5895. St Werburghs tunnel (413)

Inkie, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024
Inkie, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024

With this piece in St Werburghs tunnel, Inkie demonstrates his versatility, and shows that he can paint way outside his ‘house’ style that is so familiar to folk in Bristol. This piece was painted during the incredibly well attended February paint jam organised by Ryder.

Inkie, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024
Inkie, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024

Inkie has painted something of a tribute to Galaxian, a computer game from 1979 that could be found in pretty much every pub or arcade in the early 1980s usually alongside Asteroids. The INKIE letters have been painted in the Galaxian brand style, and he has included rows of spaceships in formation. This is a wonderfully painted piece of ’80s nostalgia, which would have resonated with most of the other artists who participated in the paint jam.

5891. St Werburghs tunnel (412)

Rowdy, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024
Rowdy, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024

Although he doesn’t paint all that often these days, Rowdy is responsible for some of the most iconic street art in Bristol. His crude pieces, often featuring his trademark crocodile, have been a mainstay of the Bristol scene for decades. He painted this small piece during Ryder’s RAW paint jam a couple of weeks back.

Rowdy, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024
Rowdy, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024

In this piece, Rowdy has painted a masked cat character hovering above a vibrant nigh time urban scene. There is an energy to the piece and a hint of subversion which I like. Of course a vertical green crocodile is in attendance. Of course, as is common in many works in the city at the moment, it is accompanied with the words ‘Free Palestine’. It is always a pleasure to see anything by Rowdy.

5882. St Werburghs tunnel (411)

Haka, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024
Haka, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024

I was fortunate yesterday in being in the right place at the right time and bumped into Inkie, Sepr and Haka who were painting a wall alongside the M32, I think with some links to St Patrick’s Day, or at least that is what Inkie implied. I managed to have a quick chat with Haka who continues to smash it with his writing/character combination pieces, heavily influenced by the picture books in his household.

Haka, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024
Haka, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024

This wonderful piece, painted as part of Ryder’s RAW paint jam, features The Very Busy Spider, created by Eric Carle (author and illustrator of The Hungry Caterpillar).Bookended by the letters HA-KA, the spider is waiting patiently in its web, faithful to the style of the illustrator. A fun piece that sadly didn’t last very long.

5877. St Werburghs tunnel (410)

Lokey, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024
Lokey, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024

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, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024
Lokey, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024

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.

5867. St Werburghs tunnel (409)

Kid Krishna, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024
Kid Krishna, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024

A little earlier in the year, Kid Krishna announced his return to the streets after a bit of a quiet period. Since January, he has been super-active and smashing it on walls all over the city, so much so that I am having to consider bunching a few of them together into a single post.

Kid Krishna, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024
Kid Krishna, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024

One of the things that Kid Krishna brings to his pieces is an incredible sense of colour, sometimes subtle and other times overt, but always carefully matched and incorporated. I have been puzzling over the character, and feel like I should know who it is, more than that, he was on some posters which I spotted in Nottingham, or something very similar. It will remain a mystery. This is a lovely fresh piece from Kid Krishna in the tunnel.

5836. St Werburghs tunnel (407)

Face 1st, Zake and Chill, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024
Face 1st, Zake and Chill, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024

It is great to see the PWA crew continuing their high-energy and frequent collaborations into 2024, although I dread to think how much money has been spent on spray paint by the team already this year. This is a tidy collaboration squeezed into the end wall of St Werburghs tunnel, united by a chrome and blue colour scheme. The piece, painted on a common background, is by Face 1st, Zake and Chill.

Face 1st, Zake and Chill, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024
Face 1st, Zake and Chill, St Werburghs, Bristol, February 2024

To the left Face 1st with a couple of happy ‘rag doll’ girls, one of them falling from the sky, contributing both fun and movement to the collaboration. In the middle Zake has painted one of his characteristic faces, full of texture and depth created by clever use of light and dark shading, and Chill rounds off the piece with a cartoon character, looking a little worse for wear, painted in his illustrative tattoo style, and rounded off with a couple of little birds in the corner. Great work from PWA.

5825. St Werburghs tunnel (406)

Werm and 3F Fino, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024
Werm and 3F Fino, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024

What a nice surprise it was to find this collaboration from Werm and 3F Fino, who I thought may have left Bristol (which he might have done), given the almost total drop-off in his work in the city. It felt coincidental, too, that I found this piece only a day or two after publishing a gallery of 3F Fino’s work.

Werm, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024
Werm, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024

To the left, Werm has worked a wonderful piece of writing painted using a fabulous colour palette of purple shades and gold. This sumptuous colour scheme creates an interesting effect, where the letters, counterintuitively, are a little more disguised than you might expect. The gold colour, although contrasting with the purple colours, doesn’t ‘pop’ the piece as much as you might expect, instead it has a rather more subtle impact.

3F Fino, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024
3F Fino, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024

To the right, a character that 3F Fino has painted many times, is holding up letters that are painted in the same colour scheme used by his neighbour. The letter fills are very nicely painted and go a long way to obscuring the letters themselves. I would like to think the letters spell FINO, but can’t be certain, and have a feeling that the fills might also spell something out. Altogether, this is a very nice collaboration from the LRS pair.

5816. St Werburghs tunnel (405)

Mr Klue, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024
Mr Klue, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024

I am very short of time today, with lots to do, having spent the whole of yesterday in London at a wonderful wedding of a cousin of mine. Still feeling a little worse for wear, and tired, as we were on the last train out of London, and then had to endure music and a party in our next door neighbour’s flat which continued until 4am. A little bit of Mr Klue magic is the perfect antidote to this.

Mr Klue, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024
Mr Klue, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024

Mr Klue has been a little quiet over the winter, but seems to be cranking things up a little. This piece is in one of his favoured spots, and is probably one of his clearest renditions of the letters KLUE in his ephemeral abstract style. A perfect piece for a Sunday morning.

5808. St Werburghs tunnel (404)

Kid Krishna, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024
Kid Krishna, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024

Whenever I see the number 404, my heart sinks, thinking of some kind of computer error code. Fortunately no such disappointment with this fine piece from Kid Krishna at the end of the tunnel, it what is proving to be a fruitful and exciting comeback after a few lay months.

Kid Krishna, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024
Kid Krishna, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024

I have to take it on trust that the letters spell out CRIE, because, although it is what he usually writes, the letters are very well disguised and obscured. I love the way the greyscale piece draws in a puddle of colour towards the middle, a little reminiscent of those blotting paper colour separations we did at school in science lessons.. Great to have Kid Krishna firing on all cylinders again.

5801. St Werburghs tunnel (403)

Silent Hobo and Mr Riks, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024
Silent Hobo and Mr Riks, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024

Flying out of Grenoble today, so no time to write much about this magnificent collaboration from Silent Hobo and Mr Riks. The former has been rather quiet on the streets of late, but the former a little more busy than usual. A classy collaborative effort, with some contemporary commentary thrown in for good measure.

Silent Hobo and Mr Riks, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024
Silent Hobo and Mr Riks, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024
Silent Hobo and Mr Riks, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024
Silent Hobo and Mr Riks, St Werburghs, Bristol, January 2024