Really quick ones today. I have to drive up to Leeds to pick my daughter up and bring her home, with loads of her stuff. Before that, we have a recycling centre (tip) trip lined up.
By now you will know I am very fond of Tian’s wheatpastes, and this is another one from his latest visit to Bristol.
The Japanese Geisha girl is a theme he returns to often, and it is at such odds with the urban environment that surrounds it. The placement of this piece on a heavily tagged wall is near perfect.
It isn’t all that long ago that I wrote about how Bristol, although it has a super-vibrant street art scene, is less well represented on the wheatpaste side of things. Of course, when you say something like that, life has a way of proving you wrong, and I have since found a whole bunch of wheatpastes, many of them by Wilko in the Stokes Croft area.
I haven’t come across Wilko before, but I have a feeling he might be from Birmingham. He certainly made the most of his visit to Bristol, and I will try to post more of his wonderful illustrations in due course. This orange and black piece has a feel of African-influenced art and cubism (which of course are related) about it. Great to see.
This is another outstanding piece of paste up work from Tian in East Street. Not only is the subject beautifully worked, but the placement, inside a phone booth, is perfect. The cut-out is taken from a piece of work called ‘Combative Jaq’… I’m not sure that I know too much more about it.
I love the sepia tints contrasting with the blues of the woman’s clothes. The selection of the photograph and the alteration of it is superb. I realise that wheatpastes are not to everyone’s taste, particularly the authorities, but they are a darn sight better than the stream of advertising posters and hoardings that we are subjected to on every street in every town and city.
Tian’s visit to Bristol filled me with excitement, and the ‘treasure hunt’ he left behind on East Street, left me with a very memorable hour or so while walking the dog a few weeks back. His wheatpastes may go unnoticed by many, but not by me.
The Japanese lady in a kimono is taken from a piece called ‘le kimono d’invisibilité’, and just looks so incongruous with its surroundings and yet blends in as if she has always been there. A stunning piece from an artist who has mastered content and placement. One of the very best.
This was the second wheatpaste I found by Christain (Tian) Lecouble on his recent visit to Bristol, during which he scattered a dozen or so paste ups in the East Street area of the city. In my mind, he is a brilliant artist who uses a sense of nostalgia to enhance his collage style. He is an accomplished and successful artist in his own right, and his paste ups seem to be a bit of a fun distraction for him.
The sepia tinted boxer is taken from a painting he composed called ‘Philadelphia Miracle’ and features the boxer Richie Kates whose career spanned 1969 to 1983. Tian is 61, and so I am guessing that Kates entered his mind at that time, and these works are representations of his own past, which resonates with me as I am the same age. This is one of many more Tian wheatpastes from this visit to come on Natural Adventures.
One of the most noticeable things about photographing street art in London is that there seem to be a great deal more paste ups and wheatpaste artists than in Bristol. Perhaps this is a function of a huge amount more wall space to choose from, as well as a cultural thing.
This wonderful wheatpaste piece, by Apparan (no stranger to Natural Adventures), features a beautiful portrait of a woman and a snail. The piece is called ‘way home’ and was pasted up in December 2023 during a bit of a wheatpaste jam as far as I can make out. It has worn very well indeed.
How excited was I to find this outstanding wheatpaste by Tian earlier this month? A rhetorical question of course. Back in April 2016, the French artist, Tian, bombarded Stokes Croft with a series of beautiful paste ups, and visited Bristol again in May 2019 doing much the same. Both visits were celebrated by me, and many others who enjoyed discovering his series of interesting cut-outs.
I guess he was visiting the city again, but this time I have only found two wheatpastes, one of which has already gone. I expect there are more, but I don’t know where to look. This one, on the swimming pool wall, is of a Japanese woman in a kimono holding chopsticks. This is very much in a theme that Tian has cultivated over the years, and embraces the sepia tint as part of the piece. I am so excited about this, and keen to find some others in the North Street area.
A gallery of fabulous wheatpastes and artwork featuring Jake the Dog from the cartoon series Adventure Time, by Liverpool-based artist LostHills.
Instagram: @losthills
Biography: Liverpool Radicals
All photographs by Scooj
One of the first artists I met, quite a few years back, was Object… and I have been enjoying his sketch/collage pieces ever since. For a couple of years now, maybe more, Object… has been very quiet, but in the last month or so he has been pasting his creativity about the place.
This combination collage of wheatpastes and paint contains a lot of social and political commentary, as well as a creative outpouring. It is difficult to make out too much from the piece, without studying it up close. It is great to see Object… out and about, though.
Abbie Laura Smith has pushed the creative boat out a little with this symmetrical wheatpaste stuck on a utility box in Cumberland Basin. Rather than being bilaterally symmetrical, the twin portraits are rotationally symmetrical, which I think might be a first on Natural Adventures.
I love the way that Abbie Laura Smith has introduced some colour into this paste-up, which features a portrait of a woman looking a little fed up, and perhaps sad. ALS has a wonderful way of representing hair, which almost looks like it is from a lino-cut that has been scored and printed. There are some subtle differences in the application of colour between the two portraits, such as the lips and distribution of pinks and reds in the hair. This is a wonderfully creative piece from our resident wheatpaster.
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