Prangin Road Ghaut is an reclamation land extension of Prangin Road in George Town. The Prangin Canal or last time known as the Prangin River is along this road and was once used to transport goods from the sea.

The Ram (and Two Sheep)

• His works were inspired by an early Australian pioneer, James Ainslie, who was a manager, employed on the large former local “Duntroon” Station, to look after a flock of sheep.
• Over a 12-year period, they “flocktuated” in numbers from 700 to 20,000 sheep.
• No wonder there is a well-known Aussie phrase which says that: “Australia was built on a sheep’s back” – May I say: “Baa none - I agree“.

For more examples of Sculpture, see this page.

From today’s wander. I actually watched the bird piece going up last summer. It was created by two artists, male and female, from Toronto’s CAVE (http://www.communitycave.com/home/) in collaboration with a pro-street art program called StART (http://www.toronto.ca/streetart/index.htm). I’m always happy to see women holding their own within what remains a predominately male culture.

What better way to start the bank holiday season then with a celebration of London’s street art and culture! One of the coolest things about London is the street art scene and under current of alternative culture.

The first long weekend of May saw Sardine and the shellster make their way (after half an hour of walking in circles, thanks iPhone!) to London’s 2013 street fest somewhere in the side streets of Shoreditch. It was a true celebration of  London’s urban street culture with Demos for BMX, skateboarding, beat boxing, street art, dance crew comps and break dancing just to name a few.

Mingling next to so many talented people in their respected fields was awesome and something I think you can only really experience in London. Yet again London lives up to its reputation of culture and cutting edge trends. Now another week of working for the man till we can breath the fresh city air of the weekend again. Until next time….

I have been seeing these pop up ALL OVER the city over the past two weeks. Simple. What’s not to love?

All day.

Halsted and Milwaukee

DALeast is currently in London where he just completed this wonderful piece above along with two others in the past week (pictures below). This new mural is probably one of his best pieces so far this year. Im particularly loving the way he draws the air bubbles in the background.

These two beautiful pieces were painted by South African artist Faith47 who is currently in London in company of her husband DALeast.
Faith47′s work is of a strange and delicate beauty and it has very often to do with the impermanence of life, a fascination with the tragedy of our existence, and the search for spirituality. This doesn’t only reflects in Faith47′s subjects, but also her style.

Pics: monoprixx

Rudimentals new album 'Home' depicts the Hackney Peace Mural.

The Hackney Peace Carnival Mural on Dalston Lane was completed in 1985 at the height of the cold war.It depicts a group of people marching for peace against ‘the bomb’ and has become an important cultural statement from that era. Those wanting to catch a glimpse need only catch the London Overground, head to Dalston Junction, cross the road, look right and it’s there. The area is particularly interesting for street art and the mural is also right next door to the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden which is a lovely place to chill out.

Devised by Ray Walker in 1983 it was completed in 1985 by Mike Jones after Walkers premature death. It’s remarkable that it’s managed to stay for so long and now the condition of it is still fairly good.

Anyone wanting more information about the mural should go to the London Mural Preservation Society which has loads of info about the many murals of London.

And If your interested in other murals from this blog you could also check out my post on the Fitzrovia Mural.

A bit late with this one as well, but… anyway… These two guys appeared a few days ago in London and are part of Invaders latest invasion in this city. with a funny depiction of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader’s epic battle. Invader is getting a bit funnier ;)

Pics: Pure Evil

NOMAD is a German artist who was educated and inspired by skateboarding, Hardcore Punk, Graffiti, Hip Hop and Rave Countercultures of the 80′s.
His activity consists of hundreds of paintings and marker drawings on Berlin’s streets, which earned him admirers and collectors and made his art visible all over the world.
His style reflects his lifestyle as a vagabond, and it is always evolving and incorporates “the necessary”. He proclaims to use whatever style or material is available to maximize the focus on the pleasure of the creation.
Nomad’s works reminds us that art and artists does not need boundaries. It’s a simple celebration of freedom, life and its vanity. It’s a healthy breath of fresh air in a world that is tied up with circumstances and definitions.
His recent project was the so called “Land Art” project, where Nomad transfers the ideas and intentions of street art into the wild nature…

I went to Berlin Music Festival with Niall & his brother, Mark, in 2011, the weekend after Electric Picnic. All great times. And this weekend just gone, I spent in the great company of 2 former colleagues, who have become great friends! Our visit involved a ‘pilgrimage’ of sorts, the background to which, I’ll outline below.

A few weeks ago, on a sunny Saturday, I ended up doing a 9 hour correction stint in the office. On a break, I popped out for a sandwich and spotted a new addition to Dublin’s street art scene. The piece in question turned out to be a collaboration between Dublin’s Maser and French artist, JR.

