Phil Collins is a hero – Fact

Friends of StandardFact, the guys at id-iom clearly understand the huge cultural and musical importance of the great man. His drumming was second to none and he featured on numerous other artist’s albums because he was so good. Plus he dumped a wife by fax…. the man was always ahead of the curve.

Art + Phil Collins = Groovy

The idea behind this piece is to obviously bring the genius of Phil Collins to a wider audience, but additionally the guys were using a bit of a subtle mind trickery, by using the lyric of ‘When I’m feeling blue, all I have to do, is take a look at you, then I’m not so blue’ from the classic ‘A Groovy Kind of Love’ on a blue background they are planting the blue message in peoples minds, hopefully forever.

A vintage year

This little piece is in Brixton so I am imagining it will have the same effect on the number of sales from that area of PC  purchases in a similar way that a certain chocolate bar did to ‘In the Air Tonight’

More from our id-iom friends very soon….

Simple rules of Hackney….

The writing is on the wall

I would like to say right now that this is not my opinion, I am only quoting something I have spotted on my travels around London…

You do have to love this though…. short, sweet, spelt correctly and with a slight musical reference. This had lead me on a new mission… to find tags and comments that may not seem that artistic but that make me chuckle.

If you can find any then I want them… regional comedy much welcomed

Another type of street art

Street culture takes its form in many ways, clothes, art, piercings, hair and of course tattoos.

Hot ink

I love tattoos and have one or two or eight of mine own and counting, I find myself staring at anyone who has ink, wondering what the story is and who did the work.

Full sleeves of art

These shots of the rather hot Jack Royle caught my attention so thought I’d share them

Not usually a fan of neck tattoos.... but...

Photoshoot by Emma Gibney spotted here at homotography

Another wasteland in East London

Still lots to be done tho...

I found the Graffiti Graveyard off Broadway and then found this on the way to the Olympic Stadium. It is a little more rough round the edges and could do with a few more pieces so if you are an artist then drop me a line and I’ll break my rule about revealing the location.

East wall

Can you spot our friend Sweet Toof in the above shot?

I like the fact that when we are inundated by sodding tourists, all getting lost and wondering into the rougher parts of Hackney to get robbed by our friendly youts, they will at least be able to see some pretty decent art along the way.

As they say… Welcome to Hackney

Things i’ve seen…

Hugo Bossman

Ghetto Blaster

Horror

Olympic Standard Sweet Toof

Sweet croc

It has been ages since I saw our old friend Sweet Toof. He is pretty damn prolific as we have already figured out and Sweet has been beating a path to that white elephant in the Eastend room otherwise known as the Olympic Stadium.

Tunnel Toof

If you take a mosey down from Victoria Park towards the stadium there are a few examples of his work plus a couple which have been started and not finished. The route to the Olympics is a pretty rich place to graf right now, so many open spaces and it will be the perfect place to showcase his wares to a huge amount of people throughout the summer.

Hazardous Toof

Sweet tag

On thing that did strike me though is while they are making some of it look nice for all those tourists… some of it looks rather dilapidated, and I don’t mean shabby chic either

Love Stik

Another addition to the catalogue of Stik images across East London, this one is Dalston, as always find it yourseves you lazy so and sos

Stik Couple

This one is cute, although Stik on the left seems to be looking for a better offer…?

Warhol…. rarely seen? I’m in

I'm the greatest....

Mr Warhol… your 15 minutes of fame it would appear will go on for a long damn time yet, Warhol esq prints can be seen everywhere and in street art his influence is undeniable.

In Dulwich in the not too distant future you will be able to see some rarely exhibited pieces by the white haired one and I so one will be making the journey down to take a look, even if it is bloody miles away. Might make a day of it, apparently there is a right nice park there.

Anyway the collection called Andy Warhol: The Portfolios will feature Endangered Species, Flowers, Muhammad Ali and Myths. These were some of his last works before he hopped off to the other side so worth a look I think

Dulwich Picture Gallery

The world’s biggest egg hunt – Great Faberge campaign

Clean eggs

In London for the last month or so there have been 200 painted Faberge eggs dotted around, all huge and painted by a wide variety of people from Zandra Rhodes to my fave by Benjamin Shine who made a London Postbox homage.

I was going to go on a mission to find them all to show you them, but then I realised that I can wait until April to see the whole lot in one place, Covent Garden. For anyone visiting London from the 3rd April you have a chance to see the entire collection until the 9th.

Check out the full range, some are amazing and some are poop, but that was bound to happen. If anyone wants to buy me the Benjamin Shine one then I am open to certain favours…. maybe

I still think it might have been an interesting idea to bring in some more unknown street artists or even a couple of the bigger hitters such as Ben Eine or even me with my finger paints…

Things I’ve seen…

It is the final day of my little break from work and therefore the amount of galleries and mooching I can achieve will be much less. From here on in guys I am working for a living again, with that in mind I thought I’d sign off with a few images I took today.

Just off Mare St.

Corp...

Love this, mix of freehand, stencil and even print outs I think. I have not got a head for heights so not going to climb in order to find out

Along the canal

Urban redevelopment - face the facts

You can tell the Olympics is just around the corner, even the empty flats in the Eastend have been given a lil make-over, we wouldn’t want our touristy friends to see un-used boarded up eyesores. Bravo Hackney council

Just propped up in the Eastend

It's only a door dear

I’ve said it before, Street Art does not need to be beautiful in the classic sense, I’d take a nice and simple piece of humour over some of the staid stuff you can see… this is very cute