Interviews

Creator of a tiny community of cement sculptures hidden and isolated around the city, Isaac Cordal invites us to reflect on the sad state of the world through his art. It holds a mirror up to society by recreating scenes of our everyday modern life reminding us of the numb passage of time, the overwhelming influence of consumerism and elimination of nature. Keep your eyes open!

Busy with his first solo book and ongoing projects, Isaac has taken a bit of time to answer some of our questions. Read on as he explains why he uses cement and on such a small scale, discusses the importance of placement of his sculptures and tells us a story about one of his installations created in a puddle in Dalston. All photos are Isaac Cordal’s unless otherwise indicated.

You come from a traditional fine art university background. Why and when did you decide to take your art into the streets?

The street is the perfect scenery for my sculptures. I could not imagine having to make big holes, carry water to fill pools; the city comes with all of this by default and it´s still free. Sometimes it’s difficult to find suitable sites and other days the city seems to be calling me.

My primary idea was to make models with rapid cement and manipulate tiny portions of urban areas but it dried too quickly. After a while I started to make silicone molds to multiply the sculptures. My first pieces in the streets were in 2006.

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RUN’s love of travel has driven him to create work everywhere from his native Italy to China to London where he lives now. His latest piece, large as always, is inspired by carnival season and can be seen at The Foundry. Hands and interlocking faces have long been a RUN signature in London.

Past his days of leaving his mark on trains and lorries, RUN talks to us about why he likes to paint legal walls these days, tells us where the name RUN comes from and gives us his thoughts on the attitude toward the graffiti scene in London.  (Except where otherwise indicated, all photos are from RUN).

What’s the story behind the name RUN?

RUN ‘s tag has been inspired by a Cypress Hill song, from the name of the dog of an Italian Mutoides friend (GRUNE), from the sound of these three letters with no meaning added.  When you are young and you choose a tag, it doesn’t usually have the deepest meaning ever.  It is like if you get a tattoo when you are 16 or 18 then ten year later it is just a mark on you, but it stays on your skin forever.

When and where did you create your first street art? What was it?

I used to graff when I was very little on trains, lorries , walls. Then I started to create paintings out of Hip Hop, using matt emulsion, water-based colour, rolls and brushes. My first big wall was in 2003 while squatting in a building in Italy. The meaning of that painting was: “We are here now and we haven’t got fear of nobody!”

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NYC 2007 (photo by Gavin Thomas)

Legendary street artist Micheal De Feo, aka, The Flower Guy is “Coming in from the Outside”, an appropriate title for this New Yorker’s first solo show in London. Michael De Feo’s street art career spans nearly two decades. His iconic flower – in simple rainbow hues – has been spotted on brick walls in NYC, gritty stairways in Hong Kong and statues in Buenos Aires. A few years ago, life changes led his work into an outward exploration and public display of his inner thoughts in the form of scribble-style self-portraits.

Michael took a bit of time away from exhibition preparations to chat with Street Art London about the cycle of life, some insight into award-winning children’s book that incorporates his street art and his bond with daughter Mariana who once went on a pasting spree with him in the South of France.

Micheal will be in London this week and hopefully we will get to see some of his street art in London’s streets.   He is also exhibiting some of his latest work at The Orange Dot Gallery (details of the show which runs from 9 to 15 March are over here).  Head over early to Orange Dot on Saturday 12 March to snap up one of 50 free prints that Michael will be giving away (more details below). (All photos are the artist’s own except where indicated otherwise.)

Miami 2009 (photo by Geoff Hargadon)

It all started with the first flower mural on East 23rd Street, NY in 1994. What prompted you to put art up on the street?

It actually started about a year earlier; that piece was the first time I painted one that size; remarkably, it’s still riding high on East 23rd Street. Back then, the idea of putting my work up on the streets came rather naturally. Having grown up here, I’ve always loved New York and wanted to be a part of the fabric of this great city. Street art was a way that I could literally do just that. Also, I realized that I could show my work to the widest global audience with no barriers by side-stepping the gallery system. I felt why wait for their approval to share my work with a narrow few when I can put my work up anywhere I like and share it with everyone?

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You’ve inevitably spotted the ubiquitous orange toasters, stuck to the escalators in the tube, on pub toilet doors, massive paintings on walls in the East End…The Toaster is an icon that is as well recognised as the logos of major corporations. The Toaster works with the same mentality as advertising, only it’s a bit more subtle and a lot more intriguing.

Read on to meet the crew who have been dedicated to sticking their favourite kitchen appliance all over the streets of London and around the world for the past 12 years. They share the story behind the reason they chose the toaster, tell us some tales from a few of their more adventurous toastering experiences and give us a sneak peak at what to expect from their first film to be released this spring.  Images below courtesy of The Toasters.

Toasters have been appearing on streets around the world since 1999. Tell us what the Toaster Crew is all about and how it started.

Three people, one image and a mission to get it as big as possible starting from New Year’s Day 1999. At first we thought we’d paint one stencil a day for a year and clock where we were at. In hindsight, that quickly became an unrealistic New Year’s resolution. The project rapidly turned into putting a multitude of stickers and stencils up every week.

