The London Police: Street art Icons

The London Police (TLP) is a London based duo which paint their LADS with smiley faces all over the world. They started in 1998 and TLP is essentially built on friendship. The friendship between Bob and Chas and their mission to travel the world and make boring places into more colourful, enjoying and friendly spaces. TLP make clean, graphical and bold street art. I found and photographed this piece (above) in Berlin and it's made on a big wall facing a playground for kids. Imagine the place without that mural. I think it makes a big difference.

In 2011, TLP and other artists were in Oslo to raise awareness and funds for Human Rights Watch. TLP claimed that Street Art fans are typically more in touch with the needs of communities and are fierce advocates of the rights of all people. The photos below, I took an early morning in Oslo. In general the street art culture have always been concerned with social awareness, societal values and political issues. E.g. the Occupy movement was massively supported by street artists who helped the activists to spread their message to the world. "We are the 99%". When Banksy presented a street art piece to the Occupy Movement in London it was news headlines all over the world. Shepard Fairey did the same for the movement in US (occupy wall street). The same happened when street artists began to paint on the Israeli wall on the West Bank drawing attention toward the situation for palestinians.

TLP in Oslo

TLP closeup

I don't know if street art can change the world, but street art isa very and social attention to a number of issues. Street Art have an impact becausethe work is public and for all, and that's hard to ignore. In addition to the public availability in the urban space. Today, if a new street art piece comes up in London, Berlin or Vardø, it burns through internet almost before it's finnished and is made available for people all over the world. You may not know where Vardø is, well check it out here. Well, I think that TLP makes a difference and you may visit their web site here for news. Together with this post I choose "All along the Watchtower" with Jimi Hendrix. This song by Dylan is so so cool! (Click on the link or the "play" button in the box below to listen).

Blu: Big Murals

Blu makes impressive street art all over the world. Blu started out as an graffiti maker in Italy and is now what can be called a global street artist who has worked and lived all over the world and his hallmark is huge murals, strong political statements and powerful imagery. Blu's murals are never detached from the places where they were conceived because Blu is a painter in the urban or industrial landscape. He always tries to communicate with the society which inhabits those spaces, searching for the uniqueness of each place. Millions have seen his animated street art streams on Youtube. Everything Blu does is ambitious, and he's talented enough to pull it off. He also stands admirably outside of the commercial art machine.

I took the photo above in central Berlin (Kreuzberg) and in front of the mural it was an open space where people lived in tents as quite neighbours to the busy an noisy city life. A very cheap way to stay and very central :-). This was my first meeting with a work done by Blu. The picture can't really reflect how it was to stand there and look at this wall and how huge it really is. And maybe you have to be a street art nerd like me to feel the overwhelming pleasure of this work. I travelled far to see this and other works by Blu in Berlin. Maybe the video below illustrates more the scale and how much paint it took make this:

Considering the size of his work, Blu have an impressive portifolio and you can see more of his work here. His animated street art movie Muto (Silent) have won several prizes and illustrates his tecniques and use of the urban environment in his creations:

Together with Blu, I choose Boys Don't Cry with The Cure (Click on the link or on the "play" button in the box below to play the song)

Mij. K. Do: Freedom in Berlin

In 2011 it was 50 years since the building of the Berlin Wall when the communist East closed its border, dividing the city for 28 years. Soldiers from the East began construction on the morning of 13 August 1961 and the wall fell 9th. of November 1989. During the 28 years of the Berlin wall more than 5000 people tried to escape over to the West, and the number of people who died trying to cross the Wall is disputed. At least 136 are known to have been killed but victims' groups say the true number is more than 700.

Today about 1,3 km of the wall is kept and goes under the name East Side Gallery. East Side Gallery is a memorial of freedom and preserves murals painted by 118 international artists since 1990. It's the largest open air gallery in the world. And, again, in 2011 Street Artists from different parts of the world were invited to paint concrete sections from the Berlin wall. The Berlin based artist Mij.K.Do was one of them. 

I photographed this piece above by Mij K Do on a warm august afternoon in 2012. This was my first visit to Berlin as an adult and I loved the city, the atmosphere, the street art culture and the art works of Mij. K. Do. I do not know much about the artist and there are almost no information on the web, just some pictures of works. The german president said in a speech about the wall that:"In the end, freedom is unconquerable. No wall can survive the will for freedom in the long term. The violence of just a few has no hold over the drive for freedom of many." I think that the idea of freedom belongs to works of Mij K Do.

Wall murals of Mij K Do placed at Check Point Charlie. Where does your heaven start?

Together with this work I choose Redemption Song by Bob Marley (Click on the link or the "play" button in the box below to listen).