It's a Sign!
Street Art Signage in London
Street furniture, pedestrian placements, poles, posts, billboard 'ad-hacks', and many other interventions lead a subversive way for artists to wind-up their way about the city.
Some artists specialise in subverting street signs, while others use them as props and platforms for their artwork.
Acknowledged, appreciated, and sadly sometimes stolen... Street signage is seemingly a viable means for artists to pursue their creative endeavours, mostly going unnoticed and slipping away in to the subconscious cityscape.
Local councils must have a whole hoard of street art secreted away in their shacks too! ...or maybe just lost to the local dump? ...One way or another, there's loads of road works round-about. Keep your eyes peeled, look up, and always observe the highway code!
'Last graffiti before motorway' by Banksy.
Here's a few exemplary street artists with LDN-links, and a contra-flow of photos from the blog follows... #Road Sign and #Billboard are 'tags' in the LDN photo database too!
Clet Abraham
Italian-born and based in France, Clet Abraham's road sign 'redirections' can be found in many cities in Europe, and around the world.
Featuring humorous humanistic themes, pre-cut 'stickers' are directly applied to existing road signs. The graphics subvert the intended instruction and provide an alternative meaning…
Crossing The Road
Crossing The Road's silhouetted street sign artworks are site specific and reference passing 'locals' the artist has observed.
Visually captured and somehow? printed onto blank-template road signs, the pieces are installed back in the original location. They never seem to last very long, there are still a few about, but I'm not saying where!
MOBSTR
Always in context, MOBSTR's thoughtful, sometimes antagonistic, street art subversions twist and question the purpose and meaning of social messaging and incessant advertising in our urban environment.
Challenging authority with bold mixed-media installations and repetitive 'narrative' interventions, the pieces are always uniquely 'on-point', challenging even the most dedicated council 'buffers' and 'Graffiti Removal Squads'…
Led By Donkeys
Starting out as a group 'guerilla operation', Led by Donkeys are now a fully-fledged, crowdfunded campaign, poking politicians and re-publishing past statements, tweets and quotes, highlighting their "thermonuclear hypocrisy".
The pro-activist gang purchase ad-space all around the UK, displaying well-timed billboard installations and outdoor mobile advertising, to full-scale audio-video projections on the Houses of Parliament and White Cliffs of Dover!
FlyingLeaps
Collaborating with established artists and many creative practitioners, FlyingLeaps 'exhibit' artworks on street poster sites and billboards around the city, aiming to "provide a forum to debate the roles of art and visual activism across multiple perspectives: personal, aesthetic, social, cultural, political…"
Many of the artworks are available to buy via their website, providing artists a new way to converse and distribute thematic, relevant imagery.
Dr D
Street artist, and original 'Subvertiser', Dr D installs work all over London and beyond. From Billboards and phone boxes, to large scale paste-ups and site-specific installations.
Manipulating existing signage, branded advertising and government messaging, the works wryly poke at social issues, mainstream media, politics, and establishment imposition.
Vermibus
Spanish artist Vermibus redistributes manipulated adverts 'collected' from the street. Deconstructing the posters using solvents to break down the featured models image and removing any branding and messaging, then placing the reinterpreted artwork in another location (city or country) by hacking into the ad-space installations without permission.
'Unveiling Beauty' was a series of work installed across the European 'capitals of fashion' during Fashion Week, 2015.
Eyesaw
These Bus Stop ad-hacks by street artist Eyesaw subverted the available space and light-box installations with the silhouetted figures brilliantly illuminated at night. They were among a series of works installed in London in 2018.
Dan Witz
American street artist and realist painter Dan Witz featured human forms subtly installed into the framework of the iconic London phone box. Very hard to find around London, there's only two (I know of) that still exist.
Jonesy
Artist and craftsman Jonesy's superb sculpted street works sit atop poles and are embedded into walls and brickworks all over London.
Forging metals, fusing found animal parts, and hand-carving rocks and minerals into magnificent humanist forms that have a real social conscience and sensitive natural fragility.
First photographed in 2013, this piece survived many years of relentless redevelopment, weathering conditions, and more tests of time, until I recently discovered it has GONE! Almost certainly NOT removed by the council (as it's been there for so long!?), surely stolen by a selfish 'taker'. 😤
Stop, Go, Left, Right?
Here's a photo-stream of the latest interventions... This page will update as more signage is seen in LDN!