Eine is best known for the vibrant typographical letters that have popped up all over East London over the past half of the decade. These letters can appear on their own on shop shutters or can spell whole words across East London walls like “Scary”, “Exciting”, “Vandalism”, “Change” and “Calculate”. Eine’s street art is driven by a love of typography and he describes being influenced by how “letters change shape when combined with other ones”.

Eine hit the headlines in April 2010 when David Cameron presented a piece of his work to Barack Obama, the US president, as a gift from the UK. The piece was not a whole shop shutter unfortunately, but a canvas work entitled “Twenty-first Century City”.

Perhaps Eine’s most famous work adorns the shutters of the shops in Middlesex Street, Shoreditch, now universally known as the ‘Alphabet Street’. For this project, Eine pursuaded local shop owners to let him create a whole alphabet along their street.

The feedback has been 100% positive. Spraypainting a shop shutter turns an ugly, boring thing into something interesting and colourful. I think you’d have to be a pretty negative person to find fault in it.

— Ben Eine

Press attention and commercial demand for his work has brought Eine firmly out of the underground, but it wasn’t always this way. Eine was brought up in South London and started out in the world of graffiti when he was just 14. He says “ I wanted to be part of that hooded tracksuit gang thing. I did it pretty hardcore for about 20 years and the last time I had a close escape from prison.’

From underground graffiti artist to shining star in the firmament of the London street art scene, Eine is eager to point out that street art is distinct from graffiti. Street art is different because “street artists want to add something to the environment. They consider the audience, whereas graffiti writers don’t care about anyone except themselves, they do it purely for the kick”.

Eine and Invader in Shoreditch:

In 1998 an invasion began on the streets of Paris as waves of Invaders began appearing on the street. Invaders were soon to spread to the streets of over 40 other cities throughout the world. The street artist responsible for this street art is known only as Invader, born in 1969 and working in anonymity, nearly nothing else is known about him.

Most of these Invaders are literally that – homages to the classic Space Invaders arcade game of the 1980s. Each piece is made up of tiles which represent the blocky pixel graphics of the original arcade game. No two Invaders are the same and many are infused with other cultural references, such as a swipe at today’s CCTV society. Invader has also played with other iconic video games characters such as Super Mario.

The installed Invaders become counterculture surveillance drones, reminding people that government and monolithic corporations aren’t the only ones watching

— Swindle Magazine, Issue 3, Shepard Faireyz

London has not been spared this Invasion and Invaders may be found throughout the street of London if one knows where to look.  Since Invader’s street art is “suspended between visibility and anonymity” you must be attuned to the correct frequency to see Invaders on the streets. Once you are on this frequency however, you will encounter Invaders all over the streets of London

Invaders come in different sizes but are usually very small, often found lurking in low down corners or high up on wall above street signs.  They are not all small however and much larger Invaders have been reported across London.

Invader has become a worldwide phenomenon and there is even an Invader on the Hollywood Sign.  Each wave of invasion in a city lasts two to three weeks and during this period Invaders pop up all over the cirty.  The mosiacs are built in advance by Invader and then installed rapidly.

Stik has been creating Stik people around London for over ten years and anyone who has wandered around Shoreditch recently will have been greated by Stik’s supersize, bright street art adorning shop shutters and walls. Stik people initally began to appear in Hackney Wick and in recent years marched westward to Shoreditch and the rest of London.

Stik people, although androgenous and constructed from simple shapes, are nevertheless capable of conveying complex body language and emotion. These themes of human emotion and expression are infused in Stik’s brightly coloured street art. Stik, the street artist, himself was homeless for a period and ideas surrounding human vulnerability are also detectable in his art.

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

— Stik, in Little London Observationalist, 6 December 2009

AliCè, real name Alice Pasquini is a street artist from Rome.

Why do you think street art is important and what message are you hoping to communicate by creating art in public spaces?

I think the artist primarily tries to express herself and doesn’t necessarily know what she wants to communicate. The meaning and the value comes from the exchange between the artist and the viewer. This exchange happens on the street in a more unexpected, surprising and freer way than in a gallery.

I create art about people and their relationships.
I’m interested to represent humans’s feelings,
exploring differents points of view.
I especially like to draw strong and independent women

— AliCè

Strong brushstrokes and illustration styles dominate your portfolio. Tell us a bit about your artistic approach.

I am a multimedia artist. My artistic background is academic. I studied Fine Arts. I specialized in old style animation and I worked as an illustrator and set designer. It is sometimes frustrating for an artist to work for very opinionated clients. Therefore, in the last few years I have embraced street art as a way to totally express myself.

Which piece are you most proud of and what does it mean to you?

There is a wall painting I am specially proud of. I painted it in Bassano del Grappa (north of Italy) last September at the Infart Festival. I like it because  there is a very good integration there between the landscape and the painting. Moreover, I worked with C215 and that collaboration worked really well.

You’ve put work up in cities all over the world. Is there something specific about London that inspires you while you’re here?

In 2000, I did one year of Fine Arts in London. It was there that I exhibited for the first time. Therefore London is a very special place for me. What I really liked about London, and I still do, is its openness towards new artistic movements and its lack of prejudices compared to Italy.

Which other street artists inspire you?

C215, Sten & Lex

Portrait of AliCé by C215 as part of the Never Judge show at Stolen Space Gallery in December 2010:

C215, real name Christian Guémy, is an international street artist superstar that has painted all over the world including India, Israel, Poland, the USA, Senegal and Morocco, and of course, London. Originally from Paris, C215 has two masters in History and in Art and previously worked in import/export! When his daughter Nina was born he became a full time artist.

C215 creates bright, intricate stencil works that are both expressive and evocative. His work nearly always consists of close up portraits and his subjects are usually beggars, street kids, homeless people and refugees. C215 describes the motivation behind the choice of his subjects as being those people who are rejected by society and capitalism, the ‘forgotten’. The message behind his work is not directly political, instead C215 seeks to humanise his subjects and raise awareness about people’s plight by awakening passers by to the identities behind each individual. There is also a message behind the placement of his works, behind bars, on bins and on rusty old doors, so called ‘non-places’ where his portraits may be forgotten about. C215 also portrays children in his work, in particular his daughter Nina, and religious figures, as a Catholic.

Each stencil has it own story. Most of my stencils come from my own pictures, but some also come from friends, or photographers with whom I collaborate. The most important thing for me is the feeling inside, the expression of the eyes, and the story behind

— C215 interview on UrbanArtcore.eu

C215 has two distinct stenciling styles. One is multilayered and extremely colourful. The other single layered with perhaps one or two colours. C215 is a prolific street artist and there are fine examples of hos work to be seen in London, particulalry along Blackhall Street in Shoreditch.

Mentalgassi are a German street art collective.

The images below are part of the ‘Making the Invisible Visible’ street art project.  Here, Mentalgassiteamed up with Amnesty UK to highlight the plight of Troy Davis, a 42-year-old man on death row in the US state of Georgia.  Mentalgassi produced three such installations in Soho, London.

Most people’s first job involved burgers and fries. David walker’s first job was creating t-shirt designs for The Prodigy. After that, he started designing record sleeves and party art before running his own street wear label called “Subsurface” for five years. It was only three years ago that he started painting. (Pretty impressive he’s accomplished all of that considering he’s broken his hand over 10 times!)

Once a fan of only black and white (with a little bit of pink thrown in for good measure), David now paints with in explosions of colour following his discovery of a little treasure box of spraypaint tucked away in a studio. His portraits are realistically surreal – the sort of images that make you stare for ages.

Which aspects of London life most influence your creativity and how?

I like the randomness of cities and the anticipation that anything can happen (good or bad) and that in turn you can make things happen. I have lived in small towns where there is just not the same sense of possibility, so this is very inspirational for me. I feel privileged to be making art full time and the speed in which this city can move pushes me forward.

Faces are the main subject of your work. Who are the people you paint? Do you know them?

I don’t know them at all. I like that they’ve never met me and they don’t know they’re being painted. I use found photography, old magazines, the web, snapshots, anything that’s not staged by me. The fact that the subjects are unknown also allows people to make up there own narrative to the portraits.

Tell us about your approach to your work, your unique “no brushes” style and your choice of fantastic vibrant colours.

I’m drawn towards the idea of making something beautiful out of what could be classed as lo-brow materials and methods. I don’t use brushes because I want the pieces to raise a question about graffiti and traditional painting as there can be strong preconceived ideas about both. People are normally quite surprised the work is made from spray paint and I think many are also surprised they actually like the work when its outside on a wall; suddenly they have connected with a scene that they previously had no time for at all.

As for colours, I’ve gone from two extremes. For two years, I only painted in black, white and pink (as it was cheaper and allowed me to concentrate on the subject more), then I came across a  box of random coloured spray paint that had been buried in the studio and started exploring as many colours as I could and all at once. It just felt right at the time and it’s been a lot of fun.

Favourite memory of painting on the walls of London?

Pretty much every time I paint outside, someone comes up to me at the end of the day and says “I saw you doing this earlier and I thought it was gonna be a right load of old crap, but I like it now. Nice one.” I think this is a great compliment.

Do you prefer exhibiting in galleries or on the street?

They both have there positives and negatives. Walls are great because you have room to be very expressive and lots of people get to see the painting. With gallery work you get to spend time developing techniques and immerse yourself without anyone watching you. I try to balance both but I need to get outside more next year.

Which other London-based artists do you admire?

So many for so many different reasons. At this very moment: Adam Neate, Will Barras, Polly Morgan, Christopher Moon, Arth Daniels

Swoon is a street artist hailing from New York who is well known for her intricate and lifesize what paste prints and paper cut outs of figures based upon people in her life.