Street Art at the London International Paste up Festival
The UK recently saw the launch of a new London street art festival here in Shoreditch, the first London International Paste up Art festival.
London International Paste Up Art Festival
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A joint project from the teams at Art House Project London and art collective, Outside The Zone, the festival took place across multiple East London locations with an exhibition at the Hoxton Gallery to mark its launch. The duo behind the event, Trix Mendez (Outside The Zone) and street artist Apparan (Art House Project London) put out an open call on their social channels inviting street artists from across the globe to get involved and contribute to the London Paste-up Festival.
Over 200 international and national street artists responded to their open call for paper artwork.
Over 200 international and national street artists responded to their open call for paper artwork.
British street artists based outside of the city were able to post their paper works to London and have their posters displayed on East London walls as part of festivals' large paste-up colleges in dedicated locations around Shoreditch.
Paste-up art, what is it?
So what exactly are paste-ups? Regular followers of Hookedblog will be familiar with poster and paste-up art as we frequently feature street art paste-up artists on the site.
Recently we shared our five favorite London Street Art Hotspots for Paste-ups on the blog. For those not familiar with the term, paste-ups or poster art is sometimes referred to as wheatpaste or wheatpasting in the US.
Paste-up art, what is it?
—
So what exactly are paste-ups? Regular followers of Hookedblog will be familiar with poster and paste-up art as we frequently feature street art paste-up artists on the site. Recently we shared our five favorite London Street Art Hotspots for Paste-ups on the blog. For those not familiar with the term, paste-ups or poster art is sometimes referred to as wheatpaste or wheatpasting in the US.
Essentially it involves artists sticking up paper poster art to surfaces and walls using a water-based wallpaper glue or a wheat/ flour paste made of flour and water as an adhesive.
Street artists will generally work on their designs at home or in their studio, creating their artwork in advance for installation on the street at a later date. Different techniques, mediums, and sizes vary from street artist to artist.
Some artists will create really elaborate hand-painted one-off original paste-ups of varying sizes, while others use screen printing techniques to create multi-layered multiples of their work allowing them to blanket cover an entire city with their mass-produced printed artwork. Digitally printed colour and black and white posters are frequently used by some artists as is lino and block printing.
Street artists will generally work on their designs at home or in their studio, creating their artwork in advance for installation on the street at a later date. Different techniques, mediums, and sizes vary from street artist to artist.
Some artists will create really elaborate hand-painted one-off original paste-ups of varying sizes, while others use screen printing techniques to create multi-layered multiples of their work allowing them to blanket cover an entire city with their mass-produced printed artwork. Digitally printed colour and black and white posters are frequently used by some artists as is lino and block printing.
For the London International Paste-up festival, we see a variety of street art techniques mentioned above used in the paste-up art installed across the festival locations.
Various paste-up artists work on Dereham Street, London.
Where to Find Street Art at the London International Paste-up Festival
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For the first edition of the London International Paste-up Festival, the organizer chose to host the festival in East London. The neighbourhoods of Shoreditch, Old Street, and Brick Lane are well-known areas for street art and graffiti with artists from across the globe installing and painting their works on the walls of the area. The festival's main sites were located in the Old Street and Shoreditch areas and included paste-up works installed on Old Street, Drysdale Street, Bateman's Row, Dereham Place, and Dereham Street.
The Old street works were temporary and have since been removed but the street artworks are still on display at the other locations.
Bateman's Row
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One of three large paste-up banners installed by the London International Paste-Up team, pictured above is the large panels installed on Bateman’s Row. Each banner featured a collage of multiple paste-up pieces from the various invited street artists.There were two additional paste-up collaged banners installed on advertising/billboard sites on Old Street, but these temporary pieces have since been removed and we, unfortunately, didn't manage to catch any images of these works The piece above on Bateman's Row is likely to stay up longer than the Old Street pieces.
Drysdale Street
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A close-up photograph pictured above features the work of Anglo-Portuguese painter, mural, and paste-up artist Jacqueline de Montaigne. One of two stand-alone street art pieces which were installed on Drysdale Street, just off Kingsland Road. At the time of posting both of these artworks were still up on these walls.
Wider shot of Jacqueline de Montaignes stand-alone hand-painted paste-up work for the London International Paste-up Festival. This artwork is pasted on one of the boarded-up railway arches located on Drysdale Street, just off Kingsland Road in Shoreditch, London.
The London street artwork of artist Yu_Wallart, also located on Drysdale Street, just off Kingsland Road in Shoreditch, London.
One of the larger collages of paste-ups installed as part of the International Paste-up festival can be found on Dereham Place, London.
Dereham Street & Dereham Place
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The main focus for the London International Paste-up festival was these two key locations, Dereham Street and Dereham Place, both locations next to each other. Here we find the largest collection of street art paste-ups from the invited festival street artists. On Dereham Place we see a large wooden hoarding pictured above, covered from top to bottom with a series of paste-up artworks of various sizes from multiple artists. On Dereham Street we see the entire side of a warehouse that runs the length of the street also covered with artwork.
There is a great sense of energy to this collage piece at both these locations with a huge volume of street artwork to take in on both walls. We have revisited both of these locations on a number of occasions taking photographs and on each visit have seen something new.
Take a look at a small selection of the photographs we have taken in our image gallery below.
One of the larger street art pieces along the wall on Dereham Street is this black and white photographic work, titled Higher Ground by London-based street artist Donk.
We have previously seen a super oversized version of this work from the artist installed further East in Hackney Wick back in 2016.
Pictured above is the work of London-based street artist and curator Appraran originally from the Canary Islands. Apparan is also one of the co-founders of the Art House Project who was involved in setting up the festival.
"Our aim is to introduce paste-ups as a form of street art to a wider audience through this international festival. We want to give the paste-up community some well-deserved recognition on the London street art scene.” - Apparan.
'For a moment there, it just felt so Winona Forever.' - Artist WRDSMTH's work located on Dereham Street, London.
Pictured above is one of a number of works street artist WRDSMTH's has created for the London International Paste-Up Festival.
His signature series of text-based works, wheat-pasted to walls and often accompanied by spray-painted vintage style typewriter can be seen upon walls in cities across the globe from Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Melbourne, Paris, and London.
We have previously featured WRDSMTH on Hookedblog back in 2016 when he installed a series of larger text-based works on a number of London's iconic red phone boxes in Westminister in Central London.
We have previously featured WRDSMTH on Hookedblog back in 2016 when he installed a series of larger text-based works on a number of London's iconic red phone boxes in Westminister in Central London.
One of UK street artist C3's miniature paste-ups featuring her signature red-haired character.
Cat-loving New York-based street artist City Kitty's street art paste-ups frequently appear on the streets of Shoreditch and Brick Lane and we have featured the artist's work on Hookedblog a number of times in the past.
A selection of the artists' hand-colored paste-ups featuring the signature cat character pictured above can be found along the wall on Dereham Place.
Colombian street artist Stinkfish is another regular visitor to the UK. The South American street artist was recently back in the UK where he painted murals in London and Bristol.
Alongside the new street art murals, Stinkfish also installed a large number of his monochromatic paste-ups around Brick Lane and Shoreditch while he was visiting.
He also left a selection of these papers works with organizers of the London International Paste-Up Festival who installed these works for the artist on the wall along Dereham Street, London.
Paste-Up Festival Street Artists
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A selection of the street artists who contributed to the works in the streets as part of the London International Paste-up festival included:Donk, Luap, Zombiesque aka Ben Rider, Shuby, WRDSMTH, Hello the Mushroom, Subdude, 7th Pencil, Daddy Street Fox, Apparan, ProHeroes, Black Dove, Sten&Oli, Diva Dog, Ghost Collective, 0rrible, Jelly, Bentoghoul, Captain Eyeliner, D7606art, LT66, 8arms2hug, Knapple, YaYa, Neon Savage, Whatifier, SHEM , DD Regalo, Kwerk, Pablo Alisson, Pure Evil, Lucie Flynn, Yorgos, JWolf, Blackdove, Mr Edwards, Cris rwk, City Kitty, Cokemoss, Planet Selfie, Jd Montaigne among others.
"Dream bigger" - Another piece by LA street artist WRDSMTH on Dereham Place, London.
