zooming east

As part of the incentive for trying out the new Lumia 1020 (see previous post) Nokia had arranged for a group of bloggers including myself to go on a street art tour of East London. I’ve seen a lot of these about over recent years and my personal opinion is that some are of dubious quality. No need to worry though – Nokia had obviously done their homework and very sensibly booked us on with Dave from Shoreditch Street Art Tours. Now Dave ‘NoLionsInEngland’ has a pretty encyclopaedic knowledge of London’s street art scene but what I really rated about his tour was the way that he actually understood the art and was able to weave a story of patterns, motives, techniques, style and even history into a well paced walk which took in all the best art East London has to offer. I considered myself familiar with much of the work on show but I was amazed how much I learnt during the afternoon, ably assisted by knowledge imparted by fellow bloggers from Hooked Blog, Inspiring City and LDN Graffiti – cheers fellas!

 

Clustered around a work by Clet Abraham we all started to get acquainted with our Lumia 1020 phones. (photo Steve Cotton / taken with a Nokia Luma 1020)

Mark from Hooked Blog hopped up on to a handy bin to capture a great shot of  this sculpture by Jonesy, definitely one of my favourite pieces pointed out to us on the day. Mark’s picture turned out just great – have a look here. I should have passed my camera up to him so I got one too! (photo Steve Cotton / taken with a Nokia Luma 1020)

Further on we were shown many fresh new works of art by our tour guide Dave. Vibes fresh and vibrant wall work was one of my favourites. (photo Steve Cotton / taken with a Nokia Luma 1020).

Normally with a shutter speed of half a second you’d expect a photo like this of Steve Espo’s work on Village Underground to be a blurry mess but a combination of digging my elbows into my sides, not breathing and more importantly the Lumias image stabilisation meant that this hand held night time shot came out pretty sharp. (photo Steve Cotton / taken with a Nokia Luma 1020).

As a special extra for the tour we all trooped in to Pure Evil’s gallery in Leonard Street to get a personal tour by accidental gallerist Charlie Edwards. After showing us around key artworks in his collection and having a demonstration of his ambient guitar playing skills we headed down in to the basement for a group photo and a demonstration of his stencil technique. (photo Steve Cotton / taken with a Nokia Luma 1020)

Charley’s guitar had an, ahem. unusual theme. (photo Steve Cotton / taken with a Nokia Luma 1020).

Due to prior commitments I had to leave the tour at this point. It was a great experience and I’d really recommend Shoreditch Street Art Tours, great passion and knowledge from someone with a genuine interest in the subject. A big thanks to Nokia too for the trial of their Lumia 1020 phone and for organising the whole afternoon so well. Last, but not least, cheers to my fellow bloggers – it was great to meet you all and it’s not every day I get to take a picture of five lovely ladies! For a massively in depth review of the afternoon with some great photos also check Posh, Broke and Bored‘s great write up. As a final post in this series in a couple of days I’ll post up some more pictures of what I did with the Slinkachu style figures we were given to experiment with using the 1020. In the meantime here’s some more pictures from the day:

 

Work by Alo in a street off Brick Lane (photo Steve Cotton / taken with a Nokia Luma 1020)

Revolution / Love poster (photo Steve Cotton / taken with a Nokia Luma 1020)

Icon’s comment on street art tours (photo Steve Cotton / taken with a Nokia Luma 1020)

Clet Abraham modified sign in Sclater Street (photo Steve Cotton / taken with a Nokia Luma 1020)

Dan Kitchener in Sclater Street (photo Steve Cotton / taken with a Nokia Luma 1020)