I started following JR on twitter & instagram and saw that from Dublin, he had moved on to Berlin and was pasting large photos of people who were participating in his Wrinkles of the City project. I was transfixed by the concept and the images he was posting and I suggested to Denis and Joan that we make JR’s artwork the focus of our May weekend jaunt to one of Europe’s finest capitals. They were game, and so it was that we found ourselves cycling the length and breadth of Berlin in search of JR’s black and white, giant pasted images.

There are purported to be 15 – 20 walls across Berlin featuring older Berlin residents images. We found 8 of them. They are impressive in photos, they are jaw-droppingly awesome in real life.

We all agreed that it was a fantastic aspect to our trip. We were taken off the beaten track and found some absolute gems as well as coming across some cool stuff en route to each paste up.

Berlin is a terrific city. I’ve been there often in the past three years, but each time is different. I’m going to miss my visits. That’s for sure.

Well hello there!

The id-iom demolition sale is now well and truly over! Who would’ve thought we had so much of our older stuff to sell – not us that’s for sure! Those that did, thank you very much for buying from us. It was much appreciated and we hope you got yourself something special to adorn your wall. We were both really happy with the results but as they say all good things must come to an end.

We haven’t been sitting back sipping cocktails whilst sitting by a pool being fanned by some obsequious servant. In fact, quite the opposite, we have actually been working our little cotton socks off painting new picture and canvases. Images can be found via the issuu link below:

id-iom April newsletter

If you want a first look at our latest pieces before the rest of the internet get a chance then you can sign up for the newsletter here.

We’d like to keep you up-to-date with information about upcoming projects and what’s available but if you are more inclined to use social media you can follow us online using the following links::

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Twitter – @thisisidiom

Cheers

id-iom

Last year I was looking for a Portuguese class in Lisbon and I heard that St. Andrew’s Church in Lapa had a great teacher and so I wanted to know more. When I dropped a message to the church, I did not only get the contact of the teacher, but even better: Minister Graham McGeoch saw a link in my e-mail signature and wanted to talk about painting a wall at the church with graffiti. What? Painting a wall at the church with graffiti? How cool is that… of course we were in ;)

St Andrew’s Church is the oldest Presbyterian church on mainland Portugal.  It has been offering English language worship in the Reformed tradition in Portugal since 1866. It is fully committed to ecumenical and interfaith relations. Before they booked an artist with us, they already did several other art projects and are very open to other cultures, religions, and ideas. It is the perfect place for Minister Graham’s idea: to involve the young crowd more at the church, and to stimulate dialog and controversy.

For this reason, he asked graffiti artist Tazy to base his design on bible verse Matthew 5:9

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

And here is the final result:

The entire design was finished in only 2 days. On the first day, Tazy prepared the wall. He removed some loose parts and applied a white ground coat. On the second day, the wall got a new life. What looked like wild lines and circles in the first draft had contrasts and faces only few hours later. During the day, many visitors dropped by, among them friends of the church, the police, and even SIC, a Portuguese TV broadcaster who ran a short story about the project (watch it here!).

The sketch

St. Andrew’s Church – All Welcome!

Preparation

The first lines

The first lines

A big hole

Yes, it’s legal!

Faces

Material

SIC Television

Details

The wall right next to the church building

Details

St. Andrew’s church yard

Almost finished!

Some last details

We are very happy and proud that St. Andrew’s Church was very satisfied with Tazy’s work and his manners. According to Minister Graham, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Neighbors, the church’s parishioners, and by-passers enjoy the urban art in their neighborhood and like the debate it triggers. Once again, it shows that street art is for everyone, that street art is valuable, that street art connects us.

Thank you to St. Andrew’s Church, especially to Minister Graham who has made this project possible.

If you would like to drop by St. Andrew’s Church to see the graffiti live, here is how you get there:

St. Andrew’s Church website
St. Andrew’s church on Facebook

The wall is illegal under international law and turns Palestine into the world’s largest open air prison. All water, food, post office, electronic, petrol……almost everything are imported from and controlled by Israel.

Well-known UK graffiti artist Banksy made a summer project on Israel’s Wall stands out as one of the most pertinent artistic and political commentaries in recent memory. One of his main pieces is his series of nine stenciled pictures all along the Israeli-Palestinian wall. Another conversation Banksy reports having with an old Palestinian man:

Old man: You paint the wall, you make it looks beautiful.
Banksy: Thanks
Old man: We don’t want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall, go home.

I hate the wall as well, but what can we do? I don’t know, but I captured as many as I can the realistic scene to everybody, at least I can tell the story to all my friends.

I love art, so I spent a day just walk around the city to find different street arts in Bethlehem. Of course I enjoy the searching process, many beautiful and meaning works really moved me. But should I happy about that? I feel sad honestly. I just want more people know that what happening at the another corner of the world, they’re not the flat politic characters on TV news only. They’re real! They’re human! They’re friendly! They need help and focus!

I found so many slogans on the wall as following:

“Revolution have started here…and will continue until…”
“Yes, We can!”
“I have a Dream”
“This Lie can not Live”
“How many lavers of paint will it take to tear the wall down”
“Q: What is injustice? A: All of the above.” (The wall)
“CS knife can cut all the poisoned yesterday…no more”
“Ubuntifada your struggle”
“Free Palestine”
“When the sun rises, it rise for everyone”
“Don’t forget the struggle”
“This wall may take care of the present only, but it has no future”
“Refuse to be enemies”
“You can put my body in a prison, not my mind!”

And I found some story on the wall, Those really touched me:

My knee shaking – The soldiers would come and beat at the door with their guns. I had to go down. It was always me. If my husband had gone, they might have shot him. It was to tense. I went down the stairs with my knee shaking and I let them in. Upstairs children would be crying. “Now is the time for shooting” Carol A. from Bethlehem

I am a dying woman – All my life was in Jerusalem! I was there daily: I worked there all my friends live there. I used to belong to the Anglican Church in Jerusalem and was a volunteer there. I arranged the flowers and was active with the other women. I rented a flat but I was not allowed to stay because I do not have a Jerusalem ID card. Now I cannot go to Jerusalem; the Wall separates me from my church, from my life. We are imprisoned here in Bethlehem. All my relationships with Jerusalem are dead. I am a dying woman. Antoinette, Bethlehem

After a wonderful wall in San Francisco just a few days ago (here), met Aryz the American artist David Choe in Los Angeles where they quickly painted this fantastic collaboration, a perfect mash-up of styles, forms and bright colours.

Pics by Purpurella (IG)

After a fabulous 3D installation created for the Campo Viejo vineyard in Spain, met Okuda and Remed again in London where they participated in the “Streets Of Spain” event in London’s South Bank Centre.
The piece above was painted live and shows how wonderfully these two artists work together,  managing to merge their own characteristic styles into perfection combining both abstraction, figurative style and a bold use of color. A wonderful piece with a funny outcome after they removed its center where you could read “The Potential Of Emptiness” something that in some way reminded me of SatOne’s mural from over a week ago.

Pics via Nobulo

The artist manages to create an ethereal effect with his use of colour, emphasis on shadow and creative use of lines.  He creates an image which looks like it’s coming apart as it moves toward you.  The effect is visually stunning.

Spots painted include Rivington Street, Sclater Street car park and Pedley Street close to Brick Lane. These add to places the artist has painted the world over. As usual pictures are below.

Pedley Street tiger by Daleast jumps right out at you

Pedley Street

The artist places his signature discreetly within the art

Rivington Street in Shoreditch

This piece looks like a Scuba Diver coming out from the sea

The art replaces a previous piece from Jimmy C and dominates the area.

Once again the piece is dramatic

The quote in the heading is characterizing another activity, but it’s not too far-fetched to transfer it to street art. Even if still metaphorical then less so. Street art is about creating openings in the concrete structures surrounding our everyday live. Inserting elements too free our awareness and perception from the numbness of routine and structures devoid of human virtues and proportions. Street art is thus filling in the blanks of aesthetics left out of the construction process. Resembling architecture in its function as part of our unsought for exposure to a creative mind – intrusive and insistent. And it should be evaluated as architecture, as good or bad in achieving places for friction and open-mindedness. To quote another french intellectual, “In art, rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary”.

After a first wall (and some very small pieces around the city), painted Phlegm this new piece in collaboration with Run as part of the Chichester Street Art Festival and organized by Street Art London.

Argentinian Franco Fasoli (also known as JAZ) is currently in France where he painted this new and monochromatic wall somewhere around beautiful Vitry.

Titled “Religious Drinking” the image shows headless lions arranged in a rather ritualistic way around a circular and empty center. At first sight he image feels contradictory, specially when taking in consideration the word “drinking”. How can a headless lion “drink” and how can that action be religious? Is the artist referring to our attitude to religion or way of seeing life? Whatever the answer is, that’s a question that only the artist can answer for now, but the motive is a somehow recurrent image in Franco Fasoli’s imagery as we can see here, a piece painted for his newly inaugurated exhibition “Battlefield” at the Artifex Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium.