Style 43

This awesome piece that has recently appeared on Stokes Croft in Bristol - from Vermin, Kid Zoo & Remo - highlights one of the things I am going to miss most about my hometown. Virtually all areas of the UK have been blessed by the can in some way these days and some outsiders could be forgiven for thinking that the graff scene was being commercialised, what with the current media penchant for all things Banksy. Luckily that is about as far from the truth as OJ’s alibis and anyone who lives in Bristol can testify to that.

The city is pretty much an ever-changing gallery that is producing some of the best art around and the artists involved are getting their work shown to a worldwide audience, who are starting to take more and more notice. Stokes Croft has become a gallery within itself, largely as a result of the amount of disused buildings in the area. Each week new pieces appear, exhibiting the vast range of styles and techniques the city’s painters offer, be it Cheo’s cartoon-like characters, Mr Jago’s colour patterns,  or Vermin’s darker techniques.

The council don’t exactly sanction the work, but they seemed to have reached an understanding, presumably thanks to the amount of support from Bristol’s other residents. In particular, organisations like the Peoples’ Republic of Stokes Croft (PRSC) have helped build bridges between the two sides and continue to fight for the preservation of one of the most popular areas of the city. Sometimes the council do get it wrong, like a few months ago when they painted over a piece on a disused shop front, which had in fact been commissioned by the owner. In theory that meant the council had flouted their own rules and regulations by defacing private property, but that was never going to stick to them.

On the whole, the pieces are done by prior arrangement with the artists involved in putting up the previous work, so there is no toe-stepping going on. Again though, this sometimes falls foul to fuck ups and funnily enough, exactly the same location that was involved in the mess with the council, was again recently in the centre of another row. This time the trouble was caused by someone painting on the shop front without the permission of the owner, or Paris, whose pieces were already up there. It all got sorted out in the end apparently, but it shows how much co-operation normally goes on behind the scenes, or else things like this would kick off all the time.

Graffiti’s ever-growing popularity among Bristolians is increasing so much, that we are starting to see more businesses draw on the on-tap talent, with numerous commissions for shops, pubs and clubs, like Lakota in the above picture, to be covered inside and out. Plus with the international success of people like Mr Jago and his recent solo exhibition in the Don Gallery in Milan, the scene in Bristol is never better.

Pretty much all the photos in this article are taken from the excellent Bristol Graffiti blog, which should be your first port of call for everything basically, as well as the equally informative, Bristol Street Art. You should also check out the excellent book, “Children of the Can“, by Felix ‘FLX’ Braun (read our interview with FLX here). Or just Google ‘Bristol graffiti’ and take it from there; you won’t be disappointed.

Tags: 3Dom, Bristol, Cheo, Epok, FLX, graffiti, Haka, Jody, Kid Zoom, Mr Jago, Mr Riks, Poer, PRSC, Remo, Serp, Soker, Vermin