Street Art London: Invader

I had a slightly embarrassing experience a couple of weeks ago. I picked up my sister-in-law from Paddington Station and as we drove through London's East End, I got terribly excited when I saw a couple of Invader pieces. Of course, no one else in the car knew what I was on about so I thought it a very good idea to remedy that situation.  This is a guest post on the incredible Invader by Griff from Street Art London.  Have fun spotting the invader in each photo!

Those of you have seen Exit Through the Gift Shop will be familiar with the work of 'Invader' who featured heavily in Banksy's film. For those who are not so acquainted, Invader, as he is known, is a French street artist who has been invading cities around the World since the 1990's. It all began in Paris in 1998, but since then waves and waves of Invaders have spread rapidly to cities all over the World from Bangkok to New York, Tokyo to Berlin and most recently, this Summer, Sao Paulo. London has not been spared.

Invaders are literally that – homages to the classic Space Invaders arcade game of the 1980s. 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. However, Invader has been known to 'go big' on occasion with larger tiles and there are a few such examples lurking in London – most notably at the Truman Brewery's Ely's Yard, just off Brick Lane.

Invader's work centres around the increasing surveillance in today's urban environments and society as a whole. Invader seeks to countenance this developing trend by installing his own silent sentinels in cities to monitor its population. Invader doesn't make it easy for us to find him though and always places his Invaders in nooks and crannies, up high and down low – in places that only become obvious once you have discovered them.

Invader has visited London on many occasions since his first visit in 1999 and overall has left over 100 Invaders in the city. Many of them are still around today if you know where to look... The images that accompany this post should yield some clues as they are all still riding on the street. There's a particularly high concentration around Soho to get you started.

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For more street art news, sightings and photographs, you can visit Street Art London and check out their Facebook community.  You can also attend one of their street art tours around east London and experience the works of Invader, Stik, Roa and even Banksy for yourself.

 

All photographs in this post are copyright of Street Art London.

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Street Art London: Stik

There has been some debate in recent weeks as to the nature of graffiti: is it art or just plain vandalism.  Griff from Street Art London is a strong believer that street art is indeed art and has kindly agreed to write up a guest post for me.  All photographs in this post are copyright of Street Art London.

We thought it would be a good idea to offer an insight into the work of one particular street artist whose work us Londoners are becoming more familiar and gaining a greater affinity with. This street artist is Stik, and if you have taken a stroll around East London recently then you will probably have noticed his 'Stik People' hanging around on the walls of derelict buildings and sleeping on shop shutters and doorways.

 
 

Stik People originally began to appear in Hackney Wick but have, in recent times, been steadily on the march towards Central London. At present, Stik is one of the most prolific street artists in London and is always putting up new work – 2011 being no exception. There are even a number of Stik People just off Shaftsbury Avenue.

Stik himself has spent a sizable portion of his life living on the street and in squats and such themes of human vulnerability trace through in his street art. Although they are androgynous and constructed out of very simple shapes Stik People are nonetheless capable of conveying complex emotions. In Stik's own words:

“Beauty is in movement. That’s what it’s about. Beauty is about the way that someone moves their body. You can tell by someone’s walk if they’re angry, whether they’re happy or if they’ve just eaten. You can tell a lot about someone just by the way they’re moving their back or their eyes. There doesn’t need to be a great deal of detail there. You can see it from across the road. You can see someone silhouetted against a white wall in the night and check whether they’re walking in an aggressive way or if they’re someone you know. That’s what I’m trying to capture in my work – that direct recognition.”

Read the full interview on Street Art London.

For more street artist news visit us at Street Art London and check out our Facebook community. We also do walking tours around East London and would love to show you all of Stik's work (and more from the likes of Banksy, Eine, C215 etc. etc.) up close.

If any of you are interested in going on one of the walking tours, I was thinking of going in April.  Let me know if you’d like to join in!

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