The Wild Hackney Project is a local grass roots response to Hackney Council’s current policy towards street art and graffiti in Hackney, which is essentially to paint over it. Recently Hackney Council threatened to paint over the Roa Rabbit on Hackney Road, a legal piece of street art painted with the permission of the building’s owner and beloved by the local community. Widespread uproar in the Hackney community, features in the Metro, an online petition signed by thousands and a flurry of angy letters from The Premises, upon whose building the Rabbit was painted, prompted a climb down from Hackney Council. Other pieces have not been so lucky, for example, a well known Banksy piece on Church Street was recently blitzed by Hackney Council along with many other pieces of street art.
@WildHackney are planning to lobby Hackney Council about a new approach to graffiti and street art that goes beyond painting it black by providing them with a policy written by local residents. If you want to have your say, go along to Wild Hackney’s first metting which is at 6:30pm on 2 December at the Fellow Court Community Center, E2 8LR.
We, at @StreetArtLondon, are never ones to miss the oppurtunity to show you some good street art, so take a look at what Wild Hackney are fighting to save. If you take a wander up Hackney Road this is what you can expect to see from street artists such as Roa, Eine and Christiaan Nagel:
Forget the Rabbit, it’s all about the Roa Beaver! Located a little nearer to the Shoreditch end of Hackney Road.
There are some lovely Eine pieces on Hackney Road. The “Strangest Week” was painted by Eine in response to a piece of Eine’s work being presented by David Cameron to Barack Obama. Eine joked that his piece is probably today hanging in the Whitehouse toilet.
This nice piece on Hackney Road only lasted a few days before it was painted over by Hackney Council.
A huge piece by The Toasters is opposite the Roa Rabbit.
Look out for some Christiaan Nagel mushrooms on your trip down Hackney Road too. One of them adorns The Premises. It’s partly down to these guys that the Roa Rabbit was saved.
Given that all of this started because of Roa’s Rabbit, we can’t resist finishing with a Roa slideshow of his other work in London: