole figure appears to be paying homage to a little toadstool.
Creative and fun, but utterly unintelligible. I love 3Dom’s work.
585. The Bearpit (34)
Tracking through my archives I found this piece by Decay. I thought that I had posted it, but it seems I had not, so here for the first time I bring you a piece which was sprayed during a bit of a Decay frenzy, shortly after he had arrived in Bristol.
This piece is quite different from most of his other work. The colour regime is typical, but the composition is something else. Usually Decay works with concentric rings of graded shades working out from the centre (although they are sprayed from the outside in – I think) and topped off with a smiley face. None of that here. This is a one-off.
I like this work, even though it reminds me of a duck.
Day end
Sky blue turns to gold
to orange to red to black
this winter nightfall.
by Scooj
Plane diverted due to fog
An unexpected
visitor literally
descending tonight.
by Scooj
584. Richmond Road (3)
I was actually looking for something else when I found this goat stencil by Stewy. I have known about it for sometime, but had no idea where it was. Finding it was the reward for my curiosity in seeking out some graffiti nearby.
Stewy has produced some wonderful stencils around the city, including this Robert Wyatt piece posted last year. Animals and well known people are the areas Stewy specialises in and his stencils are distinctive in that they are nearly all two tone.
When I first photographed the goat, the sun played havoc, with half the goat in sun and half in shade. I tried making a shadow with my body, but it looked, frankly, a bit crap, so these pictures are a second attempt ion a flat-light day, and not great pictures either.
Natural adventures 