Janie and I were super excited ahead of this one. During lockdown Janie had taken to fine art and had been reading up on graffiti art/street art. This Alternative London street tour, with an opportunity to try out some spray can art at a workshop afterwards, seemed like a very good idea, so I snapped up a couple of tickets for an alternative Friday afternoon off.
We were part of a group of 12 to 15 people, most of whom were tourists from outside the UK and very few of whom seemed to come from anywhere near Janie’s and my age range. Unlike my visits to Lord’s lately, no-one addressed me as “young man” on this afternoon.
Janie and I went mad with our camera-phones. We took nearly 140 pictures between us and if you want to flick through them all, unedited but in time sequence, this Flickr album (here and image below) has the lot:
I’ll pepper this account with some highlight pictures, which should give you a reasonable idea.
The Walking Tour
We started in Fashion Street, where there were many superb street art works, including this one, which had recently acquired its tears and farewell messages:
Of course you cannot completely separate the street art from the migrant-adopting history of the East End. It was interesting to see and discuss the Brick Lane Mosque (formerly Synagogue, formerly Huguenot Church) in that context.
It also dawned on me that we were walking streets (and due to walk streets) close to the locations I have recently been researching regarding the early years of my mother’s Arkus/Markus/Marcus family in London. More on that later.
Some of the most spectacular street art in the area emerged during (or just after) lockdown, when artists needed an outlet for their outpourings and many building owners presumably thought, “why not?”:
We wandered a bit further east, around Princelet Street…
We then wended our way to the open space around the old Truman Brewery, where a great deal of street art and graffiti art resides.
Then back along Hanbury Street..
In Hanbury Street, Gary pointed out the utterly compelling Libreria bookshop and then didn’t stop to give us time to have a look around – you cannot do things like that to me!
At the end of Hanbury Street, we were on the corner of Spital Street, where my Great Uncle John (Johnny) lived and worked as a cabinet maker at the turn of the 20th century.
On Heneage Street we rather liked the Up Yours street art piece.
Then back to Brick Lane…
…more or less completing a circuit before ploughing south towards Whitechapel.
We said goodbye to the few walking tourists who had chosen not to try some spray can art – the rest of us ploughed on towards the Hessel Street studio.
A Brief Arkus/Markus/Marcus Family Tour
We walked along White Church Lane and then past Back Church Lane – the latter (No 132) being the residence of my Great Uncle Max & Great Aunt Leah Markus at the time of the 1901 census – just a few years after Max arrived in London and while he was still labouring in the tobacco industry and dreaming of returning to his chosen profession – violinist.
When Max first arrived, in the late 19th century, he lived at 1 Matilda Street, where the rest of that enormous family (including my grandpa) still resided in 1901.
No longer there, Matilda Street has been absorbed by council housing buildings on the block just south-west of Gary’s Alternative London studio…
…how weird is that?
Especially weird, as I had resolved to have a wander around those very streets only two/three months ago when cousin Adam and I were looking into that chunk of family history with musical absurdist Ron Geesin – long story.
Of course I hadn’t yet got around to taking that stroll (I spend so little time in the City these days) and it hadn’t occurred to me that we might be close by, when I booked this experience.
Also coincidentally, btw, Cousin Adam had his own large-scale adventure with street art some 40 years ago, although Gary categorised my description of Adam’s giant mural in Covent Garden as public art, not street art.
But let us return to Whitechapel and spraying paint around.
The Studio Session
Gary made us all mask up and glove up (thank goodness) and then taught us how to spray paint on walls/boards rather than ourselves (useful skill, that, when spraying paint).
Keeping us away from the stencils until we had “mastered” the basics, we were charged with making a rectangular base and graffitiing our names. This, even I could do quite well.
Even the use of the larger stencils was within my skills grasp with relative ease – the trick being to spray enough but not too much.
It was the attempt at some detailed lettering with stencils that confounded me, with more red paint on my fingers and blotching that corner of my masterpiece than actually communicating words. I wanted to spray “Media Kills”, but I think I’ll stick to the keyboard for such detailed messages.
Janie chose, instead, to “give it large” with the visual imagery, absorbing some of the existing images into her own creation, which, I am reliably informed, is very street.
So there you have it – Janie shows big idea talent at this art medium while I scratch away thinking that words are necessary in all cases.
We’d had a wonderful afternoon. Although we haven’t travelled to far-flung locations now for years, this experience transported us in far-flung cognitive ways.
And for those who think that the words are unnecessary for this experience, there’s always the Flickr album with all the pictures from the day: