Alternative London Walking Tour

Today I participated to an alternative walking tour in East London, with typically Brick Lane and a portion of Shoreditch. Our motivated, activist, trendy and funny guide was Josh. I really enjoyed myself and discovered the context and message the artists want to pass. I deeply recommend this tour, very interesting! As you may already know, this area is full of both graffiti (images, symbols or writing, usually sprayed with spray cans) and street art (stamps, mosaics, templates). Consequently, a crucial difference between these two forms of urban art is the time spent to apply it in situ, if you see what I mean. 

While complex graffiti usually require hours or several days, street art can be mounted incredibly fast. Needless to say, all this is illegal (without consent of landlord) so timeliness really matters!

This one is actually a stencil (each color has its layer)

A Christmas tree, just because

I love this one, still untouched by others
La Pandilla (made with tiny brush to create a mesh of details)

Invader (mosaic of Space Invaders)

Clet Abraham (diverts traffic signs)

Pixel Pancho (I like the style)

ROA (he does big animals)

Shepard Fairey (also created the Obama's blue-white-red poster)

Ben Eine and his love of typo ("Protagonists vs Extortionist")
(one of his paint was recently offered to Obama by Cameron)

RRobots at the ever changing facade of Village Underground

These guys actually took 4 hours to install this mosaic, choosing the "hiding in plain sight" strategy (high visibility jacket, cones to deviate the traffic and of course pneumatic platform)

El Mac (whose particularity is to master even long strokes)
(he also uses a pneumatic platform to make these giant faces)

Vhils introduced excavation (dug the plaster to reveal the dark brick underneath)
(here using pneumatic drill, more recently using explosives)

Gregos (a cast of his face)