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London Street Art - Banksy and more

Writer's picture: Lilly Nielitz-HartLilly Nielitz-Hart

Updated: Jan 19

In the East End of London one can find Street Art by established and more recent artists. Over the years the art has become more sophisticated, many artists who started their career decades ago, are now displayed in galleries all over the world.


The Graffiti "Scary" in a railway underpass on Rivington Street
Railway underpass on Rivington Street with the graffiti "Scary" by street artist Ben Eine.

The Bristol artist Banksy has left his street art on many walls in London and elsewhere around the world. They are always popular, but not all of them have survived over the years. It was just last August, when Banksy left traces of his newest street art in London. Nine works of art, depicting animals, were spray-painted in a variety of locations around London, comprising a goat, elephants, and a fish-eating pelican, as well as a gorilla, freeing other animals from London Zoo.

Among his older works is the so-called "Designated Graffiti Area", which can still be found in its original place in Shoreditch in the backyard of the former trendy Cargo nightclub on Rivington Street, near a railway bridge. The writing refers to a fictional "Highway Authority" one can also see a security guard holding a poodle on a leach.


Banksy - "Designated Graffiti Area" in Rivington Street
In a backyard in Rivington Street one can still see a work by Banksy in its original place

Nearby is another of his famous works, "His Master's Voice". Here he modifies the logo of the record label HMV: the dog not only looks into the gramophone and listens to his masters voice, but points a bazooka into the loudspeaker. Although the former Cargo backyard has been subject to building and transformation works, the Banksy artworks remain (for now), protected from the weather and from destruction by others via a plexiglass pane.


Two of Banksy's other early works from 2004 come with an adventurous story: In that year Banksy was frequenting the trendy pub “The Foundry” in Hoxton. On the outside wall of the pub he painted a window, from which a television appears to have just been thrown out - an act that rock stars are usually notorious for. The work was a good fit for the Foundry pub, which attracted an excentric crowd. The second work shows an image of a huge rat, which appears to be holding some kind of cutlery in its paws. It probably meant something to the arty crowd in the pub.



Banksy's "Rat" - now located over the side entrance of the art'otel in Hoxton
An original Banksy artwork - "Rat" was relocated from a pub wall to the side entrance of a hotel

In 2010, Hackney council announced that the buildung in which the pub was located would be demolished and be replaced with a hotel. When this became known protests broke out, not least because the demolition would have destroyed Banksy's works. But it was also a general outcry against the progression of gentrification in the East End. In its heyday, the pub atracted artists, bands and a trendy crowd, such as the rock poet Pete Doherty and his band“The Libertines”.

Finally, the Hackney administration made a commitment, to have the Banksy artworks preserved: they would be safely removed and made visible elsewhere. However, it would take 12 years before the new hotel building was completed. In the meantime, the Banksys were languishing behind a tarpaulin which did not exactly improve them. Today marks from other sprayers are visible on the bottom part of the rat, covering Banksy's signature in the bottom left hand corner.

The rat has now been moved to the side entrance of the hotel that eventually replaced the Foundry. It is a branch of the chic Art'otel chain, which is an offshoot of the Radisson brand. Rooms are available for £500 a night - hardly affordable for aspiring spray artists. Banksy's other work, showing the television can be found inside the hotel.


Info: More on Street Art in the East End in our book, 101 London
















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