London-based graffiti artist Mr Cenz (Previously on Hookedblog) has recently completed work on one of his larger murals we have seen from him in awhile in East London. The artist has been super busy of late, we recently featured the artist on the site following his refresh of one of his long-standing spots on Fashion street which the artist refreshes on a frequent basis. We have also spotted what looks like a commissioned piece by the artist inside the recently open Quaker Street cafe, on Quaker street just a stone's throw from Shoreditch Overground Station. Elsewhere in London Mr Cenz caught up with our Walthamstow friends Woodstreet Walls (Previously on Hookedblog) and has added another wall to the E17 neighbourhood which we have yet to see in person.

London based street artist Fanakapan (Previously on Hookedblog) recently completed work on these double gates tucked away on a quiet side street along the Regents canal, away from the throngs of street art tours and the street art instagramarazzi who usually swarm around artists painting in popular street art hotspots in Shoreditch and Brick Lane. Fankapan has been painting this hidden little spot for some time now, refreshing the gates with new work on a regular basis, earlier works have included the 3D chrome octopus piece pictured below.

The latest issue of Independent London based art and culture magazine VNA Magazine has just dropped through our letter box. For this edition number 35 the VNA team have delivered another strong issue of the magazine which is celebrating it’s 10 year with this release. Starting out 10 years ago as a free black and white photographic zine , VNA magazine has evolved and grown over the years to become one of the most respected publications covering the global street art movement and its culture.

Back in August we were asked by Time Out to select some of our favourite London street art from the summer(Previously on Hookedblog). One of the pieces we selected was the Lord Napier Pub in Hackney Wick which saw a host of previous and current resident street and graffiti artists or the ‘Lunatics’ as curator and artist Aida Wilde called them, takeover and transform the pub with a riot of colourful works.

Earlier this year we featured some street work of London based illustrator slash graffiti artist Goodchild here on the blog in this post called 'It's All Good with London Based artist Godchild'. Along with some photographs of his street work the previous post also included a video round-up of Goodchild's output in 2015. The short film included a selection of the artist's work across walls, rooftops, trains, Paris Subways and even a cars!

Goodchild grew up with the rich Bristol graffiti scene where he is originally from before relocating to London to study illustration. We have long been fans of Goodchild's hand drawn patterned pieces and continue to shoot them when we discover them on the streets. Our latest finds includes the pieces pictured here which were shot on a recent visit to East London Hackney Wick. While we were stomping around Hackney Wick shooting what was new in the neighbourhood, it would appear Goodchild was traveling and has just emailed us over this recent video showcasing his adventures in New York! The video is right at the bottom of the post go have a look.

 
Goodchild's New York adventure video.

London based artist Shok-1 (Previously on Hookedblog) recently completed work on a new piece titled 'MasterPeace', which according to Shok-1 has been 'Painted in London in response to hostilities arising from the UK's EU referendum'.

A one time regular on the streets of East London it's been some time since we've seen some street work from London based street artist The Krah. The last few months has seen the artist focus on studio work and other projects including a number of exhibitions he has curated in his West London space.

Last week saw his welcome return to the streets of London hitting up the Shoreditch neighbourhood with a black and white series of large scale pasteups, some featuring new imagery and others drawing from the artists archive one of which is included in this post.


The Krah's Weird World pasteups in Shoreditch, London.



#StreetArtPorn Stencils
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Alongside the new pasteup work, The Krah has also been working on a new series of stencil pieces which have started to appear in West London and soon we are told over here in the East. The street artists new #FuckStreetart stencil works pictured below might possibly be considered a little NSFW for some. The stencil pieces feature some of most recognisable street art symbols or Street Logos as Tristan Manco referred to them in his 2004 book of the same name.

These iconic street logos have been incorporated into various explicit scenes in which he has replaced the human figures heads with the logos of some of the leading street artist from across the globe. Street artists which feature in The Krah's stencils include Banksy, Invader, Obey, Faile, Eine, Os Gemeos and D*Face to name a few. Check out the images below to see what other artists are featured in this new stencil series.


