STREET ART & GRAFFITI

Website: www.shoreditchstreetarttours.co.uk

Bambi

Bambi is an anonymous ex-Central Saint Martins student.

Website: https://streetartistbambi.com

Banksy

In about 2000 Banksy shifted his focus from his native Bristol to London.

In 2018 a version of his Girl With Balloon sold at Sotheby's for 1.04m. At the moment that the sale was completed devices in its frame automatically half-shredded it. The purchaser had not anticipated this and several days of negotiation ensued. Ultimately, the person agreed to accept the work which it was agreed was no longer the original work and which was retitled Love Is In The Bin.

In 2023 Banksy put a traffic stop sign that featured three drones on Commercial Way in Peckham. Within an hour of the installation being confirmed as genuine, it was stolen. Two men were filmed removing it with a bolt cutter. One of them was arrested subsequently.

Basement Space Gallery, Dalston

Location: 529 Kingsland Road, E8 4AR

Website: www.bsmt.co.uk

King Robbo

John Robertson (1969-2014) was born into a working-class London family. As a teenager, he became a football hooligan. He hung out with older boys who were skinheads. They were given to spraying their names on walls. They would end the tags with o s to indicate that they were skins. John found that he was drawn into the nascent graffiti scene. He adopted the moniker King Robbo. The culture that he embraced was self-referential rather than artistic or aspirational.

On Christmas Day 1988 Robbo led a team that tagged a number of tube trains in Aldgate East Underground Station. He took a bottle of Mo t & Chandon along. By the early 1990s the police were addressing graffiti in a far more assertive way. Robbo retired from the scene. He became a cobbler in King's Cross.

For the book Banksy: The Man Behind The Wall (2021) the writer Will Ellsworth-Jones interviewed The King. According to Robbo, he and Banksy had encountered one another in a bar in East London in the late 1990s. He had acknowledged that he had seen some of Banksy's work. The Bristolian had denied knowing who Robbo was. The Londoner had ensured that the West Countryman would remember him by thumping him. Robbo was 6 8 -tall. Banksy claimed to Ellsworth-Jones that the encounter had not occurred.

In 1985 the youthful Robbo had sprayed Robbo Incorporated work that stood next to the Regent's Canal beneath London Transport Police's headquarters in Camden. In 2009 Banksy painted a workman pasting up wallpaper over a portion of it. King Robbo responded by painting his name on one of Banksy's works. Banksy responded by prefixing the letters fuc . The spat became known as the Graffiti Wars. It continued with the local council becoming a third-party in it. It was ended in 2011 by King Robbo suffering a fall. He was left in a coma and died three years later without regaining consciousness.

The Robbo Incorporated site was adorned by a large pink and silver R in King Robbo's memory. It was created by Team Robbo, a group of graffiti artists with whom he was associated.

The London Mural Preservation Society

Website: http://londonmuralpreservationsociety.com

Mighty Mo

The Mighty Monkeys are by Mighty Mo. They first appeared in Camden, and then moved into East London.

Website: www.bsmt.co.uk/mighty-mo

Music

See Also: POP & ROCK; MENU

Clapton Is God

In 1965 the graffito Clapton is God was written on the wall of Islington Underground Station. Soon the phrase appeared all over London.

David Litvinoff (1928-1975) was a member of the demi-monde whose knowledge of rhythm n blues caused Eric Clapton to treat him as a confidant. He helped to spread the slogan.

Location: Angel Underground Station, Islington High Street, N1 8XX (orange, purple)

It's Only Rock and Roll

In 1974 a Rolling Stones album was promoted by a campaign that involved spray painting It's Only Rock and Roll. Forty years later an example survived at Lord's Cricket Ground.

Location: Lord s, St John's Wood Road, NW8 8QN (orange, blue)

Time's Possible Inspiration

On Westbourne Park SAME THING DAY AFTER DAY - TUBE - WORK - DINNER - WORK - TUBE - ARMCHAIR - TV -SLEEP - TUBE - WORK - HOW MUCH MORE CAN WE TAKE - ONE IN TEN GO MAD - ONE IN FIVE CRACKS UP was sprayed up by King Mob, a Situationist group. The text survived for some fourteen years. It is believed to have been the inspiration for Roger Waters's song Time.

The Who

A couple of art students were behind a campaign that graffitied a Who stencil around London. Their identities are unknown. Their actions were probably established the link of music to graffiti.

Roger Perry

Roger Perry photographed Time Out s covers from the listings magazine's inception. This involved travelling through the London of the 1960s and 1970s. He took to photographing the graffiti that he saw, inner West London of W10 and W11 proved to be particularly fecund. This he published in a book that was entitled The Writing On The Wall (2015). Much of it was word-based rather pure imagery. The poet and Sixties figure Heathcoat Williams is thought to have responsible for some of this.

Sweet Toof

Website: https://sweettoof.bigcartel.com

The Tigers of Wrath

During the counterculture the slogan the aphorism The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction from William Blake's prose/poetry work The Marriage of Heaven & Hell (1793) was a popular graffiti in London. (The American rock band The Doors had taken their name ultimately from The Marriage.)

Location: 2 Basing Street, W11 1ET. Painted over. (blue, grey)

See Also: WILLIAM BLAKE

David Vaughan

David Vaughan (1944-2003) studied at Bradford College and then the Slade School. At the latter, he came to know Douglas Binder and Dudley Edwards, with whom he set up a collective. They painted the side of the Lord John boutique in Carnaby Street, the Buick that is featured on the cover of the Kinks album Sunny Afternoon (1967), and Paul McCartney's magic piano.

Vaughan knew fashionable Sixties figures such as David Bailey. Examples of his work were collected by the likes of Eric Clapton, Princess Margaret, and Henry Moore. However, he had no particular interest in cultivating the art market. He spent much of his time working on community projects such as playground murals.

In the early 1970s Vaughan suffered from bad mental health. He chose to move to the North-West. He remained in the region, dying in obscurity in 2003.

David Backhouse 2024