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CityzenKane’s impressive sculpture of Lord Jagannath glistens and glitters against the wall of Brick Lane. Around the corner, a gun pops out from another wall and if you wander through London’s East End, you’ll catch a glimpse of CZK’s kissing fish, spirit masks, bugs and other colourful creatures standing out in 3-D amongst the rest of the spray paint and posters.

Read on for Street Art London’s conversation with CZK on how house music and a bloke with a pipe inspired him to be the street artist he is today and what look out for from him next on the South Bank. Plus, don’t miss out on the background story of that well-loved Lord Jagannath piece.

Give us a short history of your artistic background and how you first got into street art.

Since a very young age I have been drawing and making sculptures. In the late 80s, the house music revolution changed my life. Being very much involved with the scene, I considered it to be a very enlightening and spiritual experience for me. I would have amazing visions of organic shapes and colours in symmetry, so I decided to express these visions through my art. I became prolific with my drawings and making sculptures out of expanding foam and Fimo. I was living in Brighton at the time and there was a stencil artist whose name I don’t remember, who had stencils of a bloke with a pipe. His work was everywhere and this inspired me to start putting stencils up too.

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This is Stik, paint-splattered and hard at work in the Mile End Arts Pavilion on some material for his solo show back in 2010.  He’s been creating Stik in various forms for 10 years now. You’ll find his work mainly around Hackney Wick, Dalston and Shoreditch –  Stik people resting, dancing, entire Stik families bringing life to neglected walls or empty billboards. Recently, Stik’s been branching out, with people in other parts of London asking him to graffiti Stik on their walls, working at Glasto and putting up a few pieces in Bristol. He even did a campaign for British Waterways.

Stik tells us how his art has seen him through his toughest times on London’s streets, about the beauty of language and movement and a little story about a woman in Mayfair.

What is the significance of Stik?

Quite often, simple images are the most noted. If I’ve got too many lines, I kind of lose track of what’s going on. I like to have very few things going on, but a lot of data compression in that. This arm’s got three bends in it (pointing to one of the figures he was painting) and I think about the way it conveys movement. 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. Before writing, before speech, it’s the language of toddlers, the language of cave people, body language. I think it came from trying to speak to people I don’t share a common spoken language with, just trying to find a way of conveying complex emotions without speech.

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C215’s street art represents an exploration of animals, architecture, freedom and those forgotten about by society all in incredible detail and against a backdrop of overlooked places.  C215’s real name is Christian Guémy but he goes by his artistic identity, ‘C215’.  He has put work up all over the world in India, Israel, Poland, the USA, Senegal, Russia, Morocco, his home-country of France and of course, London.

C215 talks with Street Art London about the subjects and themes that have inspired him to become a full time artist. He tells us about Nina, his daughter, who is already becoming a street artist in her own right and he lets us in on a pretty crazy Friday afternoon stunt he pulled in the middle of 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.

Born in Rome, Alice Pasquini, a.k.a. AliCè, has recently been using London’s streets to ignite conversations about creativity. She paints with rich colours, using the walls to express her true artistic ideas that can be stiffled in a more professional environment.

AliCè gives Street Art London a bit of insight into her inspiration, talks about the value of street art in communicating new ideas, and gives us a heads up about her graphic novel to be released next month.  The three pieces featured in this interview may be found in Blackhall Street, Shoreditch.  Go check them out!

Your street art focuses on representations of women. What is your inspiration behind this choice of subject?

I am interested in female models different from street art cliche. I am often annoyed by female stereotypes proposed by artists where women are seen as sexual objects or cartoon heroines. I am seduced instead by real women, strong and independent women. In general, I am interested in the representation of human feelings.

Where and when did you create your first piece of street art and what was it?

In 2006, in Rome. My first piece of street art was a girl seen from up above.

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Twisting ribbons weaving through the work of Chilean street artist Otto Schade (aka Osch) have become a trademark of his portfolio after The Kiss went up at the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane. Otto is following his artistic passion with some impressively detailed street pieces that show off drawing techniques refined over many years.

In conversation with Street Art London, Otto talks to us about the complexity of his work, the simplicity of his first attempt at street art and lets us in on his thoughts behind the tangled tongues of The Kiss.

Though you have traditionally worked on canvas and paper, we’ve seen more and more of your work on the walls of East London.  Are you planning to head out to the streets more in the new year?

Sure, but I want to find some legal walls to show my 2011 stuff.

These pieces are complex, very detailed, compositions. Can you talk a bit about your technique and the thought process that occurs from initial idea to completion?

Fistly I sketch the main idea on an A3 or A4 paper. Then if I am doing a stencil of it, I scan it and over draw using computer software. Once I decide which sizes I am gonna do the graffiti, I scale the drawing and cut the stencils with laser (by pieces) due the complexity of the stencils. Once the stencils are cut, I proceed to make the graffiti. After I spray it, I retouch the graffiti with a marker because of the shadows I want to show between ribbons.

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