Os Gemeos, Barry McGee, D*Face, KAWS, Banksy, Eine, Sickboy, Invader, The London Police, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Pure Evil, Miss Van and Kaws with a Banksy paparazzi rat lurking in the background. Eine and Invader too.Faile and Obey with Banksy, Invader and Pure Evil
D*Face, Banksy, Obey, Os Gemeos, Invader and Keith Haring.

East London — Woodstreet Walls have been giving their neighbourhood a fresh lick of paint throughout their month long Paint Your London event (Previously on Hookedblog),  an initiative to provide affordable work spaces for artist in East London.  The festival has seen them transform a number of bland and dreary buildings across Walthamstow, Leytonstone, Leyton & Chingford into colourful works of art. They have been achieving this with the help of some of the best local and international street artists, 20 in total who they have enlisted to help transform multiple locations over the duration of the event.

Hookedblog have already featured a number of the artists who have worked with Woodstreet Walls painting murals in the neighbourhood for their Paint Your London event including Louis Massai (Previously on Hookedblog), Remi Rough (Previously on Hookedblog) and most recently Maser (Previously on Hookedblog).

Artist and longtime friend of Hookedblog,  Ronzo was also among those invited by WoodStreet Walls to contribute to the event. Well known for his character design, Ronzo's monster characters and urban pigeon sculptures (Previously on Hookedblog) can still be seen hanging around Shoreditch. The artist worked on a number of ideas for his E17 mural located just a few minutes walk from the Wood Street train station next to The Duke pub. For his finished mural he chose to paint this fun masked urban fox character wielding a spray can, perhaps taking inspiration from the urban foxes that are now common sight here in London. Ronzo sent us over some of his initial sketches along with a making of video of him at work on the mural which you can check out below.

Some of Ronzo's initial rough sketches for his E17 urban fox character. (Image — ©Ronzo)

Following the opening of his debut UK solo show 'Orbiting on the Periphery' at Lazarides Gallery currently on show until the 5th May, Irish artist Maser teamed up with Walthamstow art collective Woodstreet Walls to take part in their Paint Your London project in Waltham Forest.

Woodstreet Walls have been giving the neighbourhood a fresh lick of paint throughout their month long event which has seen them transform a number of bland and dreary buildings across Walthamstow, Leytonstone, Leyton & Chingford into colourful works of art. They have been achieving this with the help of some of the best local and international street artists, 20 in total who they have enlisted to help transform multiple locations over the duration of the event. We have already featured a number of other artists who have taken part in the event including Louis Massai (Previously on Hookedblog) and Remi Rough (Previously on Hookedblog) amongst others.

Maser is the latest artist invited by the collective to create work in E17, spending the last few days redecorating the exterior of a disused two story building located opposite Blackhorse Road Underground station. The bold vibrant work is part of the artists ongoing 'Interrupting Landscapes' series and his first painted here in London.

 

Maser's newest street work can be seen on the exterior of the former Standard Music Venue located directly opposite Blackhorse Road Underground station on the Victoria Line at 1 Blackhorse Ln, London E17 6DS. His 'Orbiting on the Periphery' exhibition continues at Lazarides Gallery until May 5th. Lazarides, 11 Rathbone Pl, London W1T 1HR.

Hookedblog are currently in the beautiful coastal Belgium city of Ostend for the first edition of The Crystal Ship Festival, a contemporary street art festival with a focus on art in public space. The festival launched on the 28th March with artists painting until the 10th April 2016 in the city of Ostend. An all star line up of 25 international and national artists have descending on the city to create large scale murals and installations which will form an artistic trail right across Ostend.

We have been in town a few hours now and managed to get our bearing a little as to the layout of the city and most importantly where some of the artists are working. As the festival began on the 28th a number of artists have already completed works on their murals including Argentinean artist Elian(Previously on Hookedblog). Hookedblog last caught up with Elian back in July of last year when the artists was visiting London and found time to collaborated on an impressive mural on Hanbury Street with Alexis Diaz which we previously featured on the site here.



Now in Ostend the artist has completed his mural having worked over a number of days to create what he has titled “Exercise Of Anamorphosis #2”.

