You turn your back for one week...

I was away from my beloved Digbeth to see some family last week so I've had to quickly catch up on the many goings on and pretty things that have turned up on the streets.

Perhaps most excitingly is the brilliant Mr Penfold paying the area a visit. It seems he was looked after by Tempo33, here's what they got up to:

Fazeley Street

Warner Street

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AsOne was back in town for a few days and somehow fitted in painting and pasting:

 Floodgate Street

Floodgate Street

Alcester Street

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Miss150 and Wah added to the re-covering of the electricty box on Fazeley Street:

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The Rainbow held several events over the bank holiday weekend and one of them included complementary live art from Philth, N4T4 and Glenn Anderson:

 On display for the rest of the week on Lower Trinity Street

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The 48Sheet project has come to Birmingham; 29 artists have created designs using the 48 sheet layout of a billboard  and now they're on display in prominent spots all over the city. Technically it's art on the street and some of the artists involved are better known to me for their illegal exploits so here are a few photos:

Lucy McLauchlan

A piece made using objects found around the site of the billboard on Pershore Street

Tom Tebby

High Street, Digbeth

Glenn Anderson

Constantly being changed and added to by the artist (hence the scaffolding) on Fazeley Street

Matt Watkins

Pershore Street

Pasting in numbers

Vomit was out pasting on Monday and added to a few spots that are building up nice little collections, both on Bradford Street:

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On Tuesday night; Tempo33 was out all over the Birmingham area as well as the city centre, this spot is my favourite:

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Last week I found some new stickers that I thought might be Energy, after a bit of research I'm pretty sure they are but I've not had confirmation from the man himself. I do know he's been out with his pens this week:

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It's been far too long since I put up any knitted lamppost decorations so I've been working on a new design just in time for Halloween. Photos of them up on the streets next week.

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To finish; a competition... If you 'like' my Facebook page (using that link or the box on the right) you are in with a chance of winning a Wah lollipop board, like the one below but not that one. Only the first 66 'likers' will have their names put in the bowler hat (I do actually own a bowler hat and will use it to choose a winner and there will be photos) so get on with it if you want to win!

Art Hugs

Lisk was out pasting Bradford Street on Tuesday! So far this one has already been painted over:

But these are still safe:

 With a giant Tempo33 paste!

With Golden Boy, PTP, Rebel Gunslingers and Wah

With Miss150 and Mew

With Tempo33, PTP and Rupert

Also! Mr Gutter Floozy was in Shoreditch on Wednesday and spotted a Lisk bot there:

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I spotted some new stickers on Bradford Street that I think look at bit like Energy's style, here's the sneak-photo I took at his exhibition in the graffiti4hire shop:

And here are the new stickers:

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My blog title is now 86% complete thanks to Wah doing 'snaps' for me, I love it and think it looks like a Wah branded polaroid camera!

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On Friday night I popped into the launch party for Tony Graffiti's exhibition at Green Street Arts in Digbeth. From what I know of Tony, he's been spraying since the early 80s and now makes a living using his can skills for commissions, promotion and advertising. The exhibition is called 'Keep Graffiti Real - Smoke Crack and Sign On', though I'm not sure whether smoking crack and signing on is in support or criticism of a graffiti purist mentality. I'd assume Tony isn't a big fan of having to witness the way graffiti has evolved a pretentious conjoined twin (street art) but surely that view would contradict painting adverts and putting on an exhibition. Perhaps Tony's reasons are similar to Robbo's shown in the documentary Graffiti Wars; he's been on the scene a long time and has a lot of respect and just thinks 'why not?'. The graffiti vs street art debate will continue, probably with more and more crossovers but if they are conjoined twins you can't just hug one of them.

Discoveries!

First up this week we have a solitary new Miss150 paste; we can only speculate as to why there is only one new lady in Digbeth; did Miss150 run out of paste? Did the other ladies fall out with her? Who knows...

Bradford Street

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There's also this new piece in The Custard Factory's car park:

Which turns out to be advertising for a film called Treading Water directed by Council Child Productions. The work itself is by The Goldfingers who specialise in performance graffiti and according to their website got through to the quarter finals of Britain's Got Talent in 2010 (though a lazy YouTube search found no evidence of this). Here's a time lapse video of the piece being done:

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Also spotted some new stickers by Rebel Gunslingers:

 You're*, Bradford Street

A Google search reveals they're responsible for the 'you like this' pastes:

Poor evidence of one above the Golden Boy paste, Fazeley Street

And various other bits I've spotted around Birmingham. Their Facebook page says:

'We're a street art duo (Tenko and Pyro) determined to double team the many locations in Solihull and Birmingham that are just simply gagging to be turned into art!!!'

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Yesterday was the opening of an exhibition with work from Golden Boy, Lisk and Miss150 at the 6/8 Kafe in the city centre, I knew about it last week but forget to say. It's running for 6 weeks until the 19th November and I'm attempting to organise something fun and arty as a closing event. More information coming soon!

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A late first post keeps expectations low ;)

Digbeth's streets currently boast two very talented couples; the legendary Golden Boy and Miss150 and the newer but equally amazing Wah and !?!. They're obviously all awesome in their own rights but it's nice to have a pasting buddy.

First up is a twist on Golden Boy's iconic paste with a larger size and drips of yellow that I think are added after printing.

Green Street, Digbeth

Miss150's new design; foxy and excellent placements, as always.

Bradford Street, Digbeth

Wah's sticker designs are always impressive and her first pastes are even better, the fact they all had evidence of attempted thievery just shows how good.

Floodgate Street, Digbeth

Love the colours !?! uses, he's been working a new character that should be up soon.

Floodgate Street, Digbeth

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New on the scene this week is Draw; intelligent and interesting, looking forward to seeing more from him.

Bradford Street, Digbeth and High Street,  Digbeth

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New stickers by Photocoyote (not a local, but still excellent), put up by Lisk.

 

High Street, Digbeth

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My acquisitions of the week!

A t-shirt and stickers from Khoi (super talented but based in Bristol, I'll be putting a few of the stickers up round here) and stickers from the legendary Chu ('Your Mum Rang'!) who the boyfriend met in The Rainbow last night.

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Links:

Golden Boy Flickr

Miss150 Flickr

Wah Flickr

 !?! Flickr
Draw Facebook

Photocoyote Flickr

Photocoyote Facebook

Khoi Flickr

Khoi Facebook

Chu Facebook