Street Art London

Ben Wilson (UK)

Next time you are out and about in London, look down.  You could be standing on a miniature masterpiece by Ben Wilson. Ben's technique involves super-heating the gum with a blow torch, spraying it with lacquer, applying enamel and then, using tiny brushes, painstakingly creating a tiny image before sealing the gum with a final layer of clear lacquer.  Ben estimates that he has painted thousands of pieces of gum around London.

Blu (IT) & Ericailcane (BO)

BLU's work is at once arresting and inventive and fused with political and social commentary. There is only one BLU piece remaining today in London – a collaboration with Italian street artist Ericailcane in Chalk Farm. In the piece, Ericailcane depicts a series of sheep carrying suitcases as they queue up for slaughter. The sheep mount an escalator painted by Blu and then disappear inside the head of one of his surreal characters, the inside of which is lined with row upon row of razor sharp teeth.

BRK (ES)

CEPT (UK)

Starting out in the London graffiti scene in 1986, CEPT does typographical and character based pieces and collaborates with other BC members all over London. On the streets, superheroes are the main focus of CEPT's work and these works have a comic book / Lichtenstein feel about them.

Christiaan Nagel (ZA)

Originally from South Africa, Christiaan Nagel has been living in London for three years.  Over that period he has been popping large, bright mushrooms atop buildings, bridges, walls – anything high really. Christiaan's mushrooms appear spontaneously and he likens them to 'ideas' which pop up when the environmental conditions are right to produce them.  A natural climber, Christiaan has a knack of getting up to spots that seem impossible.

Cityzen Kane has a diverse range of influences that draw from the 80's house music scene and the ancient Sanskrit writing of India. These themes are reflected in the sculptures which he installs around the streets of East London. Symmetry is a guiding force behind his work and his pieces often have an organic feel to them.   Another thread in his street art is light and he nearly always adds glitter and crystals to his pieces so that they shimmer in and interact with sunlight.

Connor Harrington (IE)

From Cork in Ireland but now based in London, Conor Harrington fuses graffiti and fine art techniques to produce huge frescos depicting Napoleonic era military figures and battle scenes.  He reflects that he saw his first piece of graffiti in National Geographic magazine when he was 12 and never looked back, soon venturing out onto the streets of Cork to put up his first typographical work in October 1994.

Ben Eine (UK)

Born in 1970, EINE became an active member of the London street art scene by the early 90’s. Initially focusing on fashioning graffiti pieces on trains and designing stickers, he soon began to experiment with an array of media and techniques including screenprinting and typography. EINE has developed his own typographical style which consists of painting individual letters on shop shutters or bigger conceptualised words on walls.

ESPO (US)

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Steve Powers aka ESPO, made his first mark in his native city at age 16 doing traditional graffiti. When he moved to New York City in 1994, he began painting his tag, ESPO, in boxy letters on shop shutters while posing as an employee of the “Exterior Surface Painting Outreach.” He was soon garnering attention from the downtown art world and exhibiting work in galleries.

El Mac (US)

El Mac is known for his huge photorealicstic aerosol  murals.  He has painted all over the world since being commissioned in 2003 by the Groeninge Museum in Brugge, Belgium to paint his interpretations of classic Flemish Primitive paintings in the museum’s collection.  El Mac was in the UK in the Summer of 2011 participating in the See No Evil Festival in Bristol.  On his way back to L.A. via Heathrow and without pausing for breath, painting through the night, he put down this awesome signature piece in Hewett St.

Escif (ES)

Escif lives and work in Valencia where he first began painting on the streets in 1997.  He is known for his minimal colour palette and elegant technique which perfectly complements the muted plaster walls of Valencia's old streets.  Along with fellow Valencia based street artists like Blastus and Hyuro, Escif's technique has come to embody the 'Valencia style'. In recent years much of his work has been infused with themes of revolution, social change and protest. 

Faith47 (ZA)

Gaia (US)

Inspired by both Swoon and Elbow Toe, Gaia started to use the walls of his hometown as the backdrop for his distinctive wheatpastes. These days he is based in Baltimore where he fuses block printing, hand drawing, and painting as he continues to create arresting public art – often hybrids of men and animals – that has surfaced in a range of gritty urban environs and now London.

Gold Peg & Sweet Toof (UK)

BC Crew Gold Peg's symbol is a Peg which more often than not is gold.  Gold Peg is often to be seen up on rooftops with other members of the BC Crew.  He is also fond of a rooftop slogan or two.

INSA (UK)

INSA is one of those numerous artists with a graffiti background who has transitioned into the street art scene.  A one time patron of Goldsmiths University, INSA is a self confessed fetishist and much of his work revolves around the adulation of the female form and also its commodification.  His work usually features and revolves around his signature high heel pattern. 

Invader (FR)

Invader, as he is known, is a French street artist who has been invading cities around the World since the 1990's. To create his street art, Invader uses tiles – usually the two by two centimetre glass ceramic ones of the type that you would tile the bottom of a swimming pool with. Thus, classic Invaders are very small and sometimes quite hard to spot given that they are made up of these mosaic tiles.

Kid Acne (MW)

Born in Lilongwe, Malawi in 1978, Kid Acne lives and works in Sheffield sharing the title of Sheffield's best known street artist with Phlegm.  He began painting graffiti early at just 12 years old and in the 90s moved to Sheffield to study Fine Art and never left.  Upon graduating he got involved in the street art scene and through his street art portrays a host of characters and figures.

Malarky (ES)

Malarky, hailing originally from South London, currently divides his time between Barcelona and East London.  He is known for his bright, exuberant pieces which incorporate a host of colourful characters which include bats, robots and of course foxes for which he is most well known.  In his own words he says that "as far as street art goes, I like to paint outside, I can’t really explain it, I like to add some colour to the streets and reclaim a bit of bland street surface, if you what I mean."

Michael De Feo (US)

Also known as the 'Flowerguy', Michael De Feo has pasted up (and sometimes painted) thousands of flowers on the streets of not only New York City, but across the globe in places as far flung as Hong Kong.  All of this began way back in 1993 when he painted one of his flowers in East 23rd Street, NY.

Pablo Delgado (MX)

Originally from Mexico but living in London for the last three years, Pablo Delgado is well known for his miniature paste ups scenes that may be found all over East London.  His work first started appearing in early 2011.  Initially he pasted up tiny doorways on the walls around where he lived.  Shortly after this he began putting up prostitutes in street corners complete with a shadow on the pavement.  The next evolution of his work was to put up seemingly random scenes from the depths of his imagination.  

Pez (ES)

Phlegm is a Sheffield based street artist originally from Wales with an amazing black and white style.  First and foremost Phlegm sees himself as an illustrator putting pen to paper to produce hand-crafted zines and books.  However, he is increasingly known for his murals and is very much a rising star in the international street art scene, regularly invited to participate in festivals overseas.  His outdoor work transplants the worlds, characters and stories from his illustrations onto walls, shutters and the interiors of abandoned buildings.

Rowdy (UK)

BC Crew member Rowdy's mascot is a green crocodile with sharp pointed teeth that he gets up around London as much as he can.  The best examples of his work in London are the two old school, gigantic crocodiles on New Camberwell Road outside Jono's Snooker Hall.

ROA (BE)

Roa, a hugely talented Belgian street artist from Ghent, is renowned for his giant black and white animal street art. Roa started off in the street art scene painting animals on abandoned buildings and warehouses in the isolated industrial areas of his hometown.  Today, Roa’s animals may be found slumbering on the sides of semi derelict buildings and peering out from shop shutters in city streets all across the world from New York to Berlin and Warsaw to Paris.

RUN (IT)

RUN is originally from Italy but now calls London home.  He started out in the graffiti scene in Italy painting trains, lorries and walls but gradually became more immersed in the street art scene.  Now working with brushes in a fine art style RUN concentrates on painting hands and faces with intricate details. A close friend of BLU and Ericailcane, RUN has, in the past, collaborated with these artists in Italy.

Sweet Toof (UK)

BC Crew member Sweet Toof is well known for the large pink gums and teeth that he puts up all over London and more recently over in New York.  Sweet Toof is currently one of the most pro-active members of the BC Crew in pursuing his own projects and has been putting lots of work onto the streets this year, especially through collaborations with the likes of Malarky and Paul Insect.  Sweet Toof currently has a particularly strong presence over in Hackney Wick as many of the industrial rooftops around encircling the Olympic Site on the other side of the River Lea are adorned with his teeth and gums.

Stik (UK)

Themes of human vulnerability are detectable in Stik's street art and he sees many of these pieces as self portraits.  This is because the artist himself has spent a good chunk of the last ten years living homeless. His figures are constructed out of very simple shapes and he universally restricts his pieces to just six lines.  This simplicity was initially born out of necessity as the pieces he used to do were often illegal and requiring fast execution.  Today, he is often invited to paint by building owners but retains his simple and elegant approach.

Thierry Noir (FR)