This is the brilliant third part of the UZI collaboration featuring characters from the comic series 2000AD by SPZero76, alongside Kid Crayon and Tera. These three have been smashing it with a few production walls this summer.
SPZero76 has created a fabulous scene, with a raccoon character dressed up as Judge Dredd and accompanied by a side-kick character with blue skin and a rifle. They are riding a rather large motorcycle through a desert dystopian landscape. Utterly fabulous.
Haha, this piece by Tera is a stonker. Part of a Uzi Crew (Tera, Kid Crayon and SPZero76) paint jam with the theme of the cartoon comic 2000 AD. I was never in to the comic, which I regret, so I am not too sure who the blue lady and robot dog are, and my Google search hasn’t turned up anything.
This is a superb piece of dystopian future artwork, where Tera has free licence to do what he does best, and that is creating characters and worlds without boundaries. For an artist who ad only been ppainting walls for about 18 months, he is rather good at it. With each piece he is bringing more definition and sharper focus. I love the crazy detail in the piece – the boot, the orange hair, the different coloured eyes of the dog, the desetr background… it is all there to enjoy.
This particular spot at the very top end of Stapleton Road is fast becoming a favourite haunt of the three-way collaborations from Kid Crayon, Tera and SPZero76 (the UZI crew). Sometimes I present them as a trio and sometimes individually, it depends on how the mood takes me. This post is the individual contrubuition by Kid Crayon to a recent production piece.
The theme for the wall was the comic book 20000AD, a British weekly science fiction comic that included the most famous character Judge Dredd. This piece celebrates another character, Rogue Trooper. The block letters are in keeping with the larger-than-life style of the comic, and the barren apocalyptic background an added bonus. I never read the comics myself, although I now rather wish I had. A superb example of illustrative graffiti writing.
One of the highlights of the year so far has been observing How Avem808 has been developing his work, and transitioning his character drawings and digital representations into his street work, creating elaborate combination and complex pieces.
In this busy piece, his characters have pretty much superseded his letters, and in fact I’m not sure that I can find any. Mouths seem to feature pretty strongly in these characters who are introduced alongside some kind of mechanical and process-type piping. There is plenty going on here, but I can’t be too sure what it all means. Colourful and creative.
Mind 49 has been painting quite a lot this year, but many of his pieces are in a spot that I haven’t yet located, and so I have missed them. This collaborative piece with RUOK, however is in a place I regularly visit, and I was thrilled to find it.
Mind 49 has been developing his style over the years and seems to be in a phase of presenting the eyes and obscuring the rest of his portraits, usually with some kind of headscarf. Hiding features is a key part of his work. In this piece the decoration of the headscarf is courtesy of RUOK, an artist I haven’t come across before, who has done an excellent job. The large daisy is by Mind 49, the rest by RUOK. This is an awesome collaboration, with both artists contributing equally to create a blended whole.
One of the hazards of photographing street art is the prevailing light conditions, which present all sorts of problems, the trickiest being shadows cast across the subject of the shot. Unfortunately, the eye of heaven was not kind to me when I visited this magnificent X-Men piece by Tera.
This was part of a collaboration with SPZero76 and Kid Crayon, featuring the film franchise, and Tera decided to go with a Wolverine character. The character is brilliantly portrayed, with tons of movement and menace conveyed in this piece. I particularly like the smoking cigar. A very nice piece by Tera, and a little different from his usual ghoulish fare.
This spring has seen a surge of pieces by Kid Crayon, which from my perspective is always very welcome indeed. This X-Men piece was painted as part of a collaborative wall with SPZero76 and Tera.
This combination piece has a slightly different look from the curvy writing we are used to seeing from Kid Crayon who has adapted his style a little to fit with an X-Men appearance, which he has wholly bought into, so much so that he has dropped his signature floating crayon. The character is Cyclops, with his destructive laser eyes. Fun stuff.
A week or two back there was an EAT/DoOrDie paint jam on Stapleton Road, alongside the M32 motorway, with an X-Men theme. This piece, by SPZero76 is one of the three painted that day.SPZero76 has a special place in Natural Adventures because he was one of the first regular artists that I photographed and wrote about ten years ago. Although he used to paint more often then, his pieces are always outstanding.
The raccoons, creatures that appear in most of SPZero76’s cartoon-style work, are playing out the parts of Wolverine with its claw hand and Cyclops, who is wearing 3D specs instead of his special visor – a nice twist. An incredible scene unfolds in such illustrative detail. This is a truly fabulous piece of cartoon character street art.
I think that I may have mentioned before that Nice One has taken to this particular hoarding and made it his own. He has painted a series of wonderful landscape and nature pieces here, that feels like a rolling gallery of his work and talent.
This is actually an augmentation of his previous winter scene, with the addition of larger ‘Nice One’ letters in purple and a fiery skyscape. I am a huge fan of his work, and always get excited when I find it. Nice One possesses that rare combination of artistic talent, originality and edge, which makes his work so compelling.
One of the central tenets of graffiti art is to protest against perceived and real injustices. Walls have been used for centuries to express support for, or dissatisfaction with, those in power, and this example from Rowdy perfectly demonstrates this.
The piece demands the freeing of the Filton 24. You might ask who they are, so I recruited ChatGPT to provide a summary as follows:
The Filton 24 are a group of pro-Palestinian activists, many linked to the direct-action group Palestine Action, arrested in connection with an action at the Elbit Systems UK site in Filton, Bristol in August 2024. Elbit Systems is an Israeli-owned defence company, and the protest was intended to disrupt what activists say is the company’s role in supplying military equipment used in Israel’s operations in Gaza. During the action, protesters breached the site’s perimeter using a modified vehicle and caused damage to property and equipment.
Initially, a small number of activists were arrested at the scene, with further arrests made later through coordinated police raids, bringing the total to 24. Police used counter-terrorism powers during the investigation and detention phase, although the protesters have not been charged with terrorism offences; instead, they face charges such as aggravated burglary, criminal damage, and violent disorder. All have been remanded in custody, many for unusually long periods before trial, which has sparked controversy and criticism from civil liberties groups. Supporters argue the prolonged pre-trial detention and use of terrorism-related powers represent an excessive response to protest activity, while authorities point to the seriousness and planning involved in the action.
Rowdy has added one of his fabulous cats, as if to add some humanity to the words, which on their own are not as potent. I love it that street art and graffiti is a way that voices can be heard, whether you agree with them or not. There is something authentic and visceral about it.
