A gallery of versatile street art and graffiti writing from Bristol’s Pirate Wall Artist – Soap.
All photographs taken by Scooj.
Soap
Tag: Street art
2404. St George skate park (4)
Discovering St George skate park has been something of a revelation for me. I knew of its existence, but just never bothered to find it, that is until recently. I guess that there is a challenge for artists and ‘hunters’ alike as certain areas become gentrified such as the Carriageworks and others get closed down to artists altogether, like The Bearpit, new areas become more attractive and I think St George is one of those.
This is a really jolly collaboration between Fiva (Fiver) and Nightwayss on one of the ramps in the skate park. Fiva gives us some straightforward block letters with a white fill and black dots, set on a black background with white dots. Yet another fine Fiva piece.
Tucked away to the right hand side of Fiva’s work is a brilliant little story of a naughty monkey playing with a box of matches by Nightwayss. This is an engaging piece that just seems to blend in with the concrete so well and almost has a 3D effect where it looks like the monkey might just decide to wander off at any minute.
Personally I think this is one of Nightwayss’ best pieces, not so much in the artwork, but more in the narrative. A pocket-sized piece that has enough detail and credibility to feel almost real. I love this a lot. I’m beginning to think that a Nightwayss gallery might be on the cards before too long. Watch this space.
2403. M32 Spot (47)
It has been a long while since I last posted anything by Object…, but that might be because he has been very busy with retrieving boards from The Bearpit and running events at the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft gallery in Jamaica Street.
Object…’s work often looks pained and tortured, but especially so in this instance The disfigured fingers have a grotesqueness to them and in a strange way, I find the piece a little upsetting. Of course I don’t know the context of the piece, but it feels terribly troubled. Object… is very good at this challenging kind of artwork.
2402. New Stadium Road (19)
I have a feeling that this might be another Monday Club collaboration, this time from Conrico and Rebecca Prince with what might be her debut street piece. (Actually if I had bothered looking properly I’d have noticed the words Monday Club – d’oh)
Conrico has really impressed me since he appeared on the scene a few months ago. His work has such a strong narrative about it and his illustrative style is imaginative and creative. I believe that he painted this dragon on the M32 roundabout but it didn’t last very long, the turnover on this wall isn’t quite as high.
Rebecca Prince is a Bristol artist whose Instagram feed would suggest that she has only very recently started painting walls. I think she has yet to find her touch, but I am very much looking forward to seeing her develop and translate her lovely drawings into great wall art. I love people giving it a go and having the courage to take to the walls.
2401. Lime Road (2)
Another piece form an artist unknown to me, and I am guessing that it might be something to do with Upfest Summer Editions because this is an Upfest spot, previously occupied by a Jody piece. It is a colourful and styalised piece by Amy Vik who I think is from Mexico, although my Google searches aren’t throwing up too much information about the artist.
The art itself does have a central/south American feel about it and it is certainly very different from anything else I have seen in Bristol for a while. It is always good to see overseas artists visiting the city.
2400. Brighton Street (3)
Another one from a month or two back from Decay which was painted for this year’s St Paul’s carnival. What is interesting about this piece is that it is a reversion to his older style of work with ‘Chuck’ in the centre of rays of concentric ovals eminating from the middle. I guess this design probably fit the space better than his more recent writing designs which are better on a ‘landscape’ wall.
Of course the colour selection is entirely appropriate to the carnival and many other pieces by other artists carried the same base colours. I can’t think how many pieces Decay has painted this year, and I haven’t captured them all by any means. I think that together with Rezwonk he bears the crown of most productive Bristol artist 2019, unless things change for the remainder of the year.
2399. South Street
This summer has been so very busy for street art in Bristol and I am really struggling to keep up with it all. For every piece that I write about in these posts there are at least another seven or eight that never make it out of my archives, and all of this without the hunderds of pieces I would normally be writing about from Upfest at this time of year. All this means that I have an inevitable backlog.
This not-so-recent collaboration is yet another extraordinary piece to have been organised by Upfest for their Summer Editions event. Who’d have thought of bringing together L7M and Paul Monsters? But here they are working together with their hugely contrasting styles.
The centrepiece by L7M is a delicately, wispily painted finch (I’m not sure which species) full of movement and colour, a skilful mixture of fine detail and blurry ‘smoke’. His work is truly exceptional and we have been lucky in Bristol to see quite a bit of it in this area thanks to Upfest.
The geometric surround is the work of Paul Monsters and is typical of his 3D blockwork, but notably different from anything I have seen from him before in that it is black, white and grey, when I normally associate his work with oranges, greens, browns, yellows and mauves. The whole thing makes for a clever juxtaposition which challenges the norm. Great collaboration.
2398. St Werburghs tunnel (93)
I love it when you start to see the work of an artist who has previously been off the radar, and recently I have become aware of a couple of stencils by Yoshi of which this owl at St Werburghs is one. Actually it is a cat owl, and if you look carefully at the face you’ll see why.
It would seem that Yoshi is reasonably new to the street art scene and is very much in a discovery phase of his work with sencils, trying out different materials and ideas. Yoshi has a good Instagram feed that offers a little bit of narrative and insight into his work, which is great, I also have noticed that there a couple more stencils I need to go out and find. Looking forward to seeing more work from Yoshi.
2397. Brunel Way Bridge (17)
Although I can’t be sure, I think this ephemeral portrait might be the work of Annika Pixie… it certainly has many of the ingredients that are common to her work, the lightness of touch and delicate nature of the subject, but I have not seen her paint many walls like this one.
As I write this, my curiosity got the better of me and I had a look at Annika’s Instagram feed, and sure enough there is a little video of this piece, filmed in only the way she can do such things. I love her touch, which is full of subtlety and magic and in such stark contrast to the macho work one is used to seeing. Nice one Annika.
2396. Dean Lane skate park (242)
The long wall at Dean Lane plays host to a great many great collaborations, and this one is no exception. Two of there artists, Rusk and Turoe One are familiar to me, but the third, Kasoe (Gatoloco) is reasonably new to me .
Starting off the collaborative wall is the familiar writing of Rusk which has been really beautifully done. His horizontal shading gives the whole piece the effect of being a glistening gold bar or something like that, and the depth created by his 3D shading is really well done. The whole piece is set on a cosmic background with a bit on an electric storm going on. Great stuff as you’d expect from this artist.
Next up is a terrific Iron Man character piece by Turoe One, an artist who has been decorating walls for more than 30 years, but whose work has been almost off my radar until recently (how does that happen?). There is little to say about the Iron Man figure other than it is utterly awesome.
On the right hand side of the collaboration, and perhaps a little bit discrete from the other two is this very distinctive and beautifully painted writing from Gatoloco who writes Kasoe. There are elements of other styles in this piece, such as 3D shading reminiscent of Inkie, but the whole thing has a strong and clear identity and is very easy on the eye. I have seen at least one other piece from Gatoloco and will be looking out for more.
Natural adventures 