Recently, I have posted quite a few pieces from the magnificent Georgie (artist), including a wonderful Michael Caine portrait in The Bearpit. However, when I took these pictures back in July 2016, I don’t think I really knew too much about her.
Georgie, Upfest, Bristol, July 2017
This is a fabulous stencil, impactful and eye-grabbing. The contrast of the grayscale stencil and the bright and colourful background work really effectively for the subject matter of the piece. I am too lazy to find out what it is called, but it seems many of her works have an obvious name. I like this very much.
I met Annika Wilkinson, who paints under the name of Annika Pixie, for the first time a couple of weeks ago at a local festival in Bedminster. She is a lovely, chatty and talented artist who is from Sweden (although I have to confess I thought her accent Scottish) but is now based in Bristol.
Annika Pixie, Upfest, Bristol, July 2017
She tends to paint portraits that have a mysticism or dreaminess about them, which I rather like. I have found several of her pieces around Bristol, so it was lovely to finally meet her. Great news is that she will be back at this year’s festival,. which is easy for her, as she lives very locally.
This piece was one of the most mysterious and moving of the whole festival. It depicts, in a stained glass window style, a mother and child wrapped in a blanket. On first glance it looks like a Virgin Mary and Jesus depiction, and the mother has a halo effect around her head. Look closer and for a little longer and the horror of the image becomes clear. This is a contemporary study of the terrible refugee crisis of people from many of the world’s most troubled regions desperately crossing the Mediterranean Sea to get to mainland Europe.
Unknown artist, Upfest, Bristol, July 2016
The child is not dressed in swaddling clothes as one so young should be, but strapped into a life jacket and the pair of them are enveloped in a silver sheet to keep them warm. This is both distressing and compelling, and pretty much my favourite piece of the whole festival. One big hitch…The picture was not there on the second day, and I never got to find out who it was by. I scoured the Interweb but drew a blank. If anyone might know, I’d love to find out. I am still really moved by this piece. Brilliant. Bravo.
There is only one downside to Upfest, in my eyes, and that is that there is so much art on display, it can be difficult to take it all in. The senses are bombarded around every corner, and in every green space in Bedminster. Sometimes it takes a while…maybe months…for all the images to bed down. This is a case in point, where it is only now when sifting through all my photographs that I am reminded of it.
Steve Pinchess, Upfest, Bristol, July 2016
The artist Steve Pinchess was born in Leicester and brought up through the care system. He loved his art, and meagre resources led him to use the streets as a canvass (I paraphrase from his biography notes in the Upfest programme). He now lives in Bude in Cornwall (very nice too) and shares a gallery with his wife.
Steve Pinchess, Upfest, Bristol, July 2016
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a clean picture of the whole piece, so am unable to commentate too much on it. Maybe I’ll do a better job this year.
In a car park just off Raleigh Road, a double decker bus was given ‘the treatment’ at last year’s Upfest. This side of the bus was given over to Snub23, and he made a beautiful job.
Snub23, Upfest, Bristol, July 2016
Snub23 Uses his geometric patterning and shading to great effect, and then looming down from the left is one of his characters that seem to be inspired by the comic genre. Powerful stuff.
Snub23, Upfest, Bristol, July 2016Snub23, Upfest, Bristol, July 2016
A little while ago Frankie Beane posted a piece by Telmo Miel which was absolutely stunning. We had a short exchange of comments, and I looked into whether or not Telmo Miel had been to Bristol for Upfest. It turns out they have been a couple of times before, the last of which was in 2015. It also just so happens that I photographed their shutter piece not knowing who they were, and only now am I able to share it.
Talmo and Miel, North Street, Bristol, June 2016
Telmo Miel is/are two artists who paint as one. This was the Dutch duo’s biography from the Upfest website:
‘Telmo Pieper and Miel Krutzmann are the names behind Telmo Miel artistic machinery. Telmo Pieper was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands where he graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy. He is a creator, image maker and a contemporary graffiti artist. Miel Krutzmann also received his degree from the Academy in Rotterdam, and he is a mural painter and illustrator, who started drawing as a child and never stopped. Together, they share a fascination for (sur)realistic imagery and are currently making life-sized wall paintings using spray-paint all over the globe.’
I hope they return soon as their work is actually rather good.
A man with a proper man cave. Luke Hollingworth, AKA Stencil Shed, AKA Syd is an artist who works in his shed, and outside his shed. This is one of his ‘outside’ pieces that he did for Upfest, and what a great piece it is.
Stencil Shed, Upfest, Bristol, July 2016
Unfortunately I only got a couple of pictures of it, but I remember thinking at the time how much I liked it. It has a story, a message. On a Tumblr feed Syd wrote:
‘My 12ft X 8 ft piece for @upfest. Two great endangered species, the sperm whale and the black rhino. Mashed up and contained in Hirst like formaldehyde. Have to say always find it challenging to come up with something decent when painting on boards (90% of artists get boards at upfest.) my usual street pieces are woven into the wall. This hits the spot I’m hoping with its inventiveness. Revisiting an old concept of mine from 2013 when I placed Damien Hirst in formaldehyde in a field of cows. This one more of a play on his shark turner prize winning conceptual art. Down super quick as my wife is 7 days overdue on the birth of our second child, gulp.’
Located slightly off the main drag of Upfest is this rather large wall with an advertising hoarding inconveniently taking up the top left hand corner. In 2015, the wall was admirably sprayed by Snub23. This year it was the turn of Gamma Gallery.
Gamma Gallery, Upfest, Bristol, July 2016
I’m afraid I don’t quite get the concept of Gamma Gallery. I’m not sure if it is one person or a collective, but irrespective of that I think this is a magnificent piece. There is something about the pigeons that I really like.
Gamma Gallery, Upfest, Bristol, July 2016
For the observant of you out there…I took this picture a short while after Upfest, and the picture on the bill board is different from the one at the time it was painted. I wish I knew more about this piece, but the Interweb wasn’t very fruitful, so I am just enjoying it for what it is.
Arguably the most stunning piece of the 2016 festival was this huge and very popular work by PichiAvo. These two artists, operating as a single entity, are from Valencia in Spain, but are busy working all over the world.
PichiAvo, Upfest, Bristol, July 2016
Their works, as far as I can make out are a synthesis of graffiti writing styles incorporated into classical statuesque images…or at least that is my take on it all. I expect there are scholarly descriptions out there, but however their work is categorised, it is undoubtedly beautiful and supremely well executed.
PichiAvo, Upfest, Bristol, July 2016
I know I have more pictures of this piece, but I’ll be damned if I can find them, so it’ll just have to be these three I’m afraid. Loads more on the Interweb if you want to see other magnificent works by this duo. They have a fine website too. Magnificent.
Mr June was one of the lead artists at Upfest 2016, and he had the privilege of painting a large wall, previously occupied by Dan Kitchener, on the side of the Salvation Army building in Church Street.
Mr June, Upfest, Bristol, July 2016
Trained as a graphic designer, Mr June took to the streets as a graffiti artist in 1985, and his preference for combining his love of typography, graffiti and abstract art come together beautifully in this mesmerising piece.
Mr June, Upfest, Bristol, July 2016
This is definitely one for the fans of large, bold designs that have an almost architectural feel to them. His use of colours is first rate, and the overall impression is impactful.
Natural adventures 