the fat kid at heart: shoreditch street art walk

i met jerome a few weekends ago thanks to mr. jensen. jerome recently moved over from sydney where him and will met so it's nice to have someone to explore with! he had been interested in taking this street art tour that is recommended on trip advisor and i had time, so we made it happen on monday's bank holiday. (i got to london right before all these bank holidays took place which was great timing. next one isn't until memorial day in the us.)

shoreditch is in east london and is very up and coming. it is extremely hipster, and we definitely felt like we were not cool enough to be there. my sunglasses weren't funky enough, my shirt wasn't short enough and my pants weren't patterned enough.

this area used to be the home to a lot of artists, but with the gentrification that has been happening, artists can no longer afford to pay rent there so people have started moving away from the area. that said, there is still a ton of street art to be found there. it is everywhere if you just look. if there was just one thing i took away from today's tour, it would be to just open your eyes and look. art is everywhere. even on poles! that's a popular calling card for a lot of these artists. they stick their stickers high up on the poles where people can't reach. artists from around the world come to this neighborhood to leave their mark. part of this culture is there's no telling how long your piece of art will stay there before someone covers it up, or adds to it to create 'dialogue' but that's okay.

the creation of the art in the past has happened at night but there are more building owners that are willing to let the artists cover their walls so some have been fortunate to take their time during the days instead of having to rush.

much of the street art that we saw has been inspired by banksy, who is known for stenciling. his stencils usually poke fun at authority. his art is worth millions today but he's not happy about it (according to tourguide dan). banksy believes that art should be affordable. we saw one of his pieces, which was mocking a policeman who had had a poodle as the guard dog. we were also shown the first place where he had a show under the rivington bridge. he wanted to have an exhibit at a gallery, but the curator wouldn't let it happen so he went ahead and created his own exhibit under the bridge and sold canvases to people were interested. he lured people in with music, beer and food!

i took a lot of pictures so brace yourself :)

the crane (stork?) was one of my favorites by the artist roa

i thought these were cool

partial space invaders. some genius decided to try and pry off the TILED art that was cemented to the wall...

thought this was cheeky :)

the tour guide asked us what we thought this was. naturally i said 'orgy' to which he goes, well that is creative. it's a mass grave. oops... (this is by borondo, a very up and coming artist)