Of the finished mural Elain has said he is "Continuing my studies about Perspective, I perform this artwork in a two-sided building located on a corner in front of a playground and a square. This is the second exercise on the technique of anamorphosis."

"It is based on generating the effect of image construction, finding the exact point of view to be observed. This Space/Painting installation seeks to stimulate dialogue and intimacy with the spectator through observation."

As with some of the artists other works a simple geometric composition in a primary palette was chosen to facilitate the finding the exact spot where the work aligns and not to give unnecessary information.



He continues to say that, "If we observe the corner from other angles, you can appreciate the natural deformation of perspective and methodology to run on that specific site, the elements invade windows and moldings. Each angle has a different morphology. The exactly point of view is located 18mts. from the building, near the center of the square and at a height of 1 m. approximately, to make easier this process to children using the playground and having fun there."


If you are in Ostend you can find Elian's mural at the following location, Achturenplein, hoek Sint-Niklaasstraat. Stay tuned as we will be bringing you progress updates from Crystal Ship Festival while we are in town.

Artists taking part in this first edition of the Crystal Ship Festival include
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1010 (DE) - AGOSTINO IACURCI (IT) - CYRCLE (US)(Previously on Hookedblog) -DISORDERLINE (B) - ELIAN (AR) - ELLA & PITR (FR) - EVERSIEMPRE (AR) - FAITH47 (SA)(Previously on Hookedblog) - FINTAN MAGEE (AU)(Previously on Hookedblog) - GUIDO VAN HELTEN (AU)(Previously on Hookedblog) - HERR SEELE (B) - JAUNE (B) - JAZ (AR)(Previously on Hookedblog) - LOCATELLI (B) - MISTER FIKSIT (B) - NOIR (B) - NUART PRESENTS BIANCOSHOCK (IT) & ISAAC CORDAL (ES) - PIXELPANCHO (IT)(Previously on Hookedblog) - POL COSMO (B) - ROBERT MONTGOMERY (UK) - ROA (B)(Previously on Hookedblog) - SIEGFRIED VYNCK (B) - SMATES (B) - ZIO ZIEGLER (US)

London — There was excitement yesterday among the London street art community as news and images began appearing online hinting at a visit from the elusive French Artist Invader. Known globally for his pixelated space invader street mosaics' which are often based on computer game characters and created using coloured ceramic tiles of varying sizes.

The artist was last seen in London back in 2013 for his seventh invasion of London, this most recent visit marking the start of his eighteenth London Invasion. Invaders last visit (Previously on Hookedblog) saw the artist installing a number of now iconic large scale works including the much loved Star Wars Invader piece featuring a pixelated Luke Skywalker battling with Darth Vader on the side of the American car wash in East London. Other notable pieces from that invasion include a David Bowie Ziggy inspired piece located on City Road also in East London.

The first new work from the ninth invasion has been installed as spotted by some eagle eyed Invader fans on Instagram. Hookedblog headed over to Camden this morning to capture some images of this new work. The large scale pixelated mosaic piece is a two part work with an invader character speeding away from a rainy storm cloud very fitting for the UK. We expect we will be seeing a number of additional works from this french artist over the next few days so stay tuned for updates as we begin the Invader treasure hunt right across London.

 

A photo posted by Hookedblog (@hookedblog) on Mar 31, 2016 at 8:45am PDT

Invader Was Here sticker spotted nearby the new work.

For our readers planning to seek out this new Invader works pictured you will find it located on Buck Street a short distance from Camden Underground Station, be sure to download the artists free app/game called Flash Invader(Previously on Hookedblog) where you gain points for each of the artist works you flash around the globe. We managed to Flash Inavader LDN_139 and won ourselves 100pts in the game.

UPDATE: The Invasion Continues...
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As we previously mentioned we suspected there would be additional works from Invader who is currently invading London with his pixelated mosaics. Following our posting of the above piece titled LDN_139 earlier today we discovered a second piece from the artist in North London. Having flashed the paint brush waving invader mosaic pictured below with the FlashInvader app we were awarded 30pts and made aware that this work is LDN_142!

For those of you not familiar with the the relevance of the numbers, each Invader piece installed is given a city and number reference in this instance 'LDN' is the city reference and the numbers 139 & 142 refer to the number of works the artist has installed across the city. As each new work is installed the number is increased which suggests that there is two additional pieces LDN_140, LDN_141  already up somewhere in London! Keep your eyes peeled and be sure to LOOK UP on your travels. More to follow...

 
UPDATE 2: The Invasion Continues...
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Found one of these awesome flower pieces where the artist has transformed a CCTV camera into a sun flower for this one in Holloway.This is one of two flower pieces we are yet to find the other work.

Hookedblog has been spending some time further east in Walthamstow over the past weekend (19-20 March), catching up with our friends at Wood Street Walls (Previously on Hookedblog) and to capture some photographs to share here on the blog of the some of the artists who started painting murals across the Waltham Forest Borough. One of the invited artists was London-based street artist Louis Masai who made a start early Saturday morning on his large scale mural on the gable end of a terrace house, working over three days to complete the mural on Monday afternoon.

For his mural Louis Masai has created a red-shanked douc monkey which has been painted for The Body Shop to promote their upcoming Bio-Bridges campaign. With this new campaign, The Body Shop aims to protect 75 million square metres of endangered forest in some of the most biodiverse areas of the world, starting in Vietnam this summer. The red-shanked douc, found in North and Central areas of Vietnam, is on the IUCN red list of endangered species and is poached for food and fur.



As well as promoting their Bio-Bridges campaign Masai's mural of the endangered monkey also brings to light The Body Shops new Enrich Not Exploit Commitment which is dedicated to enriching their people and products as well as the planet, working fairly with farmers and suppliers and helping communities thrive through their Community Trade programme. Their aim is to be the world’s most ethical and truly sustainable global business, and their Commitment is the first step on their journey to achieving that aim.

For The Body Shop, Masai was the ideal artist to work with on this project. The street artist is well known for his efforts to raise awareness through his art of the plight of some of the World’s most endangered animals. Previous outdoor murals have seen him focus on the African Rhino and the Bees, some of which are still visible around East London. The Body Shop secured the wall for Masai with local arts collective Wood Street Walls, coinciding with their event Paint Your London campaigning for affordable artist workspace in London.



Louis Masai's Red-shanked douc mural for The Body Shop can be seen at 2 Lancaster Road, E17 6AJ. The wall is about a 15 minute walk from Blackhorse Road underground station.

Hookedblog last caught up with Polish artist Bartek Świątecki AKA Pener's back in 2013 when we were invited up to a secret Cambridge countryside location, to hang out and take some photographs. The event organised by Propa Stuff (Previously on Hookedblog) saw Pener and 14 other street artists from six different countries invited to UK to spend the weekend creating, collaborating and hanging out in the countryside location.

Some three years later Pener is returning to the UK for debut London exhibition, ‘Balance’, which is set to open on Wednesday 23rd of March. The exhibition will feature a collection of Pener’s new series of conceptual abstract and deconstructive canvas, showcasing hyper-bright works based on geo-elements with details, colour transitions and fluid compositions. Underpinned by a constant futuristic movement, harmony and transparent shapes combine to dramatic effect including a large mural due to be painted both inside and outside the venue.




"After years of being a graffiti artist, and limited to lettering, Pener built his visual language into something universally communicative. Developing the alphabet into surfaces, words became unpredictable shapes created with bright colors and sharp lines. While his work can be seen as a magnified element of wild style graffiti, upon closer examination they are much more than that. Through use of clean lines, transparency of spray paint, drips and splatters, his works are focusing the energy and rawness of graffiti onto a smaller format. The new genre under which his work fits is ‘Graffuturism’, and this series of work titled ‘Cosmogramma’ refers to the very moment when Bartek abandoned classical graffiti and started his individual search for the essence of style."

balance - grafuturism exhibition By Bartek Świątecki AKA Pener at The Book Club launches Wednesday 23rd March 2016 at 6pm and will run until May 22nd 2016.

The Book Club, 100-106 Leonard Street, London, EC2A 4RH.

Photographs featured in this post were taken in July 2013. The balance - grafuturism exhibition has been directed and curated by Liat Chen.