This is the third piece from the PRSC outdoor gallery that featured Boogie and Voyder, and is by the organiser of the ‘Boogie Down Bristol’ event and all round godfather of bristol graffiti, Inkie.
This is a really wonderful piece from Inkie, and I think he was pulling out all the stops on this one to show Boogie what he was made of. The colour selections are great, and match those used by Boogie on the far left of the three. Voyder was clearly on his own agenda.
This is a fabulous Rowdy piece which is not only bright and vibrant but is also a tribute/protest piece for the survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire disaster. The crocodiles are festooned with flowers and there is a heart in the middle of the piece.
This piece demonstrates the reach of the tragedy in London, and I guess the whole wretched thing highlights a world we live in where profit and margins trump regulation and safety. Pitiful really. It is the same with environmental regulation – there are some that say it gets in the way of business and prosperity – try being prosperous when you have buggered up the environment, the place that provides our food, our water, our very life. Red tape is there for a reason, to keep us safe, and if it suppresses profit, then so be it. Right I’ll stop there before I go off on one.
I don’t generally get to see too much street work from Rowdy, so it is always nice when one crops up.
I think that NEVERGIVEUP is taking on the mantle of most prolific graffiti artist in Bristol at the moment. Hardly a day goes by without a new piece by him, and he is starting to branch out a little from his buck toothed bunnies, although there is some incorporation of them in this piece.
I’m not sure what is happening in this piece, a pyramid, an all seeing eye and I have no idea what the swirly things are. The piece as a whole has presence though and is really well executed. His work is getting better and more diverse with each outing.
Interestingly he would seem to be gaining respect in an area that gets very heavily tagged…this piece has survived intact for a couple of weeks.
In a little pedestrian tunnel, under the M32 motorway are a couple of really great walls. Great for spraying that is…less great for photographing. This is yet another wonderful collaboration piece from Deamze and Voyder, who always seem to work with Deamze on the left and Voyder on the right. I don’t know if this is a deliberate or subconscious thing, but it is pretty much always the case.
What is particularly captivating about these pieces is the white subject on a pillarbox red background. Deamze has worked a particularly nice bit of wildstyle writing with an interesting cartoon character who looks a little like Captain Klutz from MAD magazine, but isn’t.
Someone out there probably knows who it is. I love the angular style of this piece and the limited colour range. It is a fine piece.
It is becoming very difficult to describe Voyder’s work these days, as I feel he has hit such a high level, and that veach work pushes boundaries and demonstrates his command of his craft.
This is such a beautifully constructed piece and resembles a paper cut out. It is such a pity the photograph just doesn’t do it justice. That red just sets the piece off perfectly.
This is a wonderful and photogenic piece by Karl Read, a stencil artist from the south coast who produced another lovely piece at Upfest 2016. A boy dressed as superman wearing converses and flying on a swing is a winning idea, and this piece has movement, tenderness and nostalgia combined in equal measure.
I don’t know how he put up with the tiny space he had to work in and the crowds stepping over his kit to get photographs of his work and the adjacent work of Lemak.
This was another really striking piece from the festival and has been shared a lot on Instagram over the last week or two. I really rather like it and feel that perhaps it deserved a permanent wall rather than a board, but then I could say that about pretty much everything at the festival. Note for next year…more permanent walls please.
Many will instantly recognise the wonderful abstract work of Decay instantly. A Bristol-based graffiti artist who has appeared in numerous posts on this blog, with his characteristic concentric shapes of black, white, grey and red. He was very smart this year – he is a quick worker, and he sprayed his piece early on the Saturday morning before the rain came, and was then free to enjoy the festival with the rest of us punters.
I met up with him in one of the venues, I think it was the Rising Sun, by chance which was lucky, because I had told him via Instagram that I wanted to buy one of his lovely new T-shirts and would do so if I met him. The shirt is great, and a nice souvenir of the day. I also had another little souvenir in the shape of one of the spray cans Decay used to spray this piece (the one on the left of the feature image).
Mrs Scooj was not impressed and said that I was behaving like a groupie and should grow up a bit. I prefer to think of myself working alongside these artists, and whilst I admire them I don’t think I idolise them. Without archivists and rapporteurs, our world would be transient and ‘in the moment’ but there would be little in the way of context.
Another fine Decay piece.
Evening silence
interrupted only by
the roar of burners.
by Scooj
