Hackney Wick – a hidden gem I say

The Brick Lane doesn’t really have any space left, pretty much every wall is covered with pieces from everyone from Roa to Banksy to Sweet Toof, to Dscreet to some lil crack head with a sharpie. It was the original but some of the most prolific graf artists in the eastend have moved on to a far bigger canvas, that of Hackney Wick, the industrial wasteland that the Olympics forgot, that the tourists rarely find and that has it’s own little burgeoning scene full of cutting scribblers, stencilers and spray can aficionados. Check it out for your self kids.

I give you….

Sweet Toof

Sweet even in a car park

Nazir Tanbouli

A Nazir bug

Malarky

All that Malarky

Hackney Wick has many art studios dotted throughout the business warhouses, yards and garages. The roads are battered and bruised but it has a certain romance to the area. Art and tags popping out from every corner plus lots of random little places to eat, galleries and some bars.

Art Jacobs by Kidult

I like fashion, but not really high fashion, I like going to the shows but there are often people whom live on a totally different planet at them. Most of those people are the designers, which is what makes them good, but sometimes it is all so bloody serious.

It was refreshing to find that a certain Mr Marc Jacobs who on finding graffiti scrawled on his SoHo store decided to use this to take the mick and take the witty vandalism and making it into clothes.

It’s Art but not as we know it

Designer Art-shirt

Maybe should have seen it coming from a man with a Sponge Bob Square Pants tat

This was by Kidult, and was only the latest in a series of attacks. I can only imagine how pissed the anti-Jacobs chap was when he found out that his ‘work’ was now adorning t-shirts. To add insult to injury, they are feckin’ expensive at $689.

Kidult then responded with his own t-shirt selling in limited edition for €6,89

Graf Art-shirt

The cynic in me wonders if this was a clever partnership…. I’d like it if it was

Tha kids are all write

Skate-face

In amongst all this Olympic poppycock we seem to have dedicated a shed load of £££ on grown up sports, maybe forgetting the kids, not in Mile End mind. The Mile End Skate Park is packed with kids rain or shine. I like.

What I also like is that the place is adorned with graf, in the pool, the walls the floor, the benches. Everywhere.

Pool party

The place looks pretty good too, a real urban hangout, even if you can’t skate, BMX or any other urban sport, you can go and spray or tag.

Paint and skate

I do not know any of the artists and in my mind I like to think that are by kids, the next generation of painters who will be taking to the streets, canals and eventually galleries of London and beyond

Whoever wanted to be Dscreet?

Bird Cream – Dscreet

Dscreet, long term collaborator of Sweet Toof and an artist who pops up quite often around London, the impossible to miss owls keep watch over many corners of the earth, from Brooklyn to Melbourne.

This piece is cool as it takes a little bit of of Sweet Toof and then Dscreet takes over, It is called Bird Cream and was  a 2009 piece. Nice that it is still in good nick.

Find it for yourself in Bethnal Green near the rail lines

Old school cycling and hodgehegs… Chance it

Chance Street, East London, possibly one of the best streets in LDN to find street art, there is another iconic piece from Roa, there is tagging galore and there are loads of other bits and pieces you can spot, even my old mates id-iom have sprayed the wall before.

Unmistakably Roa

This stencil piece is cool, old school motorbike with side car, it won’t last that long so head down for a wee gander.

Biking Chance

According to Shop Talk it is Crycle Collective, I can not find any more info… anyone shed any light?

Side car action

Things I’ve seen….

Mile End, by the skate park where the youts dem ride their boards. It was peeing with rain so could only get a couple of shots.

Queen Worser

If Danny Dyer was a graf artist he would be called Melt… or Dry Melt, this was a moist melt…

Dry Melts

Not everyone loves London 2012 clearly

It could potentially be brilliant, but equally it could easily be a disaster of gargantuan proportions, most Londoners are generally positive about it but not everyone.

Artistic protest

In the Eastend it is probably because the Olympic juggernaut has ploughed through wherever it pleases and not always considered local residents and businesses.

Monkey protest

One thing that Seb Coe and his cronies can rely on is that the Euros in Poland and The Ukraine will be worse without a doubt

Things I’ve seen…

London has been a bit of a temperamental bitch this weekend, one minute raining cats and dogs, the next nervous sunshine, then mardy winds. One minute I was wishing for an umbrella and the next needing sunglasses. So this morning SF went out for a bike ride swearing sunglasses, a hat, waterproofs and a vest underneath. Crazy times.

Random weather gave these pictures lots of different looks.

The Wick of Hackney - Retro too

Everything in the East end has to be a bit retro doesn’t it?

Yellow alien heads

Like the Simpsons, if they were possessed

Bloody Krays

 

Things I’ve seen…

Long wall of paint...

Few of my favourite shots from today, mooching down the canals of London in the East. One entire wall of graf which was about 18ft tall, here are a few pieces….

Silkey & TLY TRP

TRP

This is the best thing I have seen for ages…. madness

Not sure who it is but it's dead good

Plus this one I spotted around the corner

No idea... but looks nice

Stik man map

Stik-y

Props to Londonist for creating the a London street map outlining where Stik pieces can be seen, even some that have disappeared.

Map Stick Man

Stik started putting his simplistic yet strangely emotive pieces around East London about 10 years ago and they can be seen from Hackney Wick, Well St, Hommerton, Brick Lane and throughout Shoreditch. When I first moved to East London in 2002, I remember spotting them and taking pictures on a snappy snap. Now 10 years down the track I still look out for new ones and this map has even been verified by the man himself.

Down Stik-s