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
