Regular viewers of this blog will be familiar with the talents of Georgie, a Bristol artist who uses many different techniques for her street art work. This time she has selected a collage and spray piece with a nice big smiley face. She has incorporated other pieces of her work in the surrounding collage, including the ‘Citizen of Nowhere’ stencil.
I was very excited when I saw this paste up by Lemak, and exceptionally talented Bristol stencil artist. Excited because I had seen a short video of him creating it on his Instagram feed only the day before. So this really was hot off the press.
I passed by the wall last Friday and it has been badly tagged, so it was fairly short lived, which is a pity. Whenever I see great pieces that are dogged or ruined I am reminded of the fantastic line in Bladerunner – ‘the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long‘ and so it often is with great street art.
I love the crisp collage effect with the graff all around – some similarities with the work of PichiAvo?
Anthony Wedgwood Benn, or Tony Benn, will be forever remembered as the Bristol South East Labour MP who ruffled the feathers of the establishment with his hard left wing views. An adopted son of Bristol and much loved MP. This is a lovely tribute to Tony Benn by Stewy.
I think I a several years late in posting this fabulous stencil, and it has faded a little over time, but I have only just discovered it, and felt it write to post it as soon as I was able. Stewy has a great track record of creating stencils of important popular figures from Bristol, some of which are recorded previously in the blog. I like his work very much, and this particular piece feels so very right.
So here it is, time to get excited about Upfest 2017 with this year’s festival artist Pahnl. There are two of these pieces, one at the North Street Green, and the other at the North Street Standard. Both I expect will be over written at the festival, the latter I believe by Inkie.
I don’t really know anything about Pahnl, so it is lucky that the nice people at Upfest have produced a free festival map and a short biography of Pahnl which reads:
‘Living at a lower level of existence, Pahnl’s miniature people, dogs, cats and birds can often be found outside in the street. Taking influence from comics and street signage, whilst adding their own subversive and funny twist, Birmingham-based duo Panhl use stencils, stickers, posters, animation, screen printing, film and photography to bring their own small world to life.’
So now you know as much as me. Certainly their work has a very strong brand feel to it, and perhaps that is a good thing for the Festival, but it is quite unlike most of the street art you find in Bristol, and maybe not representative. Having said that this is strong and characterful and demonstrates the broad church of street/graffiti art that Upfest espouses. Only a few days now.
I think that Sirens must have been squatting uncomfortably on the ground for a while during the creation of this calming piece in North Street. It is tucked in amongst scaffolding and a small alcove, often used by graffiti artists and taggers. The space smells…well what should I say? a bit like a WC, and I guess that plenty of pub goers relieve themselves here after an evening out.
How fabulous then to see this uplifting piece so typical of Sirens. Silhouetted houses and rooftops with a magnificent setting sun; an inspirational piece so full of hope. I know that Sirens likes to surprise people with his choice of location and he has excelled with this one. I imagine many will walk past it none the wiser, but those who look around will see it and benefit from the joy it brings. Nice one Sirens!
This is an extraordinary piece by Random, called ‘Prisoner 46664’ and is a portrait of Nelson Mandela. Random, originally from Liverpool, lives in North Wales and works with stencils, sculpture and wheatpastes, which scores lots of points with me.
The work is an ingenious stencil with letters cut into it, placed over a red background. The letters are like a wordle of key associations with Nelson Mandela, such as ‘Freedom’ and ‘political’ and ‘rebel’ and ‘statesman’.
A magnificent piece from Random.
You rarely meet anyone who doesn’t have a fondness for Baloo and his ‘the bear necessities’ song from the Disney adaptation of Kiplings’ the Jungle Book. It was the film I saw most frequently as a child – six times – in the days before videos. I had the LP, and pretty much know the entire film word for word, even now.
A digression. This is a fine stencil from Bristol born and bred Mr Bear. I must confess to not knowing much at all about this artist, and I haven’t come across his work, or at least, not knowingly. He is a member of SSOSVA and started painting in 1997 under the moniker ‘Bas’.
An unusual and rather unsettling piece from ‘1743’. Ambulances and crows are perhaps not the bringers of joy, and this is a hard-hitting piece, in spite of its small size.
The Upfest programme biography reads:
‘UK artist based in Leeds. I paint stuff because I can and it’s fun. Mostly with a spray can and stencils. Inspired by life and what I see around me.’
I love stencils and I love cats…this then is simply heaven. The work is from the self-taught Bizzy (Izolda Lautner) who turned he hand to artwork only some 5-6 years ago. Without any formal training, she gives great hope for street art wannabes (like me?).
This was her first piece in front of a live audience, and I think it turned out fantastically well. I wish I had seen her in the process of spraying it. I will be keeping an eye out for her work, although it looks like she won’t be at Upfest 2017, which is a great shame. You can read more about her on her Stencil Art Prize website profile.
It is always great to see artists emerge from their studios and create wonderful public pieces like this one. In this case the young artist is Liz Clayton, a graduate artist from University College Falmouth who is now living and working in Bristol.
I have heard great things about University College Falmouth and I believe Louis Masai went there too. I have a niece studying there now and she seems to rate it very highly, and what a gorgeous part of the country to be a student in.
This is a striking piece and reminiscent of Mexican art celebrating Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead), which I am sure is entirely deliberate. This is a great stencil piece by Liz, and it is fortunate to have pictured her while she was working on it. I hope to see more of her public work.
Natural